Comparisons with the powerful Scum are both inevitable and justified, with the writers of that bleak 1979 movie following up here with a companion piece on a female borstal. It’s a little less critical of the system; the staff, for a start, are much less brutal and much less complicit in perpetuating the rule of brutality within the detainee group. But it’s still an uncomfortable viewing experience. (more…)
Posted on May 30th, 2010 at 8:15 pm. Updated on May 30th, 2010 at 8:15 pm.
This is an exploitation movie, of a different kind. 1930s-style. (more…)
Posted on May 30th, 2010 at 8:06 pm. Updated on May 30th, 2010 at 8:06 pm.
This is a pretty faithful remake of the 1932 film of the same name. It is better, but you wonder a bit why they bothered to do it all again. (more…)
Posted on May 22nd, 2010 at 11:03 pm. Updated on May 22nd, 2010 at 11:03 pm.
Up the River is a low-key comedy drama starring Humphrey Bogart and Spencer Tracy very early in their careers. An early talkie directed by John Ford, it was apparently going to be a drama until The Big House (1930) beat it to the punch.. so it was rewritten as a comedy. (more…)
Posted on May 22nd, 2010 at 5:24 pm. Updated on June 21st, 2012 at 8:52 pm.
Not only is this Buster Keaton offering funnier than many more recent prison comedies (including the various Laurel and Hardy prison movies that followed soon after), it has the advantage of only having to sustain itself for 20 minutes… so there is little time for any audience to get restless. (more…)
Posted on May 6th, 2010 at 11:18 pm. Updated on May 6th, 2010 at 11:18 pm.
This hints at being a straightforward revenge story: grieving father seeks to avenge the death of his son. It starts with a couple of biblical references about vengeance and man being called upon to shed the blood of those who shed blood. Curiously, it then introduces a little-known footnote to Exodus 21: 23-24 (“a life for a life, an eye for an eye..”) along the lines of ‘if your son is shot through the eye, shoot the shooter through the eye’; you are not merely called upon to avenge the death, apparently, but to avenge the death using exactly the same method. In jail, that can add considerably to the degree of difficulty. (more…)
Posted on May 2nd, 2010 at 5:53 pm. Updated on May 2nd, 2010 at 6:07 pm.
The premise is an interesting one: treat reform school delinquents as responsible young men, and they will respond accordingly. It makes for an enjoyable film, but probably doesn’t work quite so well as a blueprint for running reform schools… in 1933 or now. (more…)
Posted on April 25th, 2010 at 10:06 pm. Updated on April 25th, 2010 at 10:06 pm.
This is the sort of movie that gives prisons a bad name. And filmmakers a worse one. (more…)
Posted on April 24th, 2010 at 9:00 pm. Updated on April 26th, 2010 at 12:06 am.
Adapted from a play by Dorothy Mackaye who spent a spot of time in San Quentin herself, this is one of the earliest Women-in-Prison movies. Quite a few actresses have since borrowed heavily from Barbara Stanwyck’s portrayal of a tough gangster moll in prison, while the film Lady Gangster (1942) borrowed heavily from the whole first half of the movie. Well, stole it, actually. (more…)
Posted on April 18th, 2010 at 9:15 pm. Updated on April 18th, 2010 at 9:15 pm.
It has just about everything, this movie with prison reform at its rather smug heart – violent escape bids, papier-mâché dummies in beds, murders, a brutal Warden… And it’s the only prison movie I know where the prison itself does the narration, not unlike Mr Ed: (more…)
Posted on April 12th, 2010 at 9:19 pm. Updated on August 19th, 2012 at 5:18 pm.