Prison stuff. In prison movies.
“What are you, Kelly? A man or a rat? You’re a rat!” says newspaper editor Frank Gebhardt to Matt Kelly. This is a film about that rat… and the kid who suffers from his ratdom – his rattee. (more…)
Posted on March 31st, 2014 at 9:41 pm. Updated on March 31st, 2014 at 9:41 pm.
This is a variation on the adage that “You can’t keep a good man down.” Sometimes, it seems, you can’t keep a really, really bad man down, either. (more…)
Posted on March 17th, 2014 at 10:00 pm. Updated on March 17th, 2014 at 10:08 pm.
This is not quite a morality play, but it’s not far removed from one: the two high-living adulterers both come to sticky ends while the poor-but-honest workers prosper and find happiness. And the wrongdoer who goes to jail, but remains true in his heart, gets a second chance. Ahhh. (more…)
Posted on March 11th, 2014 at 9:25 pm. Updated on March 11th, 2014 at 9:25 pm.
Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, 1936. Spain is about to plunge into civil war, and an unlikely romance between Daniel Da Barca (Tristán Ulloa), a charismatic Republican doctor, and Marisa Mallo (María Adánez), the daughter of a wealthy businessman who has quickly thrown his lot in with Franco’s rebel Nationalists, is beginning to blossom.
Posted on March 9th, 2014 at 12:59 pm. Updated on March 9th, 2014 at 12:59 pm.
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.
Posted on February 24th, 2014 at 9:26 pm. Updated on March 9th, 2014 at 1:13 pm.
Jailhouse as haunted house. It’s not the most novel of concepts. (more…)
Posted on February 16th, 2014 at 1:35 pm. Updated on February 16th, 2014 at 1:35 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.
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.
7 Stones is only 46 minutes long. It seems longer. It is a fairly opaque 46 minutes. (more…)
Posted on January 8th, 2014 at 9:50 pm. Updated on January 8th, 2014 at 9:50 pm.