The Longest Yard (1974) on Netflix
Former pro quarterback Paul Crewe lands in Citrus State Prison, where the football-obsessed warden wants his help with the guards' team. Crewe instead builds a squad of inmates to face them.
- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb7.1/1023,540 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes79%
Trailer
Plot summary
Paul "Wrecking" Crewe, a former professional quarterback, leaves his wealthy girlfriend Melissa in Palm Beach and takes her Citroën SM without permission. A police chase and a fight with two officers follow, and Crewe receives an eighteen-month sentence at Citrus State Prison. The other convicts have no respect for him because the NFL dismissed him for shaving points. Warden Rudolph Hazen runs a semi-pro team of guards and wants Crewe to help coach it to a championship. Captain Wilhelm Knauer, the head guard and coach, presses him to take part in an exhibition game. Crewe assembles a prison team instead, among them Samson, a former weightlifter, the martial arts expert Connie Shokner, Caretaker, Nate Scarboro, Pop, and Granville, the first black prisoner to join.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Longest Yard (1974)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The Longest Yard was shot on location at Georgia State Prison in Reidsville, Georgia, with the cooperation of then-Governor Jimmy Carter, and filming had to be delayed from time to time because of prison uprisings.
- According to Burt Reynolds, director Robert Aldrich knew comedy was not his strong suit, so they shot a take as written and then a "schtick take" where Reynolds clowned around; about 65% of the finished film used the schtick scenes.
- The character of Paul "Wrecking" Crewe was said to have been inspired by Jack Molinas, a college basketball and NBA All-Star said to have shaved points for Columbia University and the Fort Wayne Pistons and to have been a key figure in the 1961 NCAA gambling scandal.
- Director Robert Aldrich said he took the third act, in which Paul Crewe falls from grace and tries to redeem himself, from Body and Soul (1947), a film on which he had worked as assistant director, and used a similar device on All the Marbles (1981).
- A museum that can be visited by appointment, covering the film and capital punishment in Georgia, now stands in the former Death Row of the prison where the film was shot.
