» Each Dawn I Die (1939, USA)
One of the better 30s prison films, thanks to fine performances from Jimmy Cagney and George Raft. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 3:24 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:45 pm.
» The Criminal (1960, UK)
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. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 3:20 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:45 pm.
» Nu Zi Jian Yu / Women Prison (1988, Hong Kong)
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. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 3:16 pm. Updated on February 23rd, 2013 at 10:14 pm.
» Bad Boys (1983, USA)
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. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 3:09 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:45 pm.
» The Quare Fellow (1962, UK)
When the notes accompanying (and presumably promoting) the DVD include a review which concludes with the line, “While I wouldn’t recommend you to go too far to see it, it is nevertheless worth seeing”, one’s hopes aren’t lifted too high. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 3:03 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:45 pm.
» McVicar (1980, UK)
Based on the true story of John McVicar, played surprisingly well by Roger Daltrey from The Who. McVicar, an armed robber who graduated from university while in prison and became a journalist upon his release, escaped from the high security E Wing at Durham Prison in 1968, and while other parts of the film are fictionalised, the escape is supposedly not. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 3:00 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:45 pm.
» Midnight Express (1978, USA)
Based on the true story of Billy Hayes, an American caught smuggling a couple of kilos of hashish in Turkey in 1970, this is the quintessential cautionary tale against drug trafficking in a foreign country. Unfortunately, it is marred by a large dose of xenophobia. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 2:57 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:45 pm.
» The Glass House (1972, USA)
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. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 2:51 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:45 pm.
» Stranger Inside (2001, USA)
A made-for-TV women’s prison movie that tells a sad, bleak tale, with a certain grittiness to match. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 2:47 pm. Updated on January 1st, 2019 at 9:30 am.
» Captives (1994, UK)
I found this an awfully hard movie to watch. A beautiful young dentist, Rachel Clifford (Julia Ormond), starts working at a London Prison, emotionally vulnerable after the breakdown of her marriage as a result of her husband having an affair. Within hours she has fallen for a manipulative, unattractive prisoner (Tim Roth), and visits him (which surprisingly provokes no reaction at all from staff), meets him on the outside (he is allowed regular leaves to attend a university course, and this facilitates regular assignations) and takes all sorts of risks with him inside the prison (such as sending him audio tapes with her voice on them, trying to ring him, and continually seeing him for dental work – all without arousing suspicion). Read the rest of this entry »
Posted on May 16th, 2009 at 2:43 pm. Updated on August 21st, 2009 at 6:45 pm.