With the Nifty 1992 Post-Apocalyptic Prison Satire Fortress Stuart Gordon Hit the Big Time Without Sacrificing his Soul
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With 1992’s Fortress, cult theater guru turned cinematic fright -master Stuart Gordon finally got a studio budget commensurate with his ambitions and talent. The satirical post-apocalyptic prison action thriller is both Gordon’s most expensive and top-grossing movie. Fortress cost 12 million dollars to make and took in 48 million dollars.
For the first time in his career, Gordon made a movie without a plethora of Band brothers in the opening credits. He wasn’t working for Empire or Full Moon but rather people who could get him a budget in the ten figures.
With that bigger budget came a bigger name lead in Christopher Lambert, who is terrific as John Henry Brennick, a decorated then disgraced super-soldier who ends up in an evil ultra-prison in 2017 for violating a Draconian one-child-only policy by impregnating his wife a second time.
The expectant father ends up in a thirty-level ultra-prison that’s less a circle of hell than hell itself. It’s run by the Men-Tel corporation, Fortress’ version of The Terminator’s Skynet or Robocop’s Omni Consumer Products.
Capitalism is the real bad guy here. It doesn’t take much exaggeration, satirical or otherwise, to make the prison-industrial complex look like a ghoulish, blood-thirsty monster with bloody fangs and a near-complete indifference to human suffering.
Men-Tel doesn’t just control every facet of their prisoners’ lives, right down to their dirty thoughts, it owns them outright and is intent on making as much money as humanly possible off their investment.
Men-Tel’s slogan is “Crime doesn’t pay” but its existence and power says otherwise. These corporate monster’s crimes against humanity have certainly paid off.
The prison is run by the cooly enigmatic Zed-10 computer system, an ominous form of artificial intelligence that oversees everything from an icy electronic distance. In a dark inside joke the evil computer intelligence that controls everything is voiced by Carolyn Purdy-Gordon, the director’s real-life wife.
Robocop alum Kurtwood Smith joins a distinguished gallery of Stuart Gordon villains as Prison Director Poe. It seems poetically appropriate that his name is Poe because he has a lot in common with Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor Lane Henricksen plays in The Pit and the Pendulum, Gordon’s previous film.
Both are larger than life evil authority figures who masquerade as figures of righteousness and law but are actually sicker, more wicked and more deranged than the “criminals” they are tasked with punishing.
And both men become sexually obsessed with a beautiful woman despite their inability to love on multiple levels. That obsession lends them an intriguing element of vulnerability despite behaving monstrously.
They’re complex heavies who suffer for their sins but also make others suffer for things they haven’t done and crimes they have not committed. Smith is one of cinema’s great all-time creeps and Fortress gives him one of his biggest and best roles, a star turn that favorably suggests both Smith’s Robocop villain and From Beyond’s mutated and menacing Dr. Edward Pretorius.
Gordon uses Smith’s character as a powerful vessel for both Cronenbergian body horror and anti-capitalist social commentary.
To keep the prisoners in line, metal devices called Intestinators are inserted inside them that can be used to send powerful shocks and torment anytime they misbehave.
Men-Tel maintains tight control over every facet of their existence in other ways as well. Prison Director Poe has a machine that reads unauthorized thoughts, often of a sexual nature, and gets off on his prisoner’s erotic fantasies as he finds himself more and more fixated on Karen, the hero’s pregnant and terrified wife.
From the beginning it’s clear that there’s something very wrong with Smith’s warden but he turns out to be far more deranged than he initially appears. Though Prison Director Poe at first seems kinda human, if you’re being very generous, it is eventually revealed that he is a being genetically engineered by Men-Tel to be the next step in evolution and help them rule the world with an iron fist who is given biological “enhancements” so that he doesn’t have to sleep or eat.
Fortunately and unfortunately for our hero, all that this corporate droid wants in this sick, sad, hopelessly depraved world is his wife. That puts her in harm’s way but also gives them the leverage John and his prison buddies need as they plot to escape.
One of Gordon’s great gifts as a filmmaker has been casting the perfect weirdo for the role and giving weirdoes perfect roles. He’s consequently filled the supporting cast with great character actors, most notably his frequent collaborator Jeffrey Combs as D-Day, a demolitions expert with greasy long hair, coke-bottle glasses and the character actor’s trademark air of unhinged intensity.
He’s matched by Lincoln Kilpatrick as Abraham, a dignified older black gentleman ostensibly up for parole in the very near future who Prison Director Poe employs as a barber and sort of pet who is close to the seat of power but powerless himself.
Fortress may be an extremely commercial futuristic prison escape movie but Kilpatrick delivers a performance of real depth and substance. In lesser hands the role could have felt stereotypical or reductive but Kilpatrick invests the character with tremendous guile as well as integrity.
Top-notch creeps Tom Towles, who has been working with Gordon since his theater days, and a very young Clifton Collins round out the cast of prisoners. Things get trippier and trippier as the prisoners pull off a daring escape attempt littered with casualties on both the prisoner and Men-Tel side.
Fortress finds Gordon delivering the commercial goods without sacrificing his personality in the process. It’s immensely satisfying on the level of storytelling and spectacle but with a dark satirical and gothic edge that marks it as the work of a true auteur.
The 1992 hit Fortress gave mainstream audiences what they craved. More importantly, it is a proper Stuart Gordon film. That is high praise indeed.
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