Paris Pitman, Jr. (Kirk Douglas) is the sole survivor of a homestead robbery and hides the loot in a snake pit. He is caught in a bordello and sentenced to 10 years in territorial prison. He makes friends and enemies. Corrupt warden LeGoff offers him a deal for a split of the loot but is killed in a prison riot. Lawman Woodward W. Lopeman (Henry Fonda) arrives to improve the prison as the new warden and he laughs off Pitman's offer.

This movie takes its time to get going mostly because Fonda doesn't arrive at the prison until much later. Instead, Paris is playing the long game and shows his cards only after awhile. This needs to be a mano a mano movie with Douglas facing off against Fonda. It would be better to have Fonda arriving sooner and one of the guards being the corrupt one with the offer. It is still great to have these men face off but it is not a classic.

Kirk Douglas plays a very amoral and scheming bandit. For a while, this lifestyle pays off until he is ultimately captured and placed in an awful prison in the middle of the desert. At first, this is a real tough stay for Kirk as the warden is a greedy cuss and he tries to abuse Kirk into revealing where he hid $500,000 in stolen loot. But, after the warden is killed, a new guy takes over (Henry Fonda) and he and Douglas develop a certain level of respect for each other--all the while Kirk is planning his escape. As for Fonda and his motivation for befriending Kirk goes, this is all very vague until very late in the film--and I think this made for a better film.

In addition to these two terrific actors, there are some wonderful supporting performances--especially by Hume Cronin and John Randolph who seemed an awful lot like a married couple! About the only negatives were a few places where the script seemed ridiculous (such as the escape from the prison--they took their time and it sure looked too easy).

I enjoyed this Kirk Douglas film quite a bit and I was torn between giving it a 7 and an 8. My final decision to give it a 7 was because some of the nudity and language seemed rather gratuitous and was inserted less for artistic reasons than to satisfy the new 1960s and 70s morality. There are just a few too many butts and breasts to make it a good bet for most kids--and it's a shame, because otherwise it's a dandy film.

In making "There Was a Crooked Man" Joseph L. Mankiewicz set out with the intention of creating a cynical Western, based on the view that there is a little bit of badness even in the best of men… What emerges in this long and expert exercise is a film so thorough1y cynical, so negative in its view of the human species that the viewer is allowed no point of view of his own…

For Kirk Douglas, the very crooked man of the title, the film gave scope for bravura playing but the characterization is black and utterly ruthless… Mankiewicz would have done well to consider the view that there is a little bit of goodness even in the worst of men… but the film remains admirable in its staging and in the performances of an exemplary cast…

Douglas, wearing steel-rimmed spectacles and with his hair dyed red, appears at the beginning of the picture as a somewhat cultured bandit; he raids the home of a wealthy rancher and escapes with half a million dollars in cash...

In making his escape, several of his men are shot to death and Douglas himself kills his surviving companion… Thus the swag is entirely his… He hides it in a rattlesnake pit in the desert but he is later spotted in a brothel by the rancher and we next see Douglas on his way to jail…

In the prison wagon are five fellow felons: Hume Cronyn and John Randolph, a pair of con-men, religious fakers and implicitly homosexual; a huge homicidal Chinaman, played by Olympic athlete C. K. Yang in a screen debut; Michael Blodgett, a young man who accidentally killed his girl friend's father when suddenly interrupted in an act of love-making; and Warren Oates, a stupid gunman who shoots sheriff Henry Fonda in the leg when the peaceful, unarmed lawman tries to persuade him to surrender…

These endearing rascals are then incarcerated in a cell with a dirty old fellow called 'The Missouri Kid,' played like a ferret by Burgess Meredith…

The theme, like that of all prison pictures, is escape, and with Douglas openly proud of his hidden half-million, escape becomes inevitable and the wily bandit, a born leader of men, can take his pick not only of his accomplices but of the prison warden (Martin Gabel),a degenerate gentleman, as eager to leave, his post as any prisoner…

However, a noisy fight breaks out among the prisoners and in trying to stop it the warden is killed…

One irony leads to another and the new warden turns out to be Henry Fonda, a solidly honest, humane man who dedicates himself to penal reform… He quickly spots the officer-like qualities of Douglas and assigns him to supervising the building of a new dining hall… It is during the inauguration of the building, attended by the state governor and his guests, that Douglas elects to spark a revolt—his cover for escape…

The motion picture is graphic in depicting the sweat and stench of life in a desert prison, and the frustration and despair of its inmates… The spirit of decency, exemplified by Fonda's warden, is almost a stimulating note in an atmosphere swirling with resentment and spite…

Mankiewicz' film has some memorable moments: Douglas, in his opening robbery, commenting on the excellence of the fried chicken being served at the rancher's table; Hume Cronyn, passing himself off as a deaf mute at a church gathering, backing into a hot stove and yelling a profane curse; a pretty schoolteacher reciting Henley's 'Invictus' at the dining room ceremony, watched by hundreds of hungry eyes; and in the long chaos of the revolt, a furious montage of incidents, particularly the old Missouri Kid sitting, weeping because he has been in prison too long and hasn't the courage to leave "home," and Cronyn, like a firm-minded old wife, leading his companion back into their cell and telling him they will serve out their sentence