Customer Reviews

Prisoner Cell Block H Vol 2 [VHS]

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Continuing from where we left off in the first volume we see events wrap up with Vera Bennett (Fiona Spence) and her lover (Bill Hunter) as well as several new inmates appearing in Wentworth as well as a new male member of staff Jim Fletcher (Gerard Maguire).
On the inmates side we see Joyce Martin (Judy Nunn) pop up briefly to add to the drama along with Antonia McNally (Pat Bishop) who shows just who is ruling the roost at Wentworth. Bella Albrecht (Liddy Clark), Edith Wharton (the late Colleen Clifford) and Melinda Crosse (Lulu Pinkus) add to the behind bars girls.
We see Dr Peter Clements (Carrillo Gantner) take an unwanted look at goings-on within the Wentworth staff and get the chance to see Karen Travers (Peta Toppano) away from Wentworth. We say goodbye to Lynn Warner (Kerry Armstrong).
One of the worst epsiodes of the whole 692 epsiode series features on the very first disc - episodes 35 which features the siege at the Woods home in which Noeline Bourke's (Jude Kuring) brother Colin causes chaos.
The late actress Penny Ramsey also makes her debut here as Leila Fletcher, a character that will feature from time to time upto volume 4. Penny also reappears in the series much later in episodes in the 600's.
All in all the story progresses fairly well featuring a genuine threat to Bea's (Val Lehman) leadership of the women. All good stuff in these episodes from 1979.
Check out the hair, the fashions, the prices, the incidental music and much much more in this fantastic addition to the Prisoner collection. A must buy for any fans of this late night soap.

Much to my chagrin, Prisoner: Cell Block H went out of print on VHS, well over a decade ago. I can't imagine why, it's a groundbreaking cult hit! It seems they were only available on american video a short while, then became obscure & unattainable. Fortunately I scour around every now & then & discovered the old MPI releases were available from select marketplace sellers, brand new & factory sealed, so I was at long last able to get the episodes I couldn't back then.

The DVD release of sets 1 & 2 only contain select episodes. One of which has episodes 1-4: the beginnning, then skips to a much higher episode number, as they're unfortunately out-of-sequence in A&E's DVD release, so I ordered volume 3, immediately, which picks up where episode 4 leaves off, when Meg Jackson's husband is killed. Volumes 1-6 of MPI became helpful to have in my collection, as volume 3 (episodes 5 & 6), volume 4 (episodes 7 & 8), volume 5 (episodes 9 & 10), volume 6 (episodes 11 & 12)... again, episodes 5-12 are not contained on the DVD, so it makes for a great carry-over & puts the episodes in sequence from those episodes which aren't offered on the DVD sets.

Hopefully, one day Prisoner: Cell Block H will get the correct DVD treatement & some of the other fans will become more vocal in letting distributors know we don't want handpicked episodes out of sequence, we want the proper installments from the very inception of this excellent series. We wants episode 1 right through to episode 692, when The Freak is finally locked up.

I couldn't recommend Prisoner more to fans of good cult tv, or prison drama without all the hype of most american fare these days.