17. Midnight Express

USA, Feature Film, 1978, 121 min

The most harrowing, viscerally compelling prison movie of all time, Midnight Express is based on the true story of American Billy Hayes, who is caught trying to smuggle two kilos of hashish out of Turkey. He is told he will be released if he identifies his source. After fingering the taxi driver who sold him the drugs, Hayes inexplicably makes his first big mistake?he tries to run away. Caught, he is sentenced to four years in an unspeakably nightmarish Turkish prison, where he is tortured and beaten repeatedly by the prison guards. Just 58 days before his release, Hayes is recharged with a much more serious offense, drug trafficking. At his new sentencing hearing, he screams at the presiding judges, “For a nation of pigs, it sure seems funny that you don’t eat them!” That was his second big mistake, because it netted him an additional 26 years.