Hell's Highway

Duke Ellis, serving on a chain gang in the south, is preparing to escape when, on the eve of the night he had planned, his younger brother John is delivered into the same camp. The camp’s management works the prisoners on road building without limit, and illness, heat and beatings are treated as ordinary. Once his brother arrives, the meaning of Duke’s plan changes; he now has to choose between his own escape and the boy’s safety. Rowland Brown’s sixty two minute American film was made in the pre-Code years and takes direct aim at the chain gang system that was being argued about publicly at the time. Richard Dix and Tom Brown take the leads, with Rochelle Hudson and C. Henry Gordon in the cast. The RKO production was released on 23 September 1932.