The Longest Yard

1974
R
2h 1m

IMDb RATING

7.1/10

22K

YOUR RATING

POPULARITY

Play trailer4:07

Football Prison Drama Comedy Crime Drama Sport

A sadistic warden asks a former pro quarterback, now serving time in his prison, to put together a team of inmates to take on (and get pummeled by) the guards.A sadistic warden asks a former pro quarterback, now serving time in his prison, to put together a team of inmates to take on (and get pummeled by) the guards.A sadistic warden asks a former pro quarterback, now serving time in his prison, to put together a team of inmates to take on (and get pummeled by) the guards.

Director
- Robert Aldrich
Writers
- Tracy Keenan Wynn
- Albert S. Ruddy
Stars

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

7.1/10

22K

YOUR RATING

POPULARITY

4,337

445

Director
- Robert Aldrich
Writers
- Tracy Keenan Wynn
- Albert S. Ruddy
Stars

See production info at IMDbPro

Nominated for 1 Oscar
- 2 wins & 4 nominations total

Videos1

Trailer 4:07

Official Trailer

Photos185

+ 177

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Storyline

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Did you know

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Trivia
Sports Illustrated's Rick Telander wrote in the Oct. 17, 1988 issue: After the cast and crew of "The Longest Yard" departed from Georgia State Prison, the inmates played Georgia State Troopers using the equipment left behind by the film crew. The game quickly got out of hand, with inmates pummeling the out-of-shape troopers for their alleged arrogance. The game was called at the half, with the inmates ahead 66-0. End of prison football in Georgia.

Goofs
Melissa warns Paul not to touch her Maserati. The car was sold in the US as a Citroen/Maserati SM, a Citroen with a Maserati engine. The owner would be more likely to refer to it as Maserati.

Quotes
Paul Crewe: My, you have lovely hair. You ever find any spiders in it?

Alternate versions
The 1995 VHS USA re-release does not feature the song "Saturday Night Special" by Lynyrd Skynyrd during the chase scene. Instead, there is no music during the chase.

Connections
Featured in The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson: Burt Reynolds/Dom DeLuise/Art Carney/Ace Trucking Company (1974)

Soundtracks
Saturday Night Special
Written by Ronnie Van Zant and Edward King (as Edward Calhoun King)
Performed by Lynyrd Skynyrd
Recording Supervised by Al Kooper
Courtesy of Sounds of the South/MCA Records

User reviews81

Review

Featured review

7/10

You Gotta Be A Football Hero

The Longest Yard refers not to the territory gained and lost in a football game. For Burt Reynolds its that prison yard that he's in for the next 18 months.

Reynolds isn't one of the noblest athletes ever to grace the National Football League. He was a quarterback who was thrown out of the game in a point shaving scandal. Now he's doing time for stealing his mistress's Maserati and causing a lot of havoc and mayhem when she called the cops on him.

The Longest Yard starts to look a little like From Here To Eternity where Monty Clift's company captain Philip Ober wants him to box for the post championship. Reynolds really isn't interested in playing football any more or helping warden Eddie Albert out with his semi-pro team of prison guards. But he's got less redress than Clift did in the army and Reynolds is not a person to make too fine a point of resistance.

What Reynolds suggests is a tune-up game with a squad of the inmates to play the guards to keep them in a fighting edge. Sounds real good to Albert who has a mean streak in him that Reynolds is slow to realize. There's a lot of possibilities to inflict some legal pain and for him to reassert his authority.

The Longest Yard is first and foremost about what Reynolds will do when the crisis comes. His track record doesn't suggest any heroics, but some people do surprise you.

The antagonists Reynolds and Albert are given good support by director Robert Aldrich's picked cast. Foremost among them are Ed Lauter as the chief guard, James Hampton as the team manager, and Charles Tyner in a particularly loathsome role as a prison stoolie. He will really make your skin crawl.

Bernadette Peters is also in The Longest Yard as Albert's secretary with the delightful name of Miss Toot who takes advantage of her position with a little sexual harassment of the prisoners. I do love that Dickensian name that was given her for this film. The only other female of note is Anitra Ford who is Reynolds mistress and whose Maserati he appropriates. When Burt says he earned that Maserati you can well believe it.

The Longest Yard is in a class by itself, a sports/prison movie. A film that created it's own genre. That has to count for something.