By Geno McGahee
There have been countless haunted house horror movies and then they brought the haunting to boats and other cool locations, but none has been cooler than an old prison. In PRISON, we have a wrongfully executed inmate returning for revenge and a secret long buried resurfacing…and we have a whole lot of shit that doesn’t make any sense as well.
Warden Sharpe (Lane Smith) is haunted every night. He dreams about the electric chair and then wakes up screaming and screaming some more. The poor neighbors that have to live near this asshole…what they have to put up with must be terrible. You may recognize Smith from MY COUSIN VINNY and SON IN LAW, and he was even better in this. His overacting in PRISON is legendary. I must give the director, Renny Harlin, credit for his work on this film. EVERYONE was in overact mode and it made it that much more fun! On a side note, I always hated that grandfather (Mason Adams) in SON IN LAW and how he became friends with Pauly Shore at the end. What’s that about? He hated Shore until that point. What, did Shore give him a knob job in the bathroom in the deleted scenes? Sorry…I’m rambling.
Sharpe is made the warden, but he has to deal with a woman that is overseeing the operation. Katherine Walker (Chelsea Field) is proving problematic for the Warden as she insists on reporting all strange deaths that occur. The deaths are very cool, including one of an officer that is tied to a chair with barbed wire and launched through a ceiling, right into Sharpe’s office. He picks up a lamp to hit the dead man in the chair, but he doesn’t do it. That would have been overkill.
Another thorn in the side of Sharpe is inmate, Burke (Viggo Mortensen). He is cool and he knows it. All the prisoners know it too. At no time do they try to rape him. That happens in prison all of the time. Remember in SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, the warden had a special block where he kept the sodomites. Where was the sodomite block here? Well, there was one guy that chose a boyfriend and he was a dickhead, but only one horny rapist out of all those prisoners? I find that hard to believe.
Art imitates life here with Tiny, played by real jailbird, Tommy “Tiny/Zeus” Lister, the good Christian that used to go to prisons to council inmates and then later became one after he found God and found money that didn’t belong to him. I don’t think anyone would rape Zeus though, because what goes around, comes around and if he returned the favor, he’d split the guy like firewood, I would think.
Strange things continue to happen and it all comes down to a final showdown with the prisoners and a secret of a wrongful execution revealed. The warden does his best to escape after the evil spirit locks him in, but the devil will have his due and we get treated to yet another wonderful visual with the demon/spirit launched out of the ground in an electric chair, right in front of the warden. Spoiler!!! The warden gets blown up by the demon. I know it’s a shitty spoiler, but it a spoiler none the less.
I have questions as this ended. Why did the prison that was executed look identical to Viggo Mortensen? Is it an inside joke? What happened to the other prisoners at the end that were still stuck inside the prison with the demon/spirit guy? The evil and vengeful spirit did say that the entire prison died that night. So, maybe they’re all dead after all.
PRISON is a winner. What it lacks in story and continuity, it makes up for with great kills, entertainment value and amazing visuals. I should also mention the great performances by all involved. It was a very amusing film across the board. I loved it and I highly recommend it.
Rating: 7.5/10
