Laughter in Hell

Laughter in Hell is a 1933 PreCode film directed by Edward L. Cahn and starring Pat OBrien. The films title was typical of the sensationalistic titles of many PreCode films. The film was inspired in part by I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang and was part of a series of films depicting men in chain gangs following the success of that film. OBrien plays a railroad engineer who kills his wife and her lover in a jealous rage and is sent to prison. The movie received a mixed review in The New York Times upon its release. Although long considered lost, the film was recently preserved and was screened at the American Cinematheque in Hollywood, CA in October of 2012.

OBrien plays an Irish mine worker, Barney Slaney. Later Barney gets a job as a fireman on the local train for an engineer named Mileaway. He gets married, but finds his wife having an affair with Grover Perkins, a childhood nemesis. Barney loses control and kills them both. He turns himself in and receives a life sentence of hard labor. Barney quickly finds out that the brother of the man he killed, Ed Perkins, will be in charge of his chain gang, and the brother bullies him repeatedly. While the prisoners dig graves, Barney knocks Ed unconscious and drops him into one of the open graves. He then escapes during the ensuing meyhem, in which the warden is killed. He breaks out of the police dragnet, and hides at a farm which recently had a pestilence infection. He meets a woman named Lorraine, and they run away together.A controversial lynching scene where several black men were hung gained headlines after the film was released. The Motion Picture Herald expressed concern that the events depicted could be very difficult for some African Americans to watch. Writing in New Age an African American weekly newspaper Vere E. Johns praised the producers for depicting the scene and in so doing, publicizing the atrocities that were happening in some southern states. Johns also disagreed with the initial reports in the Herald which stated that only blacks were lynched, Johns stated erroneously that both blacks and whites were lynched in the picture. ........

Source: Wikipedia