Prison stuff. In prison movies.
It’s a few years into the future. The Government is rounding up all its deviates in the community (people who don’t submit with abject obedience to its rules and standards), and putting them in prison camps for re-education and behaviour modification. A little reminiscent of the early 1940s, you’d think. (more…)
Posted on December 19th, 2015 at 7:50 pm. Updated on December 19th, 2015 at 7:50 pm.
This is another Earl Owensby vehicle, following on from Buckstone County Prison [aka Seabo] (1978) – both produced by and starring Owensby as a strong, silent-type prisoner in movies that pay homage to Cool Hand Luke (1967). Without the charisma. (more…)
Posted on December 10th, 2015 at 8:31 pm. Updated on December 10th, 2015 at 8:31 pm.
It’s a bit hard to pin a label on this film. Completed in 2008, it took another three years to release it, marketed ultimately as a horror movie. But it’s more a supernatural movie; horror film buffs will inevitably be disappointed by it, and those who aren’t (such as myself) might be pleasantly surprised. (more…)
Posted on November 30th, 2015 at 9:20 pm. Updated on May 8th, 2020 at 10:39 pm.
I think it was when Warden Harold Bauman (Ron Lacey), in dismissing any idea of his prisoners putting on an artistic performance, said, “They’re not here to have fun. They’re here to be miserable,” that my wife asked, “Don’t you get sick of the same, same things all the time?”. Or it could have been earlier, such as at the arrival of the prisoner who doesn’t deserve to be in prison, or the tough prisoner running the show, or the ineffectual warden and his corrupt second-in-charge, or the earnest counsellor pushing for reform… It could have been at any point in the film, really. (more…)
Posted on November 22nd, 2015 at 5:10 pm. Updated on November 22nd, 2015 at 5:12 pm.
I think nearly everyone has seen the YouTube clips of the dancers from the Philippines’ Cebu Provincial Detention & Rehabilitation Center. Because of those clips I expected this film – which I knew had been based around the prison’s stunning dance-based reforms – to be essentially a dance film… with a few dramatic threads attempting to hold it together. I couldn’t have been more wrong; to its credit (and no doubt its commercial disadvantage), it’s a prison drama with just a few dance routines woven into it. (more…)
Posted on November 15th, 2015 at 5:11 pm. Updated on November 15th, 2015 at 5:11 pm.
I haven’t previously had much luck with Nollywood or Ghallywood offerings; their prison-themed films seem to me to be shot almost entirely in people’s living rooms. But this is a bona fide prison movie, set in Sierra Leone, accessible on YouTube, and is one that ensures you get your money’s worth: it is a traditional new fish in prison movie which morphs into a Fight Club movie and ends up as an escape movie. And even pauses at one point for a sweet song which includes the lyric, “When I kill is bad but I found pleasure doing it” before urging the listener to stay out of trouble. (more…)
Posted on October 31st, 2015 at 8:11 pm. Updated on May 7th, 2023 at 1:06 pm.
I feel for Dean Cain. I’m sure he wants to play serious prison roles, but in Dogboys (1998) he got to play an ex-Marine fighting killer prison dogs, and in New Alcatraz (2001) he had to play a palaeontologist fighting a giant prehistoric prison snake. Here he gets to play an ex-cop fighting a killer prison giant. (more…)
Posted on September 28th, 2015 at 9:47 pm. Updated on September 28th, 2015 at 9:49 pm.
Four unremarkable boys from Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighbourhood. It’s the late ’60s. All four are sent to juvenile detention in upstate New York after a prank gone wrong (a hot dog trolley allowed to career down subway steps) nearly kills a man. At the juvenile centre, the Wilkinson Home for Boys, they are repeatedly beaten, raped and tortured by several guards. (more…)
Posted on August 22nd, 2015 at 5:27 pm. Updated on August 22nd, 2015 at 5:27 pm.
OK, OK… like the odd filmed play or opera about prison on DVD, this might not strictly fit the definition of a prison movie. But it’s not so different to many movies that are filmed in studios with disjointed plots, shoddy sets and stagy dialogue. (more…)
Posted on August 2nd, 2015 at 8:18 pm. Updated on September 19th, 2015 at 10:45 pm.
In the third part of this crass trilogy, writer and director Tom Six sets out again to provoke outrage and disgust. And in that, and pretty much that alone, he succeeds. (more…)
Posted on July 25th, 2015 at 1:15 pm. Updated on July 25th, 2015 at 1:19 pm.