Prison (1988)

User Rating:

5.8/10   

Director:

Renny Harlin

Writers:

Irwin Yablans (story)
C. Courtney Joyner (writer)

Release Date:

14 April 1989 (Finland)

Genre:

Crime | Drama | Horror | Thriller

Tagline:

Horror Has A New Home.

Plot:

The spirit of a long-dead prisoner returns for revenge, haunting the prison's new governor.

Plot Keywords:

Prison | Electric Chair | Haunting | Revenge | Supernatural

Awards:

1 nomination

Cast

Viggo Mortensen	...	Burke / Forsythe Electrocution
Chelsea Field	...	Katherine Walker
Lane Smith	...	Warden Eaton Sharpe
Lincoln Kilpatrick	...	Cresus
Tom Everett	...	Rabbitt
Ivan Kane	...	Lasagna
André De Shields	...	Sandor
Tommy 'Tiny' Lister	...	Tiny
Stephen E. Little	...	'Rhino' Reynolds
Mickey Yablans	...	Brian Young
Larry Flash Jenkins	...	Hershey
Arlen Dean Snyder	...	Captain Horton
Hal Landon Jr.	...	Wallace
Matt Kanen	...	Johnson
Rod Lockman	...	Kramer

Runtime:

102 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Ultra Stereo

Certification:

Finland:K-16 (cut) (1990) | Finland:K-18 (cut) (1988) | Netherlands:16 | Australia:R | Norway:18 (video premiere) | Spain:18 | UK:18 | USA:R | West Germany:(Banned) | West Germany:18 (re-rating) | Iceland:(Banned) | Argentina:18

Filming Locations:

Rawlins, Wyoming, USA

Company:

Empire Pictures

Trivia:

The electric chair (which was never used in Wyoming) was built into the actual gas chamber of the Wyoming Prison and the death scenes were filmed there. The original chair, was carefully removed and an electric chair was built in its place. During the shooting, Viggo Mortensen's convulsions were so violent the arms of the chair were broken and needed to be repaired.

Quotes:

Lasagna: I thought bustin' cars was your thing.
Burke: Well a car ain't nothing but a series of locks. Older the lock, easier it is. And this place... is old.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Luonteita: Renny Harlin (1990) (TV)

Soundtrack:

Choas

The Best of Haunted Prison Films - Clichés and All

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).