Fortress Movie Review

When John and Karen Bennick (Christopher Lambert and Loryn Locklin) are caught trying to have a second child (in the future it will be illegal even if the first pregnancy resulted in a miscarriage), they are shipped to the Fortress, a miles-deep underground desert prison, run not by the government but by a huge corporation with designs on the yet-to-be-born child. Act up in this slammer and you'll get a jolt on the “intestinator,” a device implanted in each new prisoner allowing instantaneous and excruciating indigestible pain. Act up too often and face instant laser disembowelment. The sick fantasies of the cyber-warden (character actor Kurtwood Smith) add to the merriment of this good-but-could-be-better, depressing-but-not-as-much-as-Soylent Green depiction of our wonderful future.

1993 (R) 91m/C Christopher Lambert, Kurtwood Smith, Loryn Locklin, Lincoln Kilpatrick; D: Stuart Gordon; W: Steve Feinberg, Troy Neighbors, Terry Curtis Fox. VHS, LV LIV