It's barely the start of the twentieth century when Stroud (Burt Lancaster) starts his long career in jail. He is already guilty of murder before he loses the plot with a malevolent guard and adds to his crimes. Sentenced to swing, it's only the direct intervention by his mother with the President himself, that sees his punishment commuted and him returned to the prison run by the psychologically brutal Harvey Shoemaker (Karl Malden) who rules his empire like it were a fiefdom - and Stroud is never to leave solitary confinement. On his brief daily wander round the prison yard he discovers a sp…
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