The Rock and roles: Movies filmed at Alcatraz

It's 50 years ago this month that the world's most famous prison, Alcatraz, said goodbye to its final inmates. To commemorate The Rock's anniversary, here are some of the most memorable movies set on the island.

Clint Eastwood in the 1979 movie Escape from Alcatraz. Paramount Pictures

The Rock (1996)

Michael Bay’s best movie has an A-list cast having tons of explosive fun – Ed Harris is the former marine who has taken tourists hostage and is threatening to fire chemical weapons at San Francisco, Nicolas Cage (as the amusingly named Stanley Goodspeed) is the reluctant scientist hired to stop him and Sean Connery (stealing every scene) is the only inmate to have ever escaped who gets coerced into taking a team of good guys back to Alcatraz to save the day. It’s desperately silly but also hugely enjoyable, with a witty script that, rumour has it, was worked on by Quentin Tarantino and the British comedy writers Ian La Frenais and Dick Clement.

This gritty drama loosely inspired by a true story stars Kevin Bacon in one of his best performances, as a petty criminal sent to Alcatraz who spends three years in solitary confinement after an escape attempt. Killing a fellow inmate on his release back into the main prison, he’s charged with murder, but a young public defender (Christian Slater) decides that the prison itself should be on trial. Gary Oldman co-stars as a particularly sadistic warden, alongside William H Macy, Brad Dourif and Bacon’s real-life wife Kyra Sedgwick.

Completists should note there was an interesting 2012 television drama series called Alcatraz that imagined the prison's closure was brought about when nume-rous guards and prisoners disappeared in 1963 – only for them to turn up, having not aged a day, in 21st-century San Francisco. Jorge Garcia (of Lost fame) starred alongside Sam Neill and Sarah Jones in the show which lasted 13 episodes and was filmed on the island.

Follow us