There’s something a little pathetic about two ageing action heroes reliving their glory days from the ’80s. Granted, neither Sylvester Stallone nor Arnold Schwarzenegger looks mid-sixties, exactly, and they make a far better fist of playing action heroes than the younger but tumescent Steven Seagal in Maximum Conviction (2012). But it’s a worrying trend; I’m not looking forward to seeing Chuck Norris and Burt Reynolds wreak havoc in a palliative care prison.
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Posted on February 24th, 2014 at 9:26 pm. Updated on March 9th, 2014 at 1:13 pm.
This (along with several other contenders) could serve as a baseline against which all women’s prison movies are measured. It’s far from great, and far from terrible. It’s camp, but not too camp. Well, it’s over-the-top camp at times. It has a brave heroine, a particularly nasty villain, plenty of true-to-life prisoners who have no wish to fly above the radar, some drama… and, presumably because it’s made-for-TV and it’s 1972, a surfeit of beautiful women but no shower scenes, lesbian scenes, or lascivious male officers. What’s more, it stars two prison movie greats: Ida Lupino (Women’s Prison, 1955) and Barbara Luna (The Concrete Jungle, 1982). (more…)
Posted on February 4th, 2014 at 8:18 pm. Updated on February 8th, 2014 at 7:45 pm.
There are many men of my generation who will remember Susan Dey as the only reason for watching The Partridge Family. My memory of Laurie Partridge has dulled considerably, but it could well be her who has strayed into this TV movie, and into this TV prison, by mistake.
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Posted on January 27th, 2014 at 8:39 am. Updated on January 27th, 2014 at 8:45 am.
Forget the title; this is not your ordinary Women in Prison exploitation movie. Well, yes, there is some adolescent preoccupation with sex (principally as a spectator sport), and a collection of minor players whose sole function is to wear little underwear and have their prison uniforms ripped in fights, but it is more comic ghost story than soft-porn. And it’s the ghosts that make it a little unusual. (more…)
Posted on January 14th, 2014 at 9:02 pm. Updated on February 8th, 2014 at 7:52 pm.
I think I made a mistake in reading Roger Ebert’s review of this film (which is also known as ‘Snake Canyon Prison‘), before I watched it. As a result I was expecting something truly execrable – but it turned out to be merely unfunny, in the manner of most prison comedies. (more…)
Posted on December 28th, 2013 at 9:33 pm. Updated on December 28th, 2013 at 9:33 pm.
I thought that this was a variation on the theme played out in several films – including The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936), Devil’s Island (1939) and Hellgate (1952) – where doctors (and one veterinarian) treat injured felons because they’re injured, and then get charged with being an accessory. This is a little different; the small town doctor here does take a bullet from the chest of a young man (whom he had delivered 26 years previously and known all his life), but also gives him money and hides him for a few days – in doing so knowingly helping him evade arrest. So he might be a little more culpable than some other doctors in those other movies. (more…)
Posted on December 12th, 2013 at 11:08 am. Updated on December 12th, 2013 at 11:08 am.
I must be getting old. A prisoner ladles porridge into the prison Governor’s hat, with inevitable results; the prisoner escapes all punishment, and rather than be troubled by this, I simply put it down to comedic licence. Who knows; I may soon embrace action movies.
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Posted on November 30th, 2013 at 8:54 pm. Updated on November 30th, 2013 at 8:54 pm.
Three years after The Concrete Jungle was released, a film called Concrete Hell (aka Turning to Stone) hit the cinemas in Canada. There are plenty of parallels between the two, aside from their shared interest in building materials used in prison construction. Both feature young women charged with cocaine importation who are deserted by their male partners and dropped into brutal prisons which are controlled by big-haired queen bees. The Concrete Jungle definitely came first. Turning to Stone is definitely better. (more…)
Posted on November 27th, 2013 at 9:09 pm. Updated on November 27th, 2013 at 9:09 pm.
There is no shortage of messages here. “Prison is a state of mind; the walls, the bars, the locks, the barbed wire,” is the upfront one, direct from director Sananjit Bangsapan. But then the leading lady boasts that ‘Stoicism overcomes all’, and others’ stories remind us that ‘One doesn’t have to be in prison to be imprisoned’. Or for life to be tough, for that matter. And finally we’re cautioned, by one who should know, that ‘Sex causes trouble’. So many messages! So little consequence. (more…)
Posted on November 13th, 2013 at 8:39 pm. Updated on August 28th, 2019 at 8:01 pm.
Dr Esmat Rushdi (Nour El-Sherif) is a new male social worker in a juvenile prison for girls. The prison bears a wonderfully euphemistic name – The Foundation of Social Care for Girls – and Dr Esmat, who has a doctorate in social psychology, is intent on making it a paragon of reformist endeavour. Now, I don’t know nearly enough about Egypt in the mid-70s (or now, for that matter), but I suspect things may have changed there since this film was made. There is not a hijab to be seen. Dr Esmat sleeps in the same building as the girls; they enter his unlocked bedroom door at will, and he is similarly able to enter the girls’ dormitory through an unlocked door at any time (and does). He regularly caresses the girls’ faces, or strokes their hair, and is wont to telling them that he loves them (mostly like a brother). Viewed almost 40 years on, it seems a rather unusual approach.
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Posted on October 4th, 2013 at 9:30 pm. Updated on October 4th, 2013 at 9:30 pm.