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.
Written by Edward Bunker (who did 20-odd years in prison himself) and shot partly in Philadelphia’s closed Holmesburg Prison and several working prisons (substituting for San Quentin, where the film is set), this film about survival in prison should at least have some authenticity. And it does – to a degree. (more…)
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 4:27 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:44 pm.
A confronting black-and-white film version of the 1977 play by Ray Mooney, which purports to depict the struggle of Christopher Dale Flannery in ‘H’ Division, Pentridge, and his campaign which resulted in the Jenkinson Inquiry in 1972. Mooney, an ex-‘H’ Division prisoner himself, should know what he’s talking about, but one suspects that he also uses just a touch of artistic licence. (more…)
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 4:21 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:44 pm.
A real ‘70s action flick; tough and gritty. Jim Brown plays the handsome, stoic Curtis Hook. Hook comes to jail on some relatively minor charges, but everyone knows that he alone knows where the proceeds of a drug heist (an attaché case full of skag and $1.5m in cash) are stashed. So he’s a marked man in ‘the slams’, with everyone wanting a piece of what he’s got on the outside. We are asked to join with Hook and hope that he gets away with all the dough… which means that we have to conveniently set aside the seven drug dealers and two accomplices that he killed in order to walk away with the money. (more…)
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 4:12 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:45 pm.
This is the film to wear if you’re invited to a 1970s fancy dress party. Shot on location in California’s Folsom Prison (with inmates playing some of the roles) and looking like a grainy home movie, it’s a bit like a fairytale with some solid, believable snippets of prison life thrown in. (more…)
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 4:06 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:45 pm.
It’s not often that one screenplay gets made into three films. The Mean Machine is the British version of The Longest Yard (1974 and 2005), with a soccer match replacing the gridiron contest between guards and cons. (more…)
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 3:52 pm. Updated on June 2nd, 2018 at 11:08 pm.
You’ve got to wonder why someone would still feel the need to make a movie like this, as if “Let’s drop an ordinary decent guy and a sadistic guard into an episode of America’s Hardest Prisons” has never been done before. Or warrants a re-run. (more…)
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 3:49 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:45 pm.
It’s hard to know whether this fits into the prison movie genre or the slightly more esoteric university research movie genre. But I’ll pretend it’s the former, because it is all about imprisonment even if the people aren’t in prison. (more…)
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 3:38 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:45 pm.
First written by Miguel Piñero as a play while he was a prisoner in Sing Sing, and then shot in ‘The Tombs’ – the Men’s House of Detention in Manhattan, it’s not surprising that this has an authentic feel to it. Piñero also played a minor character in the movie, but missed its premiere as he was back inside on an armed robbery charge. (more…)
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 3:27 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:45 pm.
One of the better 30s prison films, thanks to fine performances from Jimmy Cagney and George Raft. (more…)
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 3:24 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:45 pm.