Theme: Prisons

Prisons refer to institutions where those deemed guilty of crimes by society are housed for the duration of their sentence (or in some cases until their execution). There are plentiful examples of prisons in the real world – indeed, there is no country in the world that does not have some equivalent of a prison to deal with those who have broken the particular society’s laws.

The prison film is its own genre in the exploitation and action film, depicting either the harsh conditions or the efforts to break out of a prison. There is also another whole sub-genre of war films depicting the heroic escape attempts by Allied prisoners from German POW camps. Exploitation cinema of the 1970s developed the Woman in Prison film, which usually depicted the harsh treatment of women in confinement with lurid detail.

There are a number of genre variants on these that concern prisons located in outer space (aboard asteroids or space stations) or other worlds (usually remote and desolate ones). Other works concern the types of prisons that might be built in the future (usually harsh and forbidding or hi-tech). Other films concern more exotic prisons – psychological prisons, ones that house death games, or where prisoners are abandoned in anarchic surrounds on an island, in other dimensions or even the whole of Manhattan.

A number of horror films deal with haunted prisons (usually abandoned ones). Other films have dealt with the problems of imprisoning magical beings and those with wizarding abilities, or super-villains.