The Prisoner Of Shark Island (1936) + Hellgate (1952) on DVD

Get the original film, The Prisoner Of Shark Island (1936) And Hellgate (1952) for 20% off their individual prices!

The Prisoner Of Shark Island (1936)


 Starring Warner Baxter, Gloria Stuart, Claude Gillingwater, Arthur Byron, O.P. Heggie
Directed by John Ford

Print: Black/white
Runtime: 96 min.
Genre: Westerns

Warner Baxter, Gloria Stuart. The life of the man for whom the famous expression your name is mud!" was coined, is depicted here in this intense biodrama. Dr. Samuel Mudd was wrongly sent to prison at Shark Island for being a co-conspirator of Abraham Lincoln's assassination. The truth is: Mudd, a Confederate sympathizer, had reset the broken leg of a stranger when he stumbled into his office-but the stranger turned out to be John Wilkes Booth. 1936/b&w/96 min/NR.



Hellgate (1952)
Starring Sterling Hayden, Joan Leslie, Ward Bond, James Arness, Peter 
Coe
Directed by Charles Marquis Warren

Print: black/white
Runtime: 87 min.
Genre: western

A lesson in visual deja vu for those who had seen John Ford's 1936 "The 
Prisoner of Shark Island", indicating that director Charles Marquis Warren 
and producer John C. Champion, as co-writers of this film, had some 
working knowledge of the Ford film themselves. The prison in the one, 
called Hellgate, is set in New Mexico during the Civil War, where the 
sadistic warden, Union Army officer Tod Vorhees (Ward Bond) takes more 
than an instant dislike for newly-arrived prisoner Gil Hanley (Sterling 
Hayden.) Hanley is innocent of the crimes charged to him---shades of Dr. 
Samuel Mudd---but that doesn't cut him any slack. Those who saw the 
Ford film know an epidemic is about to hit the prison and Hanley will be 
called on to combat it. Those who didn't can be surprised when it 
happens.