The Fishman of Alcatraz (1965)

D. Harry Paddock
B&W


After the success of 'The Birdman of Alcatraz' (and maybe even the lesser success of 'The Jazzman of Alcatraz') lots of Hollywood producers felt the need to make a movie with the suffix 'of Alcaraz'. After all it was the most famous prison in the world, in the news because it had recently shut down and so rather than just making A.N. Other prison film, an ALCATRAZ film made sound of commercial sense of the kind that makes dollar signs flash in the eyes of Hollywood producers and thin lines of drool to run from the corners of their greedy fat mouths. Most of these films though had ridiculously little to actually do with Alcatraz (as we'll see in the next entry), this one does though - and clearly even managed to film some scenes on the island. Not great scenes admittedly, not even memorable scenes, but enough for the film to yell out “Hey bozos! We actually fucking went there!”

I'll be honest, when I first saw the title 'The Fishman of Alcatraz' I seriously misjudged the film’s content. My obviously distressingly adolescent mind, crammed full of images of Spiderman and Batman, just imagined that Alcatraz was a really stupid place to send the captured superhero, Fishman. This is after all a prison surrounded by water and so would be a terrible location in which to hold the mighty Fishman. (Clearly my mind is full of cut-price versions of Aquaman). If one was to have Fishman in custody a prison far in land would be miles better. On Alcatraz, Fishman’s escape is inevitable.

However my super hero fantasies proved to be as unfounded and inaccurate as mermaids, mermen and that whole Atlantis myth, as this film turned out to be about a man who just really liked fish.

Following all the beats of the Burt Lancaster movie, here a doggery Elisha Cook jr is a convict who really likes fish and through correspondence courses and careful examination of his surroundings, becomes an expert on them. Therefore Alcatraz becomes his salvation, as he has lots of time to examine fish and even discovers a new breed. Set in the 1930s, there are cameos from an overweight and sweating Al Capone and a Machine Gun Kelly who ends his sentences with “rat-tat-tat” just so we know who he is. Cook looks old, but is still convincing as a small crook who got in above his head, and the whole is in many ways quite a sweet film. However whereas birds have beautiful plumage and a distinct look on screen, fish either swim away or just flop about. And after 90 minutes watching a kindly old man pursue this Piscean interest, if you haven’t flopped limp to your seat yourself, you’ll almost certainly have swum hurriedly away.