Death Row (2006)

Let's be realistic.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

A low budget horror flick from the Sci-Fi Channel. The special effects are much better than the story or acting. Dismembered bodies in pools of blood and ghosts that can only be seen when they want to be. An old rundown prison that once housed the most dangerous and ruthless criminals imagined grabs the interest of a film crew wanting to film a documentary. A group of jewelry thieves stumble upon the prison and decide to take refuge. So now there are two groups of people inside the prison and meet hellish ghosts of those who were tortured and died there.Kevin VanHook directs his own story and does well with what he has to work with. Cinematography provides the right atmosphere to set up some very graphic scenes. Starring are: Jake Busey, Kyle Schmidt, Claire Coffee, Denny Arroyo, Stacey Keach, Danny Trejo, and Abra Chouinard.

I noticed one person who commented here gave this flick a rating of 10-out-of-10, while others said 1/10. As a public service, I'll assume that EVERY movie starts out as a "10," and then in most cases loses points as it goes along. Here is where DEATH ROW lost out on more than half of its potential, plunging to a 4-of-10 (my rating and the IMDb user average):The original Science Fiction TV Channel title--HAUNTED PRISON--is not only better but more apt than the DVD retitled "DEATH ROW." Minus 2.The climactic prison fireworks special effects were even lamer than those in the ending of INDIANA JONES AND THE RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. If your CGI & special effects budgets are used up by the last scene of your movie, REWRITE--do not fill the departing viewer's memory with a final taste of crap! Minus 2.Two electrocutions-in-the-electric-chair scenes are redundant. Ditto the strangulation-style killings of both Jasmine and Lisa. Minus 1.A father-son angle is passable. The grandpa-father-son closing of DEATH ROW is a plain mishmash as presented here, with the grandpa's ghost younger than his two descendants, and apparently played by the same actor as the grandson in the scene. Minus 1.

I hired this out knowing full well it wasn't going to be an A-Grade horror flick. But even then, I'm still disgusted at this movie. A combination of terrible actors and equally terrible dialogue made this movie almost unbearable, and not because of the gore scenes, which is the only redeeming factor to this waste of 90 minutes. The premise of the film, a haunted prison, is not given an explanation as to how it obtained such a status until the last five minutes of the film, when shonky dialogue between Poor Actor 1 and Poor Actor 2 rams a quick summary of it down the viewer's throat.The acting....disgusting. The actors showed zero emotion whatsoever. When the group of allegedly naive teenagers come across the corpse of one of their own, there is no emotion displayed. Even in the following scenes, they mention the names of the victims as if they were commenting on the weather. Pathetic acting. No emotion was showed at all. As for the ending, pffft, what ending?*Spoiler* The surviving three somehow manage to escape the prison before it blows up and miraculously manage to flag down an unidentified boat, which begins to change course and head towards them. Fade to black. Worst. Ending. Ever. It's as if the creators wanted to give the viewers one final middle-finger by tossing together a shoddy ending and tagging it on using Windows Movie Maker.All in all: Do not waste your time on this garbage. Even die-hard horror/gore fans will be disgusted by this disgraceful "film".

Death Row starts as six on the run jewel thieves decide to seek refuge in an abandoned Texas prison called Isla de la Roca, one of their number Vincnet (James Leo Ryan) has been shot in the leg. The thieves manage to get the electricity running again but the prison automatically goes into maximum security lock-down trapping them all inside. Inside with them are also five teens making a documentary on the notorious prison & it's violent past, a past which is still present in the ghosts of the inmates that died there. Strange things begin to happen, people start to die horribly & the two mismatched groups decide they have to work together if they ever want to leave the prison alive...Co-written & directed by Kevin VanHook this made-for-TV horror thriller isn't anywhere near as bad as I feared it would be despite yet again plenty of 'this is the worst film ever' type comments here on the IMDb, I really wish the IMDb would ban 'this is the worst film ever' threads on the message boards I really do. Anyway, the script by VanHook & Rick Glassman maybe takes itself a bit too seriously & the story is somewhat underdeveloped but it moves along at a decent enough pace, I was never bored with it & there's some satisfying gore in it. The whole explanation behind the haunted prison is weak, the script indicates the prison has great evil in it & that's all there is too it. I'm sorry but couldn't the makers have come up with a slightly more substantial reason behind the ghostly events than that? Then there are some inconsistencies with the ghosts, some have this blurry edge around them while others don't, some can speak while others can't, some can possess human beings while others can't & it would have been nice to have things a bit more consistent. Then there's the somewhat clichéd character's, they are alright by low budget horror flick standards but why do they keep splitting up? It's so annoying when it happens & why don't they spend more time on trying to find a way out of the prison? It seemed to me they spent most of the time walking around doing nothing in particular. One also feels obliged to point out that the ending isn't very good either. The actual story is sort of fun, there's enough gore to keep one entertained & at least it doesn't last too long so I'd say it's worth watching if your a fan of this sort of low budget horror flick although more demanding viewers will probably want to give it a wide berth.Director VanHook does alright although I thought it was too over-lit at times which limited any sort of atmosphere that could have been achieved, the film looks too much like a film as it were. I wouldn't say there's many scares here either but there is some good gore including someone chopping his own legs off with an axe, someone is sliced in half by a spinning ceiling fan complete with guts splattering on the floor as well as assorted spinal column pieces & the like, someone is wrapped in possessed barb wire in a scene similar to one seen in another haunted prison flick Prison (1988), someone is cut up into little bits in some sort of machine with the cut up bits of their body falling off the end of a conveyor belt, there's plenty of blood, gory gunshot wounds & my personal favourite kill when someone is pushed through wire mesh fencing & there's shots of the mesh sinking & cutting into their flesh. For those interested there's gratuitous & pointless shower scene in the prison toilets but she keeps her underwear on so it's a bit of a none starter.Technically the film is fine, it's well made & competent although it's not stylish. The special effects are pretty good with CGI computer effects kept to a minimum. The acting is OK, there a couple of familiar faces faces here including Jake Busey, Stacy Keach & Danny Trejo.Death Row is an OK way to pass 90 odd minutes, it's nothing deep or meaningful & it won't change your life but I thought it was watchable enough for what it was. Better than I had expected although to be fair that wasn't going to be difficult.