Customer Reviews

Penitentiary

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This film was really good. Writer and director Jamaa Fanaka was still a student at UCLA and Penitentiary was the first starring vehicle for former disc jockey and future evangelist Leon Isaac Kennedy. If you don't know the story it goes like this; Too Sweet (Leon Isaac Kennedy) is charged with murder, and convicted despite his innocence; he's shipped off to a run-down prison where Jesse Amos (Donovan Womack), one of the prisoners, lords it over the other inmates. Too Sweet ends up sharing a cell with Half Dead (Badja Djola), a violent lunatic who is one of Jesse's musclemen. Too Sweet refuses to buckle under to the intimidation dished out by Half Dead and his cronies, even after seeing how they've "turned out" Eugene (Thommy Pollard), another new fish who has become Jesse's sexual slave. Forced to defend himself even though he hates violence, Too Sweet displays a genuine talent for fighting, and is persuaded to take part in the prison boxing tournament, where he could win a night with a woman or even his freedom. However, Too Sweet sees the deck may be stacked against him when he finds out his opponent is the horrible Half Dead.

After watching this I found the fight between Too sweet and Half dead particularly interesting. Through out this film you will also find some of the characters to be animated with there jail house humor and realism through others such as Too Sweet's trainer. The cinematography wasn't bad also. The use of the wide angle lenses to give the viewer a distorted view was impressive and the way some characters address the camera was interesting and strange at the same time. Some people say that part two is even funnier and I might give it a try later in the future.

This exploitation is a masterpiece, PENITENTIARY (1979) is especially worth watching because of its strange, neo-realism. An almost all-unknown cast (that also contributes a lot to the movie's appeal), realistic 1970s African American dialog and backgrounds, realistic and mind-bending scenes of perverse violence and huge doses of humor make this a blast in every department. It's a must-see if you're a fan of this genre and one to check out.

Wow, what memories; this movie is definately a cult classic. I remember going to the movies (I'm in Detroit) once every weekend to see this as long as it was at the Madison Theatre (not a theatre anymore). "Half-Dead" had a pretty successful career after this but I don't see any more of the cast anywhere. The warden was "Porky" in the Porky's movie; I believe Leon Isaac Kennedy learned the truth in Christ. Anyway, enough rambling....want a memory??? Pick this up!!

This movie will make anyone clean up their act and get straight to keep from getting locked up. Either that or it will make you want to become a boxer in the slammer so you can hook up with chicks. This movie has some memorable scenes that will have you rolling. One of the rare times that the nickname "Too Sweet" in prison doesn't mean you are someones girlfriend.

I remeber watching this when I was a kid. A guy at work asked me to order this online for him. I decided to order if for me instead and loved it. Great film with some suprising good acting by everybody. The director had a small budget,but looks like he had a much bigger one. Great film and my favorite prision film ever. To bad part 2 sucked.

Penitentiary. Wow! This is not your average, run of the mill, candy-coated prison movies. Be sure to fasten your seatbelt before taking off on this journey. After seeing it for the first time, it shocked me because I wasn't ready. However, after that, I basically became hooked. I simply cannot get enough of Penitentiary. The fight seen between Half Dead Johnson and Too sweet is the best raw, street fight type of battle you will ever witness on screen. The "Crazy Man" game, when Too Sweet jumped on Big Jesse, the (heterosexual) orgies in the bathroom, the final bout . . . I could go on and on about this movie, but I'll end here by saying if you are a fan of prison movies, you simply can't go wrong with Penitentiary. Too Sweet is the Man!

The quality of the movie is poor, but if you want a good movie, with black actors, get this classic.

What can I say? This movie brings back some old memories. Back in the day when me and my buddies would sit around my 13 inch TV set smoking, drinking, checking out this flick on video tape and rewinding it over and over to the funny parts like the brother with the broken cigarette sticking out his ear; the part when Big Jess clocks "Genie" for standing up to use the toilet; the part where the brothers are out in the yard dancing; the part where an inmate planning to rape another inmate says to his partner: "relax, Dead. Wait a few days, so we can set the booty up right."

This is "the" buddy movie for me growing up in my late teens. Basically, it's about a brother named Too Sweet who is set up and goes down for killing a racist hillbilly. Once he's sent up to the 'pen, the film becomes about survival and maintaining his sense of who and what he is against predators, like Half-Dead, probably the ugliest dude in the history of motion pictures, and homosexuals who have surrendered their manhood. But Too Sweet is a fighter both in his cell and also in the boxing-for-booty tournaments that take place in the film. His only friend is an institutionalized old head with a white fro named Hezekiah who has long stopped dreaming of being free and "deals with the meat" inside the walls.

This is one of the best Black films ever made and one of the best films about prison life, if not the funniest.

"Penitentiary" appeared in 1979, at the end of the blaxploitation movie era, and has some of the hallmarks the genre: a few wooden performances and rather poor production values. It's nonetheless an excellent film. T Donovan Womack as "Jesse" the prison shot-caller, Badja Djola as "Half Dead" and a few others compensate for the wooden performances. The real authenticity of the movie compensates for it low-budget production values. Wherever director-writer Jamaa Fanaka got it, he clearly had reliable information about his topic.

The theme running through "Penitentiary" is a prison gang's attempt to convert a young new inmate who they dub "Too Sweet" into their sex-slave through rape, an effort foiled when the intended victim defeats and in turn sodomizes his anointed rapist, "Half-Dead." A sub-plot involves the relationship between the shot-caller "Jesse" and his prison wife Eugene, renamed "Jenny" after he is turned-out. It closely follows the realities of prison sex and sexuality, including the nuances of how sex, violence and love can get fused and confused. Thus we see a scene of extreme violence when "Jesse" brutally beats "Jenny" for standing over instead of sitting down on the toilet while urinating -- defying his role as "wife" and substitute female by committing a uniquely masculine act -- followed later by "Jesse's" half-apology in which he tells "Jenny" that "you all I got." The hard, brutal and ruthless prison gang leader had fallen in love with his victim. At another moment, one inmate quibs to another who's been knocked out in an organized boxing match, "how am I gonna get some pu--y with you laying on your back?"

"Penitentiary" is full of moments like these which anyone familiar with the research on prison sexuality will recognize as absolutely true. These are easy to miss or misunderstand for those who are not familiar with the nuances of prison realities, or who have been mislead about it by some academic misunderstandings of it inspired by feminist theory applied to male prison situations ("rape is not about sex, it's about power" -- BS, at least in prison!). This indeed is a film worth watching.

I loved this movie. The plot was good enough to make up for the fact that the dialogue was campy and goofy at times and the acting was sub-par. It's worth a watch. A true classic.

This is a movie to take the blues away,if you thought jail was no fun lock yourself away with this movie and laugh at the adventure of too sweet,half dead, and jess as they fight for conjugal visits in a prison that anything and everything can happen.this is blaxplotation at it's finest .but remember it's only a movie!!!