» 13 Dead Men (2003, USA)
This is the sort of movie that gives prisons a bad name. And filmmakers a worse one. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on April 24th, 2010 at 9:00 pm. Updated on April 26th, 2010 at 12:06 am.
» Numbered Men (1930, USA)
While The Big House (1930) is generally credited with being the grand-daddy of the prison movie genre, the corny Numbered Men – released in the same year – is very forgettable. And a bit confused. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on April 24th, 2010 at 3:39 pm. Updated on April 25th, 2010 at 11:02 pm.
» Ladies They Talk About (1932, USA)
Adapted from a play by Dorothy Mackaye who spent a spot of time in San Quentin herself, this is one of the earliest Women-in-Prison movies. Quite a few actresses have since borrowed heavily from Barbara Stanwyck’s portrayal of a tough gangster moll in prison, while the film Lady Gangster (1942) borrowed heavily from the whole first half of the movie. Well, stole it, actually. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on April 18th, 2010 at 9:15 pm. Updated on April 18th, 2010 at 9:15 pm.
» 7 Ans / 7 Years (2006, France)
Director Jean-Pascal Hattu set out, one imagines, to create a movie full of longing and quirkiness. A movie of melancholic remembrances prompted by smells and touch and things imagined and things unsaid. It only half works. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on April 13th, 2010 at 9:38 pm. Updated on April 13th, 2010 at 9:39 pm.
» Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison (1951, USA)
It has just about everything, this movie with prison reform at its rather smug heart – violent escape bids, papier-mâché dummies in beds, murders, a brutal Warden… And it’s the only prison movie I know where the prison itself does the narration, not unlike Mr Ed: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on April 12th, 2010 at 9:19 pm. Updated on August 19th, 2012 at 5:18 pm.
» Ladies of the Big House (1931, USA)
Kathleen Storm (Sylvia Sidney) is a flower shop girl who is being aggressively pursued by gangster Kid Athens (Earle Foxe). Athens has to lie low for a while and asks Kathleen to lie low with him; she declines, seemingly (and improbably) having just discovered (after going out with him for a bit) what he does for a living. The smitten Athens ain’t too pleased, and swears that no-one will take his place. As luck will have it, within hours she meets engineer Standish McNeil (Gene Raymond) and within weeks she has married him, is lying horizontally with him, and is preparing to travel with him to his next work assignment in Russia. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on April 10th, 2010 at 6:32 pm. Updated on April 10th, 2010 at 6:45 pm.
» Evasive Action (1998, USA)
My wife tells me that I have trouble in admitting I’m wrong. Luke Sinclair (Dorian Harewood) won’t tell the Parole Board that he was wrong in having killed the man who was taunting him after being acquitted (on a technicality) of killing his wife and daughter, so he is forced to do most of his 15 year sentence. For his obduracy he is also required to reprise the Nicolas Cage role in Con Air (1997) in this low-grade thriller, also known as Steel Train (to distinguish it from what? Papier-mâché Train? Polyester Train?). They could well have called it Con Rail. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on April 5th, 2010 at 6:06 pm. Updated on April 5th, 2010 at 6:06 pm.
» Men Without Souls (1940, USA)
In 1939 Mutiny in the Big House hit the cinemas, with an awfully idealised portrait of a prison chaplain. This movie, released the following year, gives us much the same fare – but because the chaplain is distrusted and reviled for most of it, it’s much more palatable. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on April 4th, 2010 at 8:29 pm. Updated on April 4th, 2010 at 8:29 pm.
» A Tanú / The Witness (1969, Hungary)
There’s a little bit of prison action here. Four times the chief protagonist goes to jail. On one occasion he even stands on the scaffold on which he is supposed to hang. But it’s far from a prison movie. Instead, it’s a rather courageous satire, highly critical of the folly and dishonesty of Hungary’s post-war communist regime. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on April 4th, 2010 at 6:41 pm. Updated on April 25th, 2020 at 1:11 pm.
» Las Islas Marías (1951, Mexico)
This is a simple story about honour. And love. And how one man finds them both on an island penal colony. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on April 2nd, 2010 at 5:21 pm. Updated on April 2nd, 2010 at 5:35 pm.