Penitentiary III (1987)

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

As Good As It Gets

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

This is the third part in what must be one of the strangest, most specific movie franchises ever. The 'Penitentiary' series is about a prison where boxing tournaments seem to be par for the course. Despite the clearly unlikely set-up, the first film was actually a reasonably good blaxploitation prison drama. This third instalment, despite covering much the same ground, adopts a much different approach. It isn't so much a drama as a comedy, with all manner of ridiculous scenes. There is even homage to the most famous scene from the first film where the hero Too Sweet engages in an extended fight with a scary fellow inmate within the close confines of his cell. In this flick, Too Sweet again fights another adversary in his cell but this time it's a deranged midget! Like the scene from the first movie, this is also the best sequence in the film. Except this one really seems like a parody of the first in its sheer silliness. The midget is a psychotic madman who lives in chains in a dungeon underneath the prison, and he is brought out to batter prisoners who go against the grain. It's monumentally daft of course but is in keeping with the general tone of the entire film which is consistently ridiculous. To be fair, the movie does have some genuine funny parts too, such as when Too Sweet is driven to jail at the beginning to the melancholic sound of a saxophone, only for the camera to pan down and see that some fellow inmate is actually playing this music in the van. Penitentiary III is a film for those who want to watch a film for a few laughs with a couple of beers. It has its moments but overstays its welcome.

As far as B movies go this is one of the best. I laughed at the funny parts. The Action was great. Its definitely a Quentin Tarintino like film. All 3 are worth catching, this one is the best though. Mr.T makes an appearance in part 2 which is pretty good as well. The Midget smoking crack and kicking some a@@ rules. If you like Oz on HBO, this was the precursor. The prison footage is real raw and nasty. Definitely one to own, not just rent. This movie is probably more for guys than girls. Its one to break out around your friends who probably missed it the first time around. You get pretty pumped up during the fight scenes as well. I guess some of the acting could be better, but you could say the same thing about the Rocky movies.

After beginning in a very sort of "afro-Rocky" way, unsung berserk exploitation director, Jamaa Fanaka, return to his blaxploitation roots with this one. Tony Geary, former "General Hospital" star, returns to his roots as well, with his strangest film since he got raunchy with future "Ilsa" Dyanne Thorne, in "Blood Sabbath" (1972). Leon Isaac Kennedy returns as "Too Sweet", and ends up boxing, in prison, again. But this time he meets an eventually helpful, mystical dwarf,"The Midnight Thud", who teaches him Kung Fu when not smoking crack. Geary gets all strange as the nasty "Serengeti", and seems to be channeling Chris Walken throughout. Fanaka knocks this out of our normal dimension, but doesn't quite equal some of his other, less profitable work, like "Welcome Home Brother Charles" (aka "Soul Vengeance"), where other mystical midgets also assist the "hero".

A prison/boxing movie that has to be seen to be believed. It's almost impossible to explain. Too Sweet ends up in prison again because he violently pummels a boxer to death during a boxing match after his drink was spiked with some sort of drug that made him crazy and more violent. The prison has a dungeon(!!!) where a midget is kept like an animal and who is routinely left out of by the prison wardens whenever they want to get rid of a prisoner. The prison is basically controlled by a blond man who's prison cell is decorated with tacky red curtains and paintings. And he's got a "girlfriend," a man in complete drag. At one time, the killer midget is sent into Too Sweet's cell and the two fight a *really* long fight that's a real head scratcher. BTW, during this long fight Too Sweet is only in his underwear! This scene is the "highlight" of the movie.There are more fights during the rest of the movie but I lost track of everything afterwards. The whole thing is just too weird. Everyone involved must have been on drugs or something. PENITENTIARY 3 exists in its own alternative Cannon universe.