Yes, we were going to be doing The Hunt For Red October. But we decided to kick that one down the road a month and replace it with a much less worthy movie, and an even less worthierer book. It’s the 1987 novel Penal Colony, by Richard Herley, and it’s a bit of a stinker. The movie is watchably bad and available for free with ads in several locations. The movie is the Ray Liotta-starring dystopian-ish No Escape, notable mostly for Stuart Wilson’s turn as the Big Bad.
Trigger warning for the book: lots of talk of sexual assault in prisons. Also it’s super homophobic and basically distills down the essence of AIDS-fueled anti-gay sentiment that I remember so well from being a conservative kid in the 80s. We’ve moved on since then, but this book has not.
The movie is arguably worth watching-ish, so if you don’t already possess the book, don’t spend any money on it. We’ll explain why.
Rankings!:
- Seth/James/Colin: Movie/book
