The Experiment opens with scenes of various animals engaged in alpha male battles for superiority, some other animals killing others that are less strong, and humans engaged in acts of degradation and abuse of others. The message seems clear: men are no different to animals, and it is the natural order of things for prison guards to brutally assert their power over prisoners. We soon learn that this natural order involves things such as guards urinating on prisoners, demanding sex from them, and finding justification to deny an ill prisoner access to life-preserving medication. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on February 25th, 2012 at 10:03 pm. Updated on February 25th, 2012 at 10:03 pm.
Director Beto Gómez apparently shot this, his first film, in just seven days for $50,000. “(Back then) I thought making a film was just about grabbing a camera and shooting”, he says of making El Agujero. None of this might fill you with confidence.
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Posted on February 9th, 2012 at 10:05 pm. Updated on March 17th, 2013 at 1:48 pm.
It’s this sort of third-rate film that spawned the whole exploitative Women-in-Prison genre. This one features no cat fights, no shower scenes, no predatory lesbians. Instead, it depicts an island full of uniformly beautiful women in period costume panning for gold in crocodile-infested swamps while being whipped by the guards. Maybe voyeurism was different back in the early ’60s. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on February 9th, 2012 at 9:39 pm. Updated on February 9th, 2012 at 9:39 pm.
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Histoire charts the decline of Claude (Emmanuel Auger), a clean-cut, good-lookin’ 19-year-old serving 10 years for an armed robbery. He’s so clean-cut and so good-lookin’ and is so missing his pretty girlfriend, Karine (Karyne Lemieux), that we can’t really believe he belongs in a harsh maximum-security prison. But then we could be wrong. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on February 3rd, 2012 at 10:17 pm. Updated on February 3rd, 2012 at 10:17 pm.
If there’s a purpose to this unusual half-silent, half-talkie film (other than to hear the main character sing the song ‘Weary River’ four times), it’s to show that a wayward man can turn his life around with the support of a good woman and a good Warden. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on January 30th, 2012 at 9:56 pm. Updated on January 30th, 2012 at 9:56 pm.
This is a heartwarming tale – full of stabbings, rape, murder, drug dealing, slash-ups, suicide and corruption. But heartwarming nonetheless. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on January 28th, 2012 at 10:02 pm. Updated on February 3rd, 2012 at 10:29 pm.
Guru has two redeeming features. It is mercifully short, at around 56 minutes. And it is unapologetically dotted with anachronisms, if you like spotting such things; things like light switches and heavy passing traffic that are just slightly at odds with its 15th Century setting. To tell the truth, they don’t redeem it at all; it is schlock-horror tripe that could be enjoyed only by masochists who are fans of other people’s children’s school productions. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on January 21st, 2012 at 5:32 pm. Updated on January 30th, 2012 at 10:10 pm.
Prison hell is a bit subjective: just look at In Hell (2003), or Bangkok Hell (2002) or Hell in the City (1959). The only thing that’s certain is that it is a worse hell in someone else’s prison system. Like Midnight Express (1978) or Brokedown Palace (1999). Hunger (2008), even. Or Hell in Tangier. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on January 9th, 2012 at 9:28 pm. Updated on December 30th, 2019 at 8:44 pm.
The collective wisdom seems to be that this is a remake of Caged (1949). Even my Warner Bros DVD says so, and I guess they should know, having made both movies. But maybe they didn’t watch past the first few scenes. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on January 1st, 2012 at 6:52 pm. Updated on January 1st, 2012 at 6:52 pm.
It’s forty-odd years since I’m Going to Get You… was released. Maybe it was brave and ground-breaking in its day by virtue of its depiction of homosexuality and corruption in prisons. But my guess is that it was a tawdry, poorly-made film back in the 70s… and it remains so today. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on December 28th, 2011 at 10:20 pm. Updated on December 28th, 2011 at 10:20 pm.