While the Rocky films are typically considered to be the Rolls Royce of boxing pictures, the Penitentiary flicks have always been more of a twice-used Ford Festiva: Sure, it might have plenty of scuffs and dents all over, but it gets great gas mileage and the insurance is cheap, too. I like both, but I’d rather drive to 7-Eleven in a Festiva.
This comparison reaches an apex with the first sequel, Penitentiary II. We find Martel “Too Sweet” Gordone (Leon Isaac Kennedy) fresh out of the hud and making love to all the sweet ladies who have missed him, including a very special one he meets at a roller-skating park. Unfortunately, she’s killed by a gang, leaving Too Sweet to fight a rival in the penitentiary he was so desperate to leave. Helping him along the way is a bearded elderly man who loves the ladies and Mr. T, who loves the ladies two at a time while dressed as a genie in gold lamé.
Everywhere he goes, people cheer loudly for Too Sweet, including Rudy Ray Moore in a cameo on a fire escape. Here, Moore plays, of course, a “born rat soup-eating, insecure muthafucker.” I wouldn’t want it any other way. Unfortunately, Too Sweet’s family is kidnapped and Ernie Hudson — clad in a tight white T-shirt and rainbow clown wig — beats him up backstage while his family is kidnapped. Luckily, they escape with the help of their adorable son unplugging the television and with them back by his side, Too Sweet finds his will to fight and, of course, win.
Additionally, as Too Sweet wins the match, Mr. T kills Hudson in the dressing room, so … win-win?
As the credits roll, everyone — including the little-person prisoner (Tony Cox) scoring poon under the ring — cheer wildly at the camera as the credits roll. Of course, some of them will be back for Penitentiary III, released by the Cannon Group in 1987 and, sadly, is nowhere to be found on home video, no matter how hard I look.
Director Jamaa Fanaka was a bit of a cinematic odd-duck — has anyone here seen Soul Vengeance and its magic-lasso penis? — who sadly passed away in 2012, only a few films under his (probably) welterweight belt. Still, with those movies mostly like Penitentiary II, I consider it a great movie in absolutely stellar filmography, a purely dependable Festiva of film. —Louis Fowler