If You Liked Birdman of Alcatraz, Watch These Next
Finished Birdman of Alcatraz (1962) and want more of the same? These 19 movies are what its fans watched next, ranked by how often people who liked it also liked these. Like Birdman of Alcatraz, most of them are drama, crime, history.
Everything on this page has a home release and plays right here on Rotten Brains — pick one and press play. No sign-up, and a free account only adds resume and history.
19 titles · updated 2nd October 2026
2.The Shawshank Redemption(1994)
8.7DramaCrimeAlso drama and crime
Imprisoned in the 1940s for the double murder of his wife and her lover, upstanding banker Andy Dufresne begins a new life at the Shawshank prison, where he puts his accounting skills to work for an amoral warden. During his long stretch in prison, Dufresne comes to be admired by the other inmates -- including an…
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3.Cool Hand Luke(1967)
7.7DramaCrimeAlso drama and crime
When petty criminal Luke Jackson is sentenced to two years in a Florida prison farm, he doesn't play by the rules of either the sadistic warden or the yard's resident heavy, Dragline, who ends up admiring the new guy's unbreakable will. Luke's bravado, even in the face of repeated stints in the prison's dreaded…
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5.The Stanford Prison Experiment(2015)
6.8ThrillerDramaHistoryAlso drama and history
In 1971, Stanford's Professor Philip Zimbardo conducts a controversial psychology experiment in which college students pretend to be either prisoners or guards, but the proceedings soon get out of hand. Based on a true story.
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6.Bad Boys(1983)
7.0CrimeDramaThrillerAlso crime and drama
Mick O'Brien is a young Chicago street thug torn between a life of petty crime and the love of his girlfriend. But when the heist of a local drug dealer goes tragically wrong Mick is sentenced to a brutal juvenile prison where violence is a rite of passage and respect is measured in vengeance.
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7.Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile(2019)
7.0DramaCrimeAlso drama and crime
A chronicle of the crimes of Ted Bundy, from the perspective of his longtime girlfriend, Elizabeth Kloepfer, who refused to believe the truth about him for years.
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8.The Green Mile(1999)
8.5FantasyDramaCrimeAlso drama and crime
A supernatural tale set on death row in a Southern prison, where gentle giant John Coffey possesses the mysterious power to heal people's ailments. When the cell block's head guard, Paul Edgecomb, recognizes Coffey's miraculous gift, he tries desperately to help stave off the condemned man's execution.
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9.The United States of Leland(2003)
6.5CrimeDramaAlso crime and drama
A withdrawn young man, Leland Fitzgerald is imprisoned for the murder of a mentally disabled boy, who also happened to be the brother of his girlfriend, Becky. As the community struggles to deal with the killing, Pearl Madison, a teacher at the prison, decides to write about Leland's case. Meanwhile, others affected…
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10.Convict(2014)
6.5ActionCrimeDramaAlso crime and drama
Set in the dark and old Parramatta prison built by the original convicts our lead character Ray a war veteran finds himself serving 18 months for manslaughter after defending his fiance. He soon realizes that the prison boss has it in for him and does everything possible to break Ray even going after his fiance.
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11.White Heat(1949)
7.7CrimeDramaThrillerAlso crime and drama
A psychopathic criminal with a mother complex makes a daring break from prison and then leads his old gang in a chemical plant payroll heist. After the heist, events take a crazy turn.
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12.The Silence of the Lambs(1991)
8.3CrimeThrillerDramaAlso crime and drama
Clarice Starling is a top student at the FBI's training academy. Jack Crawford wants Clarice to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant psychiatrist who is also a violent psychopath, serving life behind bars for various acts of murder and cannibalism. Crawford believes that Lecter may have insight into a case and…
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13.Murder in the First(1995)
7.1CrimeDramaAlso crime and drama
A young, inexperienced public defender is assigned to defend an inmate accused of committing murder while behind bars.
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14.The Color Purple(1985)
7.7DramaHistoryAlso drama and history
An epic tale spanning forty years in the life of Celie, an African-American woman living in the South who survives incredible abuse and bigotry. After Celie's abusive father marries her off to the equally debasing 'Mister' Albert Johnson, things go from bad to worse, leaving Celie to find companionship anywhere she…
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15.Lock Up(1989)
6.8ActionCrimeDramaAlso crime and drama
Frank Leone is nearing the end of his prison term for a relatively minor crime. Just before he is paroled, however, Warden Drumgoole takes charge. Drumgoole was assigned to a hell-hole prison after his administration was publicly humiliated by Leone, and has now arrived on the scene to ensure that Leone never sees…
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16.The Professor and the Madman(2019)
7.1HistoryDramaMysteryAlso history and drama
Professor James Murray begins work compiling words for the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary in the mid 19th century, and receives over 10,000 entries from a patient at Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, Dr. William Minor.
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17.Papillon(2017)
7.3AdventureCrimeDramaAlso crime and drama
Henri “Papillon” Charrière, a safecracker from the Parisian underworld, is wrongfully convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in the penal colony of French Guiana, where he forges a strong friendship with Louis Dega, a counterfeiter who needs his protection.
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19.The Unforgivable(2021)
7.4DramaCrimeAlso drama and crime
A woman is released from prison after serving a sentence for a violent crime and re-enters a society that refuses to forgive her past.
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