Le défi du tigre

Penitentiary II (1982)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

The second film in Jamaa Fanaka's trilogy has Too Sweet (Leon Isaac Kennedy) out of prison and living with his sister. He tries getting a new relationship going with a young lady but she's brutally murdered by the gangster Half Dead (Ernie Hudson). Deciding to do something positive with his life, Too Sweet starts taking boxing lessons where he hopes to become a champion.

The first film in the series was a rather insane and over-the-top masterpiece of cult cinema. The movie was highly entertaining but a lot of its entertainment came from how silly and bad it was. PENITENTIARY II is even campier and more over-the-top so if you enjoyed the first film then there's no question that you'll be laughing at this one. Everything that was so insane about the original is pretty much done here just just even more batty.

I'm not even sure where to begins but I guess the funniest thing about this picture is some of the really awful drama that leads to some of the biggest laughs in the film. The perfect example would be early on when Too Sweet is with his girl and her over-dramatic response to him trying to get some sex. The incredibly awful next scene involves Too Sweet breaking down crying and I dare anyone to watch this and not start laughing.

The film also has some pretty wild fights throughout, which is another major plus. There are quite a few bloody battles but strangely enough they aren't nearly as good as what we saw in the first film. Some other highlights include a dwarf (Tony Cox from BAD SANTA) trying to get laid. There's a sequence where former boxing champ Archie Moore comes out of no where for a cameo. Then there's another sequence where Half Dead pours potato salad on his woman only to then start eating it off of her! Kennedy doesn't give what you'd consider a "good" performance but he at least manages to hold your attention through the film. It was a lot of fun getting to see Hudson here in an early performance playing a nutty psycho. Then there's Mr. T who plays one of the trainer and yes, you get to see him and Hudson go at it in a great fight. Oh yeah, the previous mentioned Cox is also a blast. There are some really bad performances scattered throughout the film that add to the camp factor.

PENITENTIARY II is certainly an awful film on many levels but if you like this type of badness then dig in.

I didn't think too much of the first "Penitentiary" movie, finding it a cheap and slow exercise. Though it must have made quite a bit of money, because a few years later this sequel came out. And it manages to be worse than the original in almost every way you can think of. The script is a mess - it has a meandering quality, as if director/screenwriter Jamaa Fanaka was making things up as he was going along. And it never makes any of the characters real enough to be believable. The only good things about the movie were that the production values were a step up from the original, and there is a (un?)intentionally funny "Star Wars" reference. If you must see one movie from this series, I recommend you skip forward and watch part 3, which is pure (and entertaining) insanity done with slickness.

This film essentially begins where its predecessor left off with a man named "Martel 'Too Sweet' Gordone" (Leon Isaac Kennedy) having been released on early parole from prison due to his boxing skills. On that note, one of the conditions for his release is that he must report to a boxing promoter by the name of "Sam Cunningham" (Stan Kamber) and work with him for at least one year. The problem is, Martel doesn't particularly want to be a professional boxer and as a result he wants nothing to do with Sam. So, in the meantime, Martel has since moved in with his sister "Ellen Johnson" (Peggy Blow) while he contemplates what he wants to do in life. As luck would have it, he also meets his old girlfriend "Clarisse" (Eugenia Wright) and the two get back together again. Unfortunately, just as everything seems to be falling into place, an old enemy named "Half Dead" (Ernie Hudson) breaks out of prison and has only one thing on his mind--to settle an old score with Martel. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that I honestly didn't care that much for this particular sequel due in large part to the manner in which the director (James Fanaka) kept cutting away from one scene to another during the main fight. This repeated technique made everything look much too cheap and totally diminished the overall effect. Likewise, I thought that the acting of Leon Isaac Kennedy could have used some improvement as well. Be that as it may, I simply wasn't that impressed with this film and I have rated it accordingly. Below average.

The current DVD release available for this title is NOT the same version of the film that was shown in theaters. The DVD distributor for some reason made cuts to parts of the movie. (In particular, Ernie Hudson's ambush of the girl in the shower.) The sequence may too brutal for more sensitive viewers, but that doesn't justify making cuts to the original film.) HBO broadcast the movie in it's entirety in the 80's, and the first VHS/Beta home video releases also contain the complete film.

Now here's a weak link. The first "Penitentiary" is a classic of low budget filmmaking, a classic boxing movie and a classic of blaxploitation. The third is a classic of an entirely different stripe, a truly bizarre, off-the-wall cult movie that must be seen to be believed.

This second one, though? Perhaps we needed some kind of bridge between the first and third, so different are they, and so good for completely opposite reasons. It's hard to think of any other reason for "Penitentiary II" to exist.

In this one, Leon Isaac Kennedy of course reprises his role as Too Sweet, now out of jail. The movie has nothing to say about anything this time around and just goes through the motions of a sequel: obviously the first movie ended with a climactic fight sequence, and so too must this. Further we get some of the same characters repeated (aside from Too Sweet) though they are played by different actors and are apparently only in the movie for the call-back. An actor called Floyd Chatman made the character of Seldom Seen a force to be reckoned with in the first "Penitentiary". Here some other actor takes the role, but barely gets any screen time, and barely does anything other than appear for a few scenes.

Half Dead was the big bad guy in the first movie, and so too is he here, though his presence doesn't really make sense and is poorly explained. Now he is portrayed by the beloved character actor Ernie Hudson, whom audiences worldwide know as Winston Zeddimore from the "Ghostbusters" movies, and the cop from "The Crow". It's certainly unusual seeing him in a bad guy role - here he is a rapist and a murderer - but he could have done so much more with the part if they hadn't just made it a lame call-back to the first movie.

The only other actor in the movie I recognized is the immortal Tony Cox, who only has a couple of scenes but steals them nonetheless.

Oh, and of course, there's Mr T, who barely says or does anything, except for a fight scene at the end which follows the climactic boxing match and upstages it in terms of realism.

This movie was, more than anything else, boring. It seems to be running on fumes, like everybody involved knew there was no reason for it to exist, and were all just going through the motions.