Prison stuff. In prison movies.
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.
Also known as The Concrete Jungle. Advertised when it was released as ‘The Toughest Movie Ever Made in Britain’, this is part underworld movie and part prison movie. (more…)
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 3:20 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:45 pm.
Yes, that’s right; ‘Nu zi jian yu’ becomes ‘Women Prison’… and that sets the standard for the sub-titling throughout. It’s an entertaining prison movie for traditionalists: a fight for top dog, a naïve first-timer, a brutal, corrupt officer, an escape, some sexual assaults, and even a disturbance that requires the use of tear gas. Not unlike the 1987 Hong Kong film about a male prison, Prison on Fire, in some ways. (more…)
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 3:16 pm. Updated on February 23rd, 2013 at 10:14 pm.
23 year old Sean Penn plays a Chicago schoolboy Mick O’Brien, who has a long rap sheet and ultimately gets sent to a juvenile institution for driving his car into (and killing) the 8-year-old brother of his arch enemy in the schoolyard, Paco Moreno. At the time, he was being pursued by Police from the scene of a crime where he and a mate were all balaclava’d up, ready to rip off Paco’s gang’s drug stash, before another gang started shooting and people got killed. You get the picture; they’re young, but bad dudes. (more…)
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 3:09 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:45 pm.
This is your line-and-length type prison movie, scoring awfully high on the cliché count. Which is a shame because it’s co-written by Truman Capote and is filmed grainily on location in a prison in Salt Lake City (I just can’t work out which one) with plenty of prisoners as extras. The backdrop is stunning and the film should be better. (more…)
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 2:51 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:45 pm.
A made-for-TV women’s prison movie that tells a sad, bleak tale, with a certain grittiness to match. (more…)
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 2:47 pm. Updated on January 1st, 2019 at 9:30 am.
Quaint and oddly acclaimed film which is not a prison-based Inferno as the title might lead one to expect. (more…)
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 2:10 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:45 pm.
‘A Song of Love’. Jean Genet had all the credentials to write and direct a prison movie – in his younger years he was a petty thief, vagrant and prostitute and spent a number of years in juvenile and adult penal facilities. This 26-minute, soundless, black & white film draws on some of that experience, and no doubt his experience as a gay man in prison. (more…)
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 2:04 pm. Updated on May 7th, 2020 at 9:46 pm.
This purports to be the true story of Gerry Conlon and the Guildford Four. The Belfast-born Conlon and three others, suspected by Police of being a crack IRA death squad, were convicted of the 1974 Guildford pub bombings, and his father, aunt and other members of her family were convicted of bomb-making. They were arrested just a couple of days after the British Police won new anti-terrorist laws that allowed them to hold terrorism suspects for seven days without charge, and Conlon claimed that Police used that time to beat confessions out of him and his co-accused, with whom he lived briefly in a London squat. (more…)
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 1:53 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:45 pm.