» Convicts 4 (1962, USA)
Convicts 4 what, exactly? Better scripts, perhaps. (more…)
Posted on September 12th, 2009 at 1:06 am. Updated on September 12th, 2009 at 2:09 pm.
The Nasty Guard
» Letters from a Killer (1998, USA)
The blurb on the back of my DVD reads, “When a man is falsely convicted of the murder of his wife’s lover and ends up on death row, he develops intense relationships with three women.” It’s not a great movie, admittedly, and there is some detail in the plot to which you have to pay attention, but you’d hope that enough of the movie’s publicists would have stayed awake long enough to know that he was accused of killing his wife and then strung along four women romantically. His wife. Four women. (more…)
Posted on August 27th, 2009 at 6:37 pm. Updated on March 7th, 2016 at 10:44 pm.
» So Evil, So Young (1961, UK)
It’s hard not to enjoy a movie about a progressive girls’ borstal where the main character, Ann (Jill Ireland), is warned that her monthly visit with her father must be short, and the visit is then terminated after precisely 1 minute 12 seconds. When she pleads for a little longer, she’s told, “I’m afraid the rules have to be obeyed.” Wonderful stuff. (more…)
Posted on August 24th, 2009 at 2:53 pm. Updated on September 1st, 2009 at 9:55 pm.
» The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936, USA)
This is an impressively shot exercise in American self-flagellation and patriotic absolution. (more…)
Posted on July 18th, 2009 at 6:51 pm. Updated on August 27th, 2009 at 10:33 pm.
» Men of San Quentin (1942, USA)
This is an unashamed propaganda film for prison reform and the incumbent San Quentin Warden, Clinton T Duffy, to whom the film is dedicated (along with his ‘men’). (more…)
Posted on June 8th, 2009 at 12:13 pm. Updated on March 11th, 2017 at 8:19 pm.
» Der Heiße Tod / 99 Women (1969, UK / West Germany / Spain / Italy)
Literally ‘The Hot Death’, and an absolute shocker. Made by a director who apparently went on to make some ‘legendary’ exploitation movies, this is a boring, limp-scripted, horribly acted, and uninspired effort. (more…)
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 11:57 pm. Updated on August 11th, 2013 at 12:02 pm.
» Prison on Fire 2 (1990, Hong Kong)
I’m afraid I don’t really get the Hong Kong film genre. This sequel to the wholly dramatic Prison on Fire again stars Chow Yum Fat as Ching, although this is the engaging Ching, not ‘Mad Dog’ Ching of the last part of the first movie (even in the fight scenes), and is a curious blend of drama, farce, comedy, whimsy, fighting, unintentional humour and even a song or two thrown in for good measure. (more…)
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 6:58 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:44 pm.
» Lock Up (1989, USA)
When even some of the Stallone-friendly sites suggest that this isn’t one of Sylvester Stallone’s best movies, you are entitled to approach it with trepidation. But it’s no worse than many other prison action flicks. (more…)
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 6:53 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:44 pm.
» Caged (1949, USA)
The title makes it sound like a precursor to the 1970s’ women-in-prison exploitation movies, but this is a fair dinkum Academy Award-nominated film about a woman in prison. You know it’s set in a different era when, in the opening scene, new receptions are being unloaded from the van and they’re wearing hats, gloves and carrying handbags. Fascinatingly, there are no African-American or Hispanic prisoners, either, anywhere in the prison. (more…)
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 6:23 pm. Updated on May 7th, 2020 at 4:29 pm.
» Brute Force (1947, USA)
This is exactly what you’d expect a hard-hitting prison melodrama in 1947 to be like. Although it comes from a very different era, there are some familiar themes, including a heated debate by administrators about whether prisoners are getting it too soft. There is even a number-plate industry (more 14 Gang in Pentridge than Ararat). And there is the unfamiliar, too, such as the population in a post-War US prison being entirely white, save for one prisoner named Calypso who is inclined to break conversationally into song. (more…)
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 6:14 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:44 pm.