4 Movie Prisons That Would Be Worse Than Death

movie prisons that would be worse than death. From futuristic deathtraps like the titular facility in “Fortress” to the desolate Turkish hellhole that is Sagmalcilar prison in “Midnight Express,” these gems of the cinematic penal system prove that getting shanked in the weight room might just be the best way to go.

Shawshank Prison

While Shawshank prison was home to an understanding and compassionate inmate named Red to tell your troubles to, the prison itself was a complete hell. Wrongly convicted banker Andy Dufresne finds this out on his first night at Shawshank when he witnesses callous Captain of the Guard Byron Hadley literally beat a new prisoner to death for talking on his first night. Dufresne is later terrorized and raped repeatedly by a gang of cons, forced to take part in a money laundering scheme for the warden, and sent to solitary confinement for months at a time where he is helpless to stop Hadley from killing a young prisoner. After spending nineteen years at the Maine shithole, Dufresne crawls through a tunnel in the wall of his cell–carved with a rock hammer over two decades–much to the chagrin of Hadley and the money-hungry warden now deprived of his lanky golden goose.       

Alcatraz

This high-tech thunderdome is one of the best examples of movie prisons that would be worse than death. The setting of the 1993 film “Fortress,” the Fortress was run by the futuristic Men-Tel Corporation. Set in the year 2017, innocent convict John Brennick, his wife and a few fellow cons become fed up with the prison’s ruthless robotic guards, demented Brennick orchestrates a prison break which results in a couple of exploding gut bombs in his fellow inmates before the entire prison is set on fire.

Sagmalcilar Prison

The moral of the nightmarish 1978 film “Midnight Express” is simple: don’t try to smuggle hashish out of Istanbul like Billy Hayes tried to do or you’ll be thrown in a Turkish prison like Sagmalcilar. Based on Hayes real-life story, Sagmalcilar is without a doubt the best example of movie prisons that would be worse than death. The prison was ruled by a sadistic guard named Hamidou who basked in the physical and mental torture he inflicted on the prisoners, which included routine humiliation along with stringing them up by their feet and beating them with a club. Sent to Section 13, Sagmalcilar’s wing for the criminally insane, Hayes witnessed and even participated in a gruesome murder, slipped deeper and deeper into insanity, and nearly got raped by Tweet