The Film: 4.5/5

Part gritty slice-of-life prison drama, part gripping action flick, Jamaa Fanaka’s Penitentiary is a classic of hard-boiled jailhouse pulp excitement with the blood, fury, and social conscience of a two-fisted Sam Fuller yarn. One of the seminal black films of the 1970’s, Penitentiary spawned two sequels – both directed by Fanaka – but neither could match the raw, punishing experience of the original, making its Blu-ray debut courtesy of Vinegar Syndrome as one of the titles the company acquired from Xenon Video (which includes the Rudy Ray Moore movies they released in 2016 and several others on deck for the future, including Penitentiary II and Fanaka’s first two films Welcome Home Brother Charles and Emma Mae on a double feature disc).

Disc jockey (he went by the on-air moniker “Leon the Lover”) turned actor Leon Isaac Kennedy enjoyed a brief stint as a B-movie action star during the 1980’s thanks to his performance as the hero of the Penitentiary trilogy – Martel Gordone, a.k.a. “Too Sweet”, a nickname he earned thanks to his undying love for Mr. Goodbar candy bars. Trying to do the gentlemanly thing of defending the honor of a prostitute who gave him a ride from some unpleasant johns wanting to rough her up gets Martel knocked out cold. When he comes to, he finds himself convicted of a murder he knows he didn’t commit, but the legal system cares little for his claims of innocence and throws the book at him. After a six-month stint in the county jail, our man Too Sweet is transferred to a tough prison (portrayed by Los Angeles’ own Lincoln Heights Jail), where he’s forced to share a cell with the brutish psychopath Half-Dead (Badja Djola).

Having to violently defend himself from Half-Dead’s unwanted sexual advances one night earns Too Sweet a lot of respect from his fellow prisoners, including fellow newcomer Eugene Lawson (Thommy Pollard), and the attention of guard Lieutenant Arnsworth (Chuck Mitchell), who runs the prison’s boxing program and wants Martel to enlist. Participation and victories bring with them some much-desired privileges – among them conjugal visits with some of the beautiful inmates from the women’s prison next door – but the ultimate prize is a shot at early release that can easily be secured by Arnsworth in exchange for the victor becoming a prize-winning contender for his boxing promoter brother-in-law. For Too Sweet to earn his freedom, he’ll have to beat the top contender in the program, Jesse Amos (Donovan Womack), who also runs the prison’s most notorious gang and wields great power behind bars.

It would be easy to classify Penitentiary as blaxploitation, but Fanaka wasn’t out to make a disposable piece of grindhouse entertainment with the film that would become the biggest hit of his young filmmaking career. Fanaka, whose real name is Walter Gordon (Jamaa Fanaka is Swahili for “together we will find success”), was a student at UCLA when he wrote and directed Penitentiary, and during this time he joined with fellow black filmmakers Charles Burnett (Killer of Sheep) and Julie Dash (Daughters of the Dust) to establish the L.A. Rebellion, a movement devoted to nurturing and unleashing powerful new voices in black cinema. He wanted to tell honest, powerful stories of the hardships of being black in America, but with the independent film scene virtually non-existent in the 1970’s (with a few exceptions) the best way for Fanaka to do this and make a good career out of it was to smuggle his hard-driving messages inside the tantalizing candy coating of a marketable genre feature.

Penitentiary wastes no time throwing its hero into the shit; Too Sweet is out cold and in serious trouble by the five-minute mark when the film’s title hits the screen in massive white letters against a black background. Then Fanaka lets us spend a few minutes in the company of the prison’s inmates and demonstrates how the unforgiving environment can turn downtrodden men into violent savages who must find new and harsher ways to survive every day of their sentence. The director refuses to keep us at a cool distance from the proceedings, instead putting the audience in the thick of the action with the help of cinematographer Marty Ollstein. Scenes vibrate with feverish intensity and the use of overlapping, possibly improvised dialogue brings authenticity to the character-building moments, and this is before Too Sweet reenters the film.

Kennedy had originally been cast in a supporting role and Cooley High star Glynn Turman was to play Too Sweet, but things changed unexpectedly, and Kennedy soon found himself shifted into the lead role, to which he brings the stoic, swaggering charisma and dramatic drive of Steve McQueen while making the character his own. There is rarely a moment when we don’t doubt Too Sweet will come out on top, but Kennedy’s natural charm and quality acting chops adds to the strength of his performance and helps to transform what could have been a one-note cipher of a part into a relatable hero we can easily root for. Martel starts out simply wanting to do his time and get out and predictably soon decides to join the prison boxing program, and yet the conviction Kennedy invests in the character makes the decision feel organic and like his actions are driven out of personality and not by the mechanics of the plot.

Fanaka surrounds his star with a terrific supporting cast full of solid turns from recognizable professionals and lesser-known players whose lack of familiarity brings additional realism to their performances. The late Badja Djola (The Last Boy Scout) is downright frightening, yet strangely empathetic, as Half-Dead. Wisely chosen for the key role of Eugene was Thommy Pollard (Frantic), who has the necessary conviction to play a character whose story runs parallel with that of Too Sweet, and like Penitentiary’s hero, he finds renewed strength and confidence participating in the boxing program. Best known as the titular corpulent whorehouse tyrant from the Porky’s movies, Chuck Mitchell is damn good as the sympathetic guard who runs the program and thankfully is that rarest of movie prison authorities who isn’t a sadistic asshole. Floyd “Wildcat” Chatman is quietly authoritative and sad as the institutionalized lifer “Seldom Seen” in the first of only two film performances he gave in his acting career. Hazel Spears (Disco Godfather) and Gloria Delaney (Crossroads) supply Penitentiary with beauty and sex appeal that act as welcome breaks from the brutal violence.

The fights are punishingly intense and powered by sweaty, teeth-gnashing fury. Whether this was an intentional creative decision or a result of the production’s lack of expert choreography, Fanaka’s bloody brawls are realistically portrayed with a lack of finesse, conceived and staged for bruising impact. The frenzied camerawork and layered sound design make you feel every punch, with the director making sure to keep the stage blood flying. Music plays an important background role in Penitentiary; the score by Frankie Gaye (Marvin’s brother), William Anderson (who also provided music for Welcome Home Brother Charles), and Andre Douglas is a great accompaniment to the action and drama and often sounds like a funk-infused John Carpenter soundtrack. Shame it has received an official release. Early in the film it’s established that music is a way of life for the prisoners and a means of escape in the form of a makeshift band that performs in the yard (played by part of the UCLA campus).

Penitentiary was Fanaka’s third film as a director, and though on the surface it might seem like another lurid throwaway prison action flick, every frame is infused with the pain, rage, and hope of the black American experience. It’s a stone-cold classic that has lost none of its impact as socially relevant cinema and face-smashing B-movie entertainment.

Audio/Video: 4.5/5

I know I say this a lot when reviewing a Blu-ray – especially one released by Vinegar Syndrome – but this is literally the best Penitentiary has ever looked and sounded on home video. The new 1080p high-definition transfer, sourced from a recent 4K resolution scan and restoration of the original 35mm camera negative, is quite simply a revelation. Correctly framed in its original 1.85:1 widescreen aspect ratio, the transfer is a major improvement over the aged video master used for earlier DVD releases from Xenon and Arrow and is mostly clean apart from some flecks of dirt and a few chemically-damaged frames at the 84-minute mark that were inherent to the source elements and couldn’t be removed by the restoration team. The grain structure is solid and consistent, and though the prison interiors don’t allow for an abundance of vibrant color outside of the occasional reds and yellows in costumes and scenery, the timing is accurate and true, and the colors really pop when they appear. Details are sharp and lifelike, and the widescreen compositions allow the claustrophobic interiors to open up and breathe.

The film’s original mono sound mix is faithfully recreated with stunning results on the linear 24-bit English DTS-HD Master Audio 1.0 track, the biggest beneficiaries being the frequently overlapping dialogue that comes through clear and without disruption and the layered sound design of grunts, body blows, and the excellent music. The mix is solid and true to its low-budget roots. English subtitles have also been provided.

Extras: 4.5/5

Outside of a commentary track featuring director Fanaka that was carried over from the Xenon DVD, all the supplements on this Blu-ray are brand new. Despite featuring more than its fair share of silence, Fanaka’s commentary is rich with detail and insight into the evolution of the story and filming and nicely functions as an audio lecture on the topic of independent filmmaking in the 1970’s. There’s another commentary, new to this release, from second assistant director Sergio Mims that provides additional background on the production from a different perspective and has many worthy moments.

The centerpiece of the extras is the ninety minutes of new interviews. First up is star Kennedy in “Too Sweet for Penitentiary”, the longest of the video features (40 minutes) and a great watch as he opens up about his early days as a disc jockey and how he used it as a springboard for his film acting ambitions, his relationship with Fanaka, replacing Glynn Turman in the lead role, performing his own stunts, and more. “Filming Penitentiary” (22 minutes) sits down with cinematographer Ollstein for a discussion of his own background in cinema, shooting in a real jail, and the benefits and pitfalls of low-budget filmmaking. Finally, “Producing Penitentiary” (28 minutes) is a spirited interview with producer Alicia Dhanifu that supplies a great wealth of stories about her career in Hollywood producing films, documentaries, and environmentally-conscious informercials, meeting Fanaka when they were both film school students, her later years teaching community college and working in the theater, and much more. Towards the end of the segment, Dhanifu briefly acknowledges the success of the #MeToo movement and shares her own experiences dealing with sexual harassment in the entertainment industry.

The extras conclude with the original theatrical trailer (4 minutes). Vinegar Syndrome has also included a DVD copy and reversible cover art.

Overall: 4.5/5

Brimming with raw energy and dramatic dynamism, Penitentiary is a classic of 1970’s black cinema, an intense and stylish action film with memorable performances, realistic fight scenes, and socio-political edge that remains relevant to this day. Jamaa Fanaka, who deserved a bigger and better filmmaking career than the one he managed to carve out before he sadly passed away in 2012 due to complications from diabetes, directed the living hell out of what could have been a forgettable prison flick. Vinegar Syndrome’s Blu-ray/DVD combo edition, with its outstanding restored picture and sound and informative bonus features, is destined to introduce this hard-hitting genre masterwork to a new generation of fans and go down as not just one of their best home video releases of the year, but as one of the best home video releases period. Oh yeah, this comes highly recommended.