Penitentiary [Special Edition]

Director: Jamaa Fanaka Jamaa Fanaka

Overview

"Jamaa Fanaka's gritty and idiosyncratic blend of blaxploitation, sports drama, and life-behind-bars thriller gets a third round on DVD in this release from Xenon Pictures. Penitentiary has been given a letterboxed transfer to disc in the widescreen aspect ratio of 1.85:1; while the image hasn't been enhanced for 16 x 9 monitors, the new transfer is clean, well-detailed, and struck from better-looking source materials than the previous video release. The original monophonic audio has been preserved in a Dolby Digital Stereo track, which sounds about as good as the original materials would permit. Writer, director, and producer Fanaka contributes a commentary track as a bonus, and while there's a fair amount of dead air, he does offer some interesting background on how the film got made (he was still a student at UCLA when he shot the movie, and used some of the school's equipment and facilities during the production). Scratchy trailers for Penitentiary and Penitentiary II round out the package, which is a definite improvement over this movie's earlier incarnations on video."

Product Details

Release Date:	01/24/2006
UPC:	0000799436424
Original Release:	1979
Rating:	R
Source:	XENON PICTURES INC.
Region Code:	1
Presentation:	[Letterbox]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Stereo]
Language:	English
Time:	1:39:00
Sales rank:	40,560

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Leon Isaac Kennedy	Martel 'Too Sweet' Gordone
Hazel Spears	Linda
Thommy Pollard	Eugene T. Lawson,Actor
Badja Djola	'Half Dead' Johnson
Gloria Delaney	Inmate
Chuck Mitchell	Lt. Arnsworth
Wilbur 'HiFi' White	Sweet Pea
Jamaa Fanaka	Actor
Mykelti Williamson	Actor
Donovan Womack	Actor
Hazel Speers	Actor
Frankie Gaye	Composer

Technical Credits

Jamaa Fanaka

Robert Edelen	Executive Producer
Jamaa Fanaka	Director,Producer,Screenwriter
Beatrice Gordon	Executive Producer
Robert Gordon Sr.	Executive Producer

Editorial Reviews

This gritty cult favorite, a major independent hit in 1979, makes up in energy and attitude what it lacks in slickness and believable plotting. The boxing-in-prison premise of Penitentiary requires a major suspension of disbelief for the audience, but viewers who can make that mental leap will be rewarded by an always-interesting effort that fuses elements of gritty reality with surreal set pieces that stick in the memory. Penitentiary's main asset is the personalized touch that writer/director Jamaa Fanaka brings to the film. No matter how odd the plotting becomes, he takes great care to create distinctive, intriguing characters and compellingly dramatic situations that hook the viewer in. He also shows great skill at crafting intense action scenes, the most memorable being Half Dead's fight with Too Sweet in the confines of their cell. The acting is raw but sincere and thus a solid match for the story. Leon Isaac Kennedy fuels Too Sweet with plenty of charisma, Donovan Womack adds a humanizing element of self-doubt to the bullying Jesse, and Badja Djola is positively terrifying as the mindlessly brutal Half Dead. On the downside, some of the story elements are too strange to accept (especially the idea of female prisoners being brought in to watch the fights) and the ending is a little too pat and upbeat to be believed. However, it rises above these problems thanks to the obvious amount of heart that Fanaka pours into the film and his ability to surprise the viewer with offbeat twists. In short, Penitentiary is probably a little too eccentric for the average viewer but has plenty to offer cult movie fanatics and blaxploitation fans.