Prison Movies

» Prison Farm (1938, USA)

There’s no place like prison to learn that your lover is a loser… and then fall in love again. Just ask Jean Forest. (more…)

Posted on November 18th, 2013 at 8:16 pm. Updated on November 18th, 2013 at 8:16 pm.

» Thunderbolt (1929, USA)

One of the early ‘talkies’, Thunderbolt can’t quite make up its mind about what sort of movie it wants to be: a drama, a comedy, a romance, a piece of early film noir…  Heck, it even shows off its synchronised sound with a few musical numbers. In the end it’s so busy it doesn’t quite cut the mustard in any genre. (more…)

Posted on November 9th, 2013 at 6:52 pm. Updated on November 9th, 2013 at 6:57 pm.

» Prison Warden (1949, USA)

There are quite a number of films where romance blossoms between the warden’s wife or daughter and the suave or good-looking prisoner who happens to be working around the warden’s home as a manservant or chauffeur. This is a very distinctive variation on that theme. (more…)

Posted on October 23rd, 2013 at 8:57 pm. Updated on October 23rd, 2013 at 9:06 pm.

» Hold Back Tomorrow (1955, USA)

“According to the law, on your last night you can have any wish granted,” says the Warden to triple-murderer Joe Cardos (John Agar), who is within hours of his execution. Joe asks for nothing… then changes his mind and belatedly asks for some female company so that he might have a bit of ‘fun’ in his last hours. Oh, and some music, too. Now, you might think that there would be a long list of small print conditions to the Warden’s offer (e.g. *excepting guns, helicopters, a stay of execution, cocaine, any person or object for the purpose of sexual gratification, Moët, wild beasts, freedom, anybody’s head on a plate, truffles… and so on), but no, the Warden sends Police off into the night to find a woman prepared to spend a night in a Death Row cell with a convicted woman-strangler. (more…)

Posted on October 10th, 2013 at 9:31 pm. Updated on October 10th, 2013 at 9:31 pm.

» Al Dâhâya / The Victims (1975, Egypt)

Dr Esmat Rushdi (Nour El-Sherif) is a new male social worker in a juvenile prison for girls. The prison bears a wonderfully euphemistic name – The Foundation of Social Care for Girls – and Dr Esmat, who has a doctorate in social psychology, is intent on making it a paragon of reformist endeavour. Now, I don’t know nearly enough about Egypt in the mid-70s (or now, for that matter), but I suspect things may have changed there since this film was made. There is not a hijab to be seen. Dr Esmat sleeps in the same building as the girls; they enter his unlocked bedroom door at will, and he is similarly able to enter the girls’ dormitory through an unlocked door at any time (and does). He regularly caresses the girls’ faces, or strokes their hair, and is wont to telling them that he loves them (mostly like a brother). Viewed almost 40 years on, it seems a rather unusual approach.

(more…)

Posted on October 4th, 2013 at 9:30 pm. Updated on October 4th, 2013 at 9:30 pm.

» Human Experiments (1979, USA)

I’ve watched lots of prison movies; lots of similar stories and similar themes. But none, I think, quite like this. (more…)

Posted on September 28th, 2013 at 10:30 pm. Updated on September 28th, 2013 at 10:30 pm.

» Betrayed Women (1955, USA)

“State Prison wasn’t like any other institution in the country. It was outmoded and backdated… a sort of female Devil’s Island. A bleak prison with swamplands on all sides, smouldering with tension that festered under rules of discipline that hadn’t changed in the past hundred years. A hell hole that God and the public had forgotten.”  So says Jeff Darrow, or maybe Jeff Darrell (Tom Drake), asked by the new Governor to report on prison conditions and treatment. Notwithstanding this ridiculously overblown introduction, the Bayou Reformatory for Women seems much the same as any other movie prison with spiteful guards and a toughish regime. (more…)

Posted on September 25th, 2013 at 10:16 pm. Updated on September 25th, 2013 at 10:20 pm.

» Fleischwolf / Meatgrinder (1990, Austria)

“Few institutions invented by men are so obviously unsuccessful as prisons,” Christian Broda, Austrian lawyer and politician, is quoted as saying at the very end of Fleischwolf. It is a short film, just 70 minutes, with most of it dedicated to proving the aptness of Broda’s conclusion. (more…)

Posted on September 19th, 2013 at 10:32 pm. Updated on September 19th, 2013 at 10:36 pm.

» Unchained (1955, USA)

Unchained is the story of one man’s struggle – with the unerringness of his belief that he’s always in the right, and against the temptation to escape. But it is (or was) also an opportunity for America’s first major minimum-security prison at Chino (the California Institute for Men) to showcase itself – and its first warden, Kenyon J Scudder, on whose book Prisoners are People the film is partly based. (more…)

Posted on August 29th, 2013 at 10:45 pm. Updated on August 29th, 2013 at 10:55 pm.

» The Story of Molly X (1949, USA)

“Molly, no girl goes on fighting the world just for the kicks she gets out of it. There’s always a reason. In your case, it could be something that happened in your early life,” proffers Superintendent Norma Calvert. “I never got over being born,” Molly says drily. (more…)

Posted on August 18th, 2013 at 3:06 pm. Updated on August 18th, 2013 at 3:06 pm.