Welcome to this week's Cult Movie. Now there are two types of prison movie. The female
variety commonly referred to as chicks in chains flicks and the male variety known as
blokes behind bars flicks. Tonight's is the latter. The 1987 Hong Kong drama Prison on
Fire starring Chow Yun Fa. If you're planning on making a prison film in the near future,
there are certain ingredients you will have to include. If you're making a female version,
all you need to do is make sure Linda Blair is in the cast. If you're going for the male version,
you'll need corrupt guards, cruel prison gangs, cowardly stool pigeons and all this scene through
the eyes of a wide-eyed first-time inmate. Prison on Fire does have all these cliches,
but it also has Ringo Lam as director. This was part of Lam's On Fire series, which included City
on Fire, the basis for Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and the controversial School on
Fire, which attacked Hong Kong's education system. Prison on Fire is a well-made intense drama,
but it's the performance of Chow as the happy-go-lucky realist that makes the film. The great thing about
Chow, unlike other stars, is that he's not frightened to play normal human characters. For
instance, there's a scene where he's sitting on the toilet spouting his philosophy on prison life
to the young new boy. Now you won't see Kevin Costner doing that. And when he finally does
spit the dummy, you wouldn't want to be in his way. So enjoy the testosterone fest that is Prison
on Fire. SPS advises that the following program has been classified M. It contains violence and
adult themes.