By Geno McGahee
I used to be very critical of Sylvester Stallone’s body of work, noting that his films were pretty much shit with the exceptions of the ROCKY films and FIRST BLOOD, but after being unable to go anywhere and do anything, I’ve decided to put some money down and rent some of Sly’s work. I no longer claim that his ROCKY and FIRST BLOOD films are the only ones worth watching. He’s actually made a few that are great fun and decent action films. One of those is the 1989 prison film “LOCK UP.”
Frank (Stallone) is in prison for beating up some goons that hurt a friend of his, giving him 18 months behind bars. All is good as he prepares for his exit and he’s got it pretty good. He’s allowed to go meet up with his girlfriend, Melissa (Darlanne Fluegel), and is treated well by the guards. The last six months are sure to pass by, but what sort of prison action film would that make? We need some villains and prison rape to make this rock.
Late at night, a group of police officers storm into the prison, led by Meissner (John Amos). Now, I have to say that John Amos is not in enough action films. He ruled in this and was great in DIE HARD 2. His delivery is so amazing and he’s incredibly imposing in this role with his booming voice and glare.
Frank is yanked out of his cell and is informed that he is being transferred, which is confusing everyone. The guards at the prison are baffled why a model prisoner with very little time left is being moved and Frank has no fucking clue. When he arrives at the new prison, he learns what’s going on. Warden Drumgoole (Donald Sutherland) has some unfinished business with him. When Frank was in his prison, he escaped and it ruined Drumgoole’s life and he’s going to make him pay for it.
As I watched Frank walking the prison yard, I recognized trouble right away. Chink (Sonny Landham) was standing in the background and I knew he was going to give Stallone all sorts of shit. Landham is in a lot of action films, but I knew him mostly from PREDATOR. I’ve heard he’s not good to work with and that they hire extra security because he’s crazier than most of the characters he plays, but he’s got presence and great delivery and does well in the role of a murdering rape-threatening inmate.
Chink, working for the warden, starts making Frank’s life miserable. He is always trying to get him to fight and always bullying him. Knowing he only has a little time left, he tries to ignore the guy, but it’s not easy. With such little time left, I was surprised that he befriended a young man, First Base (Larry Romano). Prisoners usually look for romance when they have lengthy sentences. I know that Frank and First Base are just friends, I guess, but I thought there was shit going on there.
Immediately befriending Frank is Dallas (Tom Sizemore) because he wants to escape and he knows that Frank had done it before. He starts kissing up to him and getting him a job in the mechanic shop with Eclipse (Frank McRae), and this is when things start to get strange and my suspicions grew.
Eclipse, Frank, First Base and Dallas all start restoring a car but then they are having the time of their lives. They start spray-painting it and then start spraying each other. Eclipse holds down First Base and Frank sprays his ass and I began to wonder what sort of film I was watching. Plowing him had to be in the deleted scenes.
Informing the warden that he wasn’t going to “break him”, Frank is pushed to the limit. Chink kills his friend with benefits, First Base, forcing Frank into action. He attacks and beats the hell out of Chink, but gets shanked for his trouble. While in the infirmary, he is visited by another inmate that is getting out in a few days and he reveals his plans to rape his Frank’s girlfriend upon his release.
With no other option and with only three weeks left to go, Frank plans an escape to save his girlfriend but gets caught by the warden and his goons. The shit hits the fan when he realizes that the inmate with plans of rape was a prison guard doing the warden’s dirty work. Finally snapping, Frank attacks the group and says “rape this”, punching that guard in the nuts as hard as he can. I really want to do that. I just need to find a reason. Maybe the mailman could carelessly throw my package on my porch and I can say “rape this” and punch him in the nuts. It won’t make as much sense, but at least I can say I did it.
We get the big showdown with the Warden and Frank, leading to the finale with the warden in the electric chair. Unfortunately, it didn’t end up the way that I wanted it to, but it was still good. LOCK UP is a really good film and gets an extra point for Donald Sutherland telling John Amos, twice, that he was going to “have his ass.” Talk about prison life.
I highly recommend LOCK UP. Stallone did pretty good in this. I wish there was more Amos and Sutherland, but other than that, I would put this up there as a decent entry in the Stallone catalogue.
