Touches You

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Highly Overrated But Still Good

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

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.

In the 1990s, Finnish director Renny Harlin became known as one of the purveyors of Hollywood action cinema: "Cliffhanger", "Cutthroat Island", "The Long Kiss Goodnight" and "Deep Blue Sea" were his output. To be certain, he is almost always a candidate for Golden Raspberry Awards.This makes his early effort "Prison" all the more interesting. Far from the explosion-filled brain candy that he released in the final decade of the twentieth century, this is a clever horror flick. Nothing really special, but I certainly liked it. The movie also features early appearances of Viggo Mortensen, Tommy "Tiny" Lister and Kane Hodder (one of the many actors who played Jason Voorhees). It was certainly a major honor for character actor Lane Smith, who plays the warden.Apparently, Renny Harlin's next movie will be about the Russia-Georgia War of 2008 with Andy Garcia playing Mikhail Saakashvili (I'd always thought that Saakashvili should get played by Bob Hoskins). I'll keep an open mind about this one, but I'm also doubtful, given most of Harlin's output. In the meantime, I advise you to check out "Prison". Really neat.

Prison is not often brought up during conversations about the best eighties horror films, and there's a good reason for that because it's not one of the best...but as you delve past the classic films that the decade had to offer, this is certainly among the best of the lesser known/smaller films. The film does have some connection to blockbusters; for a start it's an early directorial effort for Renny Harlin; the capable director behind a number of action films including Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger and Deep Blue Sea; and secondly we have an early role for Lord of the Rings star Viggo Mortensen. The film is not exactly original but the plot line is interesting. We focus on a prison that has been reopened after a number of years. This was the prison where a man named Charles Forsyth was sent to the electric chair after being framed by the prison's governor. Naturally, the spirit of the dead man is not resting in peace; and when the old execution room is reopened, the spirit of the dead convict escapes for vengeance.The film is not exactly The Shawshank Redemption, but it does take care to build up its various characters and while the main point of the film is always the horror, the prison drama behind it all does make for an interesting base. This is a good job too because other than the basic premise, the film doesn't really have a 'plot' to go from and we solely rely on the interaction between the characters to keep things interesting. The horror featured in the film is at times grotesque but it's never over the top, which might actually be the reason why this film is seldom remembered, being released in a decade of excess. The murders themselves are rather good and imaginative, however, and provide some major highlights. As the film goes on, we start to delve more into the back-story of the vengeful convict's ghost and while it's fairly interesting, some things about it don't make sense and it drags the film down a little. Still, everything boils down to an exciting climax and overall I have to say that Prison is a film well worth tracking down.

Prison is set in Wyoming where work on a new prison has hit a problem so the state board decide to re-open an old state penitentiary that has been closed for 20 years, Warden Eaton Sharpe (Lane Smith) is put in charge. 200 odd prisoners are shipped in & they are put to work fixing the rundown prison up including Burke (Viggo Mortensen) who is ordered to break into the old execution chamber, he duly obliges but when he penetrates the bricked up door an intense beam of light shoots out & all the electrics, gas & fire around the prison goes crazy for a few minutes. Burke has unwittingly unleashed a deadly evil force which is in the mood for some killing & no-one is safe...Directed by Renny Harlin I thought Prison was a poor late 80's horror flick that seemed to forget about the small point of having a story. The script was by Empire Pictures regular C. Courtney Joyner who was responsible for writing such 'classics' as Class of 1999 (1990), Puppet Master III: Toulon's Revenge (1991) & Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys (2004) amongst other low budget horror crap that even I haven't heard of & seems to take itself very seriously. The biggest problems I have with Prison are that it's far too slow, it's over 30 minutes into the film before the 'evil force' is even released although the pace does pick up towards the end but by then it was too little too late as far as I was concerned, then there's the fact there's no discernible storyline here at all. For a start it never tries to explain why there's an 'evil force' bricked up in the old execution chamber, it never explains why this force decides to kill random inmates when it's supposed to be out on a revenge mission or why it just doesn't kill Warden Sharpe straight away, no explanation is given to where Burke fits into it even though he looks exactly the same as the prisoner who was electrocuted & has come back, there's no real explanation as to how the Warden is connected to everything that's going on apart from two early nightmare sequences in which he seems to be remembering something although it's never revealed what it is or why. To be honest I couldn't really give you a plot synopsis as the film doesn't have a rigid story which it follows all the way through. The character's are dull & forgettable, the murders are few & far between, the pacing is way off, the whole film is a mess & even ghosts can't shoot straight when it comes to trying to shoot the hero. A less than satisfactory way to spend 100 odd minutes, there really are better things you could be doing.Director Harlin's full American flick debut he does a good job & there's a decent atmosphere but after over an hour of constant drab, dull, dark prison cells & corridors I started to get bored. I just think the look of the film is far too repetitive, bland & frankly lifeless. I didn't think it was scary & the gore is pretty tame apart from the best moment in the entire film when a police guard gets killed when a load of barb wire wraps itself around his body & face with a nice close up of his throat being torn open. Other than that there's a burnt corpse & a mangled body which falls from the ceiling & very little else. There is a scene when the Warden burns all the prisoner mattresses in front of them & then makes them stand all night in their underwear in the yard, I was watching this scene & thought that you'd never get away with doing something like that. Over here prisoners have rights & if the Warden did something like that there would be a national outcry from all those humanitarians & every prisoner would sue the Warden, the prison service & the Government for everything they had & they'd win!With a supposed budget of about $4,000,000 Prison actually had a pretty healthy budget although it doesn't really look like it on screen, sure there's a decent cast & the few special effects that are included are good but overall it's set in the same location with limited ambition. Prison was actually shot in a real Wyoming state prison so it certainly looks the business. The acting is alright, Prison proves that sometimes Hollywood stars not only have one crap horror film skeleton in their closets but in the case of Mortensen he has two with this & the awful The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1994) both of which I'm sure he'd like to forget about...Prison is a dull, lifeless, colourless & humourless waste of 100 minutes, despite one good gore scene I didn't like it at all as I actually prefer my films to have a story rather than seemingly random events & incidents cobbled together with no narrative sense.