Recent Reviews
DVD Review: DEATH ROW
By Dave Dreher
Mar 6, 2007, 07:59

Kevin VanHook has pretty much built a career out of making straight to video DVD’s that first air on Sci-Fi channel and then get the treatment from those fiends over at Anchor Bay. This time around it’s a haunted prison tale that stars Stacey Keach and Jake Busey. This one did its sentence of the Sci-Fi Channel a while back under the title HAUNTED PRISON but has undergone a name change for the DVD release and is now called DEATH ROW.

I enjoy VanHook’s films, they have a Saturday Matinee flare that just makes them a blast to watch. All of his past releases have been schlocky fun and he actually kind of raises the bar a bit with Death Row. The acting is a bit better and the gore flows much more freely. CGI is used but there is also a healthy dose of good old fashioned physical effects that gives this film a much more grisly edge.

DEATH ROW tells the tale of a group of documentary film makers looking to tell the history of the notorious Isla del Roca prison. As the film opens the crew is meeting with a former guard (Stacey Keach) who is recounting the horrible history of the institution which we see via a series of flashbacks. Our team of film makers heads on off to the prison to document the buildings torrid past and once there discover that a group of cop killing jewel thieves have decided to make this remote location their hideout. To make matters worse it seems that the spirits of the dead inmates and guards are still wandering the halls and you know what, they’re pissed.

I know, sounds schlocky and silly but you know what? VanHook actually manages to tie all of this together and in the end winds up with a couple hours of great, brain dead entertainment. I particularly enjoyed a few of the death scenes with the "death by ceiling fan" scene being one of my favorites. I mentioned above that the FX in this one are a bit more gruesome and man they are but there is also a butt load of those horrible CGI produced moments that just make you want to cringe and the final scene is just barely watchable. The CGI flames look ridiculous but it’s all in the name of fun and in the end the well done physical effects more than make up for the poorly executed fake ones.

As is always the case Anchor Bay has put together an exceptional package and it looks and sounds great from a technical standpoint. Here are the specs and info from the company:

Several years ago, a bloody riot of epic proportion ravaged the corridors of the Isla del Roca penitentiary, resulting in the gruesome death of both inmates and guards alike.Now condemned, the prison serves as nothing more than a shattered relic of archaic brutality; a chilling reminder of man’s morbid and murderous nature. Seeking to explore the violent history of the uprising, a naVve crew of filmmakers invades the decaying penitentiary, only to discover that a band of fugitives has taken refuge inside the empty jailhouse. Fearful for their lives, the filmmakers soon discover that the convicts may be the least of their problems – and that the victims of that fatal riot may still haunt the prison walls. Jake Busey (THE FRIGHTENERS), Stacy Keach (AMERICAN HISTORY X), and Danny Trejo (FROM DUSK TILL DAWN) star in this terrifying splatterfest from critically acclaimed horror maestro Kevin Van Hook.

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When all is said and done, I enjoyed my time spent at VanHook’s latest endeavor and recommend you give it a spin. There are worse ways to spend your Saturday.