paulclaassen While there are a number of plot flaws, this remains one of my all-time favorite horror films of the 80's. The film has a constant foreboding atmosphere and is very unpredictable. A great cast ensures credibility and the effects are really good for its time, especially the scenes where they break through the old execution chamber, the chair crashing upward through a ceiling, and the body falling through the roof during breakfast. The prison becomes increasingly chaotic as the film progresses and the haunting ensues, and it really is fantastic entertainment! I'm so thrilled the film had a beautifully restored Blu Ray release!

Woodyanders Sadistic Warden Ethan Sharpe (superbly played with fierce intensity by Lane Smith) runs the rundown Creedmore Prison with an iron fist. Moreover, Sharpe harbors a dark secret: The joint is haunted by the angry and lethal spirit of an innocent man Sharpe wrongly, yet willingly sent to the electric chair for execution. Director Renny Harlin does an expert job of creating and sustaining a supremely creepy atmosphere as well as a strong feeling of pure dread and pervasive gloom, makes excellent and inspired use of the novel penitentiary setting, and stages the elaborate splatter set pieces with admirable skill and brio. C. Courtney Joyner's crafty script puts an ingeniously nightmarish spin on various familiar prison movie clichés which include a brutally thwarted attempted escape, a grisly ruckus in the cafeteria, and a rousing climactic riot and subsequent break out. Viggo Mortensen does well in an early lead role as cagey car thief Burke. The fine acting by the rest of the tip-top cast keeps the picture on track: Chelsea Field as the feisty prison reformer Katherine Walker, Lincoln Kilpatrick as weary and venerable old felon Cresus, Tom Everett as twitchy weasel Rabbitt, Ivan Kane as macho meathead Lassagna, Andre De Shields as voodoo practitioner Sandor, Tiny Lister as the hulking Tiny, Stephen E. Little as monstrous predatory top con Rhino, Mickey Yablans as the timid Brian, and Arlen Dean Snyder as hard-nosed prison guard captain Horton. The spare rattling score by Richard Band and Christopher Stone further enhances the overall eerie tone. Mac Ahlberg's exceptionally moody and stylish cinematography rates as another significant asset. An on the money little scarefest.

rael Lane Smith stars as a worn-out bug-eyed warden Sharpe who in 1968 executed some prisoner. 20 years later the almighty Board reopens the Prison, transfers some inmates to it and reinstates the old dog Sharpe who's plagued by nightmares of that execution he carried out a long time ago. Viggo Mortensen plays a mysterious convict do-gooder that helps everybody and carries himself with unprecedented grace. Lincoln Kilpatrick (who did some quality time later in Fortress) plays an old black guy that already did time here under warden Sharpe. The go-to girl of late 80s action and horror Chelsea Field is spliced in as a concerned female observer. To top it all off the evil spirit gets unleashed (it's the 20th anniversary of that execution) and haunts the place The Keep/Evil Dead style. Prison is not well written, but looks okay and is shot well. It has a lot of familiar faces. The scares don't work, but I think it's because they're ridiculous and funny to begin with. The third act has people running around in panic and a surprise twist is revealed that goes absolutely nowhere. This movie you're going to laugh at if you've seen Evil Dead, The Keep and Fletch. But to Renny Harlin's credit, he made it watchable enough for others to comfortably sit through it. It's his first all-American movie and he made a wise decision of grabbing onto the first (worst?) thing they gave him and do his best with it.

BaronBl00d I pulled down a VHS box from my vast collection - many unseen - and picked out a movie, based on the box art, I thought would be fun, and yes, bad. Prison had that 80s cheesy look all over that box. I sat down and watched, and lo! and behold!, found that sometimes we do indeed sit down to a movie with preconceived expectations in mind. Fortunately, I reversed mine quickly and soon realized I was sitting down not just to an okay film but a rather good movie in total. Prison tells the story of an old, dilapidated prison being reopened to save on budgetary concerns. It looks creepy as all empty and filled with prisoners. The prison used as a set is incredibly atmospheric and easily the most important character in the film. The story using the prison as its central setting tells in a prologue of a man being killed via the electric chair. We see Lane Smith as a guard - tearing away a Crucifix before sending the man to his Maker. We then go to present day, first with a government board at a meeting deciding to open the prison and send a beautiful doctor in to make sure that conditions are acceptable as she campaigned vigorously against re-opening the old prison. Then we see the new warden, Lane Smith, haunted by a nightmare in bed - and given the new job of opening a prison he has not been to in years. Well, the rest follows suit: prisoners and guards arrive with plenty of stereotypes abounding. We are given some character depth and several of the prisoners are interesting characters. The acting is better than one might expect with Lane Smith doing as always a workmanlike job. Viggo Mortenson as a very different prisoner being solid. Tom Everett, Tiny Lister, and Ivan Kane really exploring the boundaries of their stereotypical characters. Chelsea Field is okay as the female lead. The best performance is by Lincoln Kilpatrick, an underrated character actor, as Cresus - a prisoner who had been in that very same prison years ago when the "man" had been executed" with some kind of terrible secret. Prison is not the next best thing to sliced bread or anything like that, but it is definitely worth a look and definitely better than most would expect from it. I was pleasantly surprised at the way director Renny Harlin created a story so visually atmospheric. The film has a tense, taut pace and Harlin knows how to build his scenes. There are a few excessively shot gore scenes - the one with the barbed wire was a bit much as was the one with all the pipes. But these scenes are visually creative and interesting. The acting is uniformly decent. The script actually much more cohesive than one usually gets from films like these. That may in part be credited to Irwin Yablans who wrote the story. You may remember he came up with the idea of making Halloween scary as a holiday. Here he makes incarceration a hell of a lot more scarier than it already is. Give Prison a break(get it).