Knast Fighter

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".

How can you go wrong with a plot like "A man is framed for murder and sent to prison. He is beaten and tortured, then forced to fight the prison's worst killer, a martial-arts fighting midget called Thud." ??

This is a B-grade pen movie but it is so bad that it's actually a lot of laughs. I saw this movie ten years ago when I was 16 but I bet I'd enjoy it again if I were to watch it now.

7/10

Penitentiary III (1987)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Too Sweet (Leon Isaac Kennedy) is in the boxing ring when he goes crazy and beats the other boxer to death. He's sentenced to three years in prison and sure enough he gets there just in time to join a boxing competition put on by the warden and one of the most powerful inmates there.

The final film in Jamaa Fanaka's trilogy appears to have a bigger budget than the first two and it's certainly much more polished but at the same time there's no question that it's the weakest of the lot. Cannon produced and released this third film and it's hard to believe that you could ever say that they made the "best looking" film of a series but I think this is part of the problem.

The film just look too good for its own good. The less-than-stellar quality of the first two films made them perfect exploitation movies. This film here doesn't reach the same levels of camp and it just comes across as a rather bland "C" movie without too many memorable scenes. The highlight is a scene early on when Too Sweet must battle an almost demonic character that turns out to be a midget! This fighting scene is good and certainly the best thing about the picture.

The performances are much better this time around and as I said there's no question that this film looks a lot more professional. Sadly, the story itself is nothing original and there's really just nothing all that entertaining here. It's really too bad because the first two films are so awful that you can't help but love them. This third film just doesn't have the same charm.

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.

This film begins with "Martel 'Too Sweet' Gordone" (Leon Isaac Kennedy) once again in the boxing ring fighting against an opponent that he highly respects. Unfortunately, unknown to him, his manager slips a drug into his water bottle between rounds which causes him to go into an uncontrollable rage and results in the death of his opponent. Not only does this death fill him with extreme regret afterward, but he is then sentenced to prison as a result of lab tests done after the fight which showed the presence of an illegal substance. Although he declines the offer made by "the Warden" (Ric Mancini) to fight on his boxing team, he soon learns that refusing to fight on a rival team headed by an inmate named "Serenghetti" (Anthony Geary) has severe consequences. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that I didn't honestly care for this movie at all as the plot was much too silly to be taken seriously. As a matter of fact, although it is billed as an action film, some of the scenes are so ridiculous that it should probably be listed as a comedy instead. And even then the comedy wasn't that good. That being said, those who enjoy bad films might find some value in it, but otherwise I would recommend avoiding it altogether.