While searching on Angel Island, the Warden insists that the men's personal effects were important, and the men would have drowned before leaving them behind. Shreds of raincoat material, including personal effects of the men, are found floating in the bay. The following morning, the escape is discovered and a manhunt ensues. The men depart from Alcatraz, partially submerged in the water, clinging to the raft and using their legs to propel themselves. They scramble down the side of the building into the prison yard, climb over a barbed-wire fence, make their way to the shoreline of the island and inflate the raft. He later changes his mind but is too late and returns to his cell to sulk over his missed opportunity.Ĭarrying the flotation gear, Morris and the Anglins access the roof and avoid the searchlights. Butts loses his nerve and fails to rendezvous with them. Morris, the Anglins and Butts plan to meet in the passageway and escape. That night, the inmates decide they are now ready to leave. Wolf is released from solitary confinement and prepares to attack Morris again, but English manages to intercept him while implying that his gang will beat up Wolf. Nonetheless, he issues orders for Morris to be relocated to a different cell as soon as possible. The Warden orders an inspection of Morris' cell but finds nothing unusual. Over the next months, Morris, the Anglins, and Butts dig through the walls of their cells with spoons (which have been soldered into makeshift shovels), make papier-mâché dummies to act as decoys, and construct a raft out of raincoats.ĭuring mealtime Morris places a chrysanthemum at the table in honour of Doc, but the Warden stops by and crushes it, causing a provoked Litmus to suffer a heart attack. Morris notices that the concrete around the grille in his cell is weak and can be chipped away, which evolves into an escape plan. Later, Morris encounters two bank robbers and brothers John and Clarence Anglin, who are his old friends from another prison sentence, and he links up with prisoner Charley Butts. Doc is depressed and hacks off several fingers of his left hand with a hatchet from the prison workshop before being led away. The guard reluctantly follows his orders. Doc pleads with a guard that he has nothing left to live for without his painting, to no avail. Enraged, the Warden removes Doc's painting privileges. The paintings are flattering, recognizing the guards' humanity, but the Warden's painting, which has been kept out of view, captures the ugliness of his cruellty. The Warden discovers that Doc has painted a portrait of him, as well as other guards. Both men are imprisoned in isolation in the hole. Morris also makes an enemy of Wolf, a rapist who harasses him in the showers and later attacks him in the prison yard with a knife. He makes a gift of one of the blossom heads to Morris. Doc's portraits contain chrysanthemums as a symbol of human spirit and freedom. Over the next days, Morris makes acquaintances with some inmates: the eccentric Litmus, who is fond of desserts English, a black inmate serving two life sentences for killing two white men in self-defense and the elderly Doc, who paints portraits and once grew chrysanthemums at Alcatraz. The day of his arrival, Morris steals a nail clipper from the Warden's desk. Alcatraz is unique within the US prison system for its high level of security, and no inmate has ever escaped. In early 1960 Frank Morris, a criminal who has absconded from other facilities, arrives at the maximum security prison on Alcatraz Island. Campbell Bruce and based on the 1962 prisoner escape from the maximum security prison on Alcatraz Island, marks the fifth and final collaboration between Siegel and Eastwood, following Coogan's Bluff (1968), Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970), The Beguiled (1971), and Dirty Harry (1971). The film, an adaptation of the 1963 non-fiction book of the same name by J. Escape from Alcatraz is a 1979 American prison action thriller film directed and co-produced by Don Siegel, written by Richard Tuggle, and starring Clint Eastwood alongside Patrick McGoohan, Fred Ward, Jack Thibeau, and Larry Hankin with Danny Glover appearing in his film debut.

Escape from alcatraz movie