Prison stuff. In prison movies.
I had a bit of trouble with this film. I don’t know whether it was that I’d read somewhere that it was the Indian Shawshank Redemption (not that I entirely understood what that meant), or that I kept thinking that the charismatic leading man was Leonard Cohen. Maybe it was the plot. (more…)
Posted on May 17th, 2009 at 1:29 pm. Updated on April 19th, 2020 at 10:04 pm.
Literally ‘The Hot Death’, and an absolute shocker. Made by a director who apparently went on to make some ‘legendary’ exploitation movies, this is a boring, limp-scripted, horribly acted, and uninspired effort. (more…)
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 11:57 pm. Updated on August 11th, 2013 at 12:02 pm.
Perhaps it’s just that I don’t like westerns, or comedy-drama-westerns, but this is a genuine 70s shocker. (more…)
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 11:55 pm. Updated on April 18th, 2020 at 6:00 pm.
It sadly says much about the world that there could be ten Ernest P Worrell movies. This is the third or fourth, and I’m pleased to say that I haven’t seen any of the other nine. It seems that the character was created for a series of TV ads and just grew from there; how remains a mystery. (more…)
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 11:52 pm. Updated on August 23rd, 2009 at 8:52 pm.
Laurel & Hardy find themselves in the hoose-gow (ie jail, or work camp in this instance, the word derived from the Mexican Spanish juzgado meaning tribunal more than jail, apparently). Anyway, they are your innocent bystander-type prisoners, very much out of their depth. Luckily, it is an extraordinarily benign prison; in just 18 minutes they manage to kick a warder in the behind, escape (only to return after being shot in their respective backsides), and eat the warder’s lunch – all with no particular consequence. (more…)
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 11:49 pm. Updated on February 26th, 2010 at 8:48 pm.
Also known as ‘Truth or Die.’ A mediocre made-for-TV film based on the true story of Jerome (Jerry) Rosenberg, a small-time Brooklyn criminal who hit the big time in 1962 when he and an associate were charged and convicted of the murder of two policemen during a robbery. Sentenced to die by electric chair, he was saved after New York first abolished the death penalty (with killing Police one exception), after which he mounted a successful legal challenge to his own death sentence. (more…)
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 11:46 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 9:27 pm.
One of comedian Rodney Dangerfield’s last movies. Thankfully. (more…)
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 11:43 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 8:30 pm.
There’s so much to like about this film – its authenticity, its subject matter, compelling performances, beautifully filmed… and yet, for some reason, it doesn’t hit you quite like it should. (more…)
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 11:39 pm. Updated on March 6th, 2016 at 4:26 pm.
Mediocre comedy starring John Lyshitski as an habitual criminal who wants to get back at the judge who kept sending him to prison by ‘helping’ the judge’s son who has been wrongly convicted and sent to prison. (more…)
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 7:32 pm. Updated on September 1st, 2009 at 9:39 pm.
A short film (for some reason edited down to just 50-odd minutes), but definitely one of the oddest. You’d expect a ‘30s film called Prison Nurse to glorify selfless, self-sacrificing nurses in the way that Mutiny in the Big House (1939) deified prison chaplains. At least, I did. But this movie is of a very different flavour. (more…)
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 7:31 pm. Updated on June 6th, 2010 at 5:47 pm.