The film is a typical prison yarn that ticks all the boxes of your prison film which lowered its rating to me somewhat. It brought nothing new to the genre, albeit being from 1978.
The daily routine of the prisoners including recreation time 'on the yard' was a bore just as much as the prisoners mundane daily routine I would have thought.
All the usual tropes of the genre including the inevitable parole hearing, top dog (although said character is never referred to as top dog), murder, cruel guards are all here.
The film tries to bring in a bit of extortion, murder and ingenious escape attempt aboard a hot air balloon to excite its audience but by that stage I was in a slumber watching it. I mean take the said escape attempt in a hot air balloon. The balloon is just slowly rising from the prison in full view of the watch towers lights. Why didn't the guards just shoot it down?
The daily routine of the prisoners including recreation time 'on the yard' was a bore just as much as the prisoners mundane daily routine I would have thought.
All the usual tropes of the genre including the inevitable parole hearing, top dog (although said character is never referred to as top dog), murder, cruel guards are all here.
The film tries to bring in a bit of extortion, murder and ingenious escape attempt aboard a hot air balloon to excite its audience but by that stage I was in a slumber watching it. I mean take the said escape attempt in a hot air balloon. The balloon is just slowly rising from the prison in full view of the watch towers lights. Why didn't the guards just shoot it down?