Hellgate

Despite the quote that begins the film from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes about the main character Gilmore Hadley and other historical references, the film is not based on an historical incident. The story, which critics saw as a reworking of the "Prisoner of shark Island" (1936) about Dr. Mudd who was imprisoned for the Lincoln assassination, is fictitious and the Holmes quote part of the pseudo-historical trappings created by director and co-screenwriter Christopher Maquis Warren..

When Gil Hanley is in jail, he is kissing his wife Ellen and his whole head is sticking out between the bars, which are so far apart he could have slid out sideways between them.

Opening credits prologue: KANSAS, 1867-- A STATE OVERRUN BY GUERRILLA TERRORISTS IN THE WAKE OF THE CIVIL WAR