Best Prison movies of 1972

Actors : Sharon Gans, Michael Sacks, Ron Leibman, Eugene Roche,
Directors : George Roy Hill,

A man named Billy Pilgrim tells the story of how he became unstuck in time and was abducted by aliens.

Actors : Peter O'Toole, Harry Andrews, Sophia Loren, James Coco,
Directors : Arthur Hiller,

The funny story of mad but kind and chivalrous elderly nobleman Don Quixote who, aided by his squire Sancho Panza, fights windmills that are seen as dragons to save prostitute Dulcinea who is seen as a noblewoman.

Actors : Barbara Bouchet, Frank Wolff, Gastone Moschin, Mario Adorf,
Directors : Fernando Di Leo,

Just out of prison, ex-con Ugo Piazza meets his former employer, a psychopathic gangster Rocco who enjoys sick violence and torture. Both the gangsters and the police believe Ugo has hidden...

Actors : Rie Yokoyama, Meiko Kaji, Yôko Mihara, Yayoi Watanabe,
Directors : Shun'ya Itô,

After being used and betrayed by the detective she had fallen in love with, young Matsu is sent to a female prison full of sadistic guards and disobedient prisoners.

Actors : Lino Ventura, Charles Bronson, Jill Ireland, Walter Chiari,
Directors : Terence Young,

When Joe Valachi (Charles Bronson) has a price put on his head by Don Vito Genovese (Lino Ventura), he must take desperate steps to protect himself while in prison. An unsuccessful attempt ...

Actors : Roosevelt Grier, Don Marshall, Roger Perry, Ray Milland,
Directors : Lee Frost,

Doctors are forced to transplant the head of a dying, racist surgeon onto the body of a black death row inmate.

Actors : Claude Brasseur, Bernadette Lafont, Guy Marchand, Charles Denner,
Directors : François Truffaut,

Stanislas Previne is a young sociologist, preparing a thesis on criminal women. He meets in prison Camille Bliss to interview her. Camille is accused to have murdered her lover Arthur and ...

Actors : Mariette Hartley, Stefanie Powers, Michael Callan, Lee Van Cleef,
Directors : George McCowan,

Marshal Chris Adams turns down a friend's request to help stop the depredations of a gang of Mexican bandits. When his wife is killed by bank robbers and his friend is killed capturing the ...

Actors : Kayoko Shiraishi, Meiko Kaji, Yukie Kagawa, Fumio Watanabe,
Directors : Shun'ya Itô,

After spending a year in solitary confinement, Matsu escapes from prison with six more convicts, followed by the guards led by the vengeful warden who wants her dead at all costs.

Actors : Telly Savalas, Bud Spencer, James Coburn, Georges Géret,
Directors : Tonino Valerii,

Branded a coward for surrendering his New Mexico fort to the Confederates without firing a shot, a Union colonel attempts to redeem himself by leading a band of condemned prisoners on a suicide mission to recapture it.

Actors : Richard Burton, Peter Ustinov, Elizabeth Taylor, Beau Bridges,
Directors : Peter Ustinov,

The Faust legend retold (loosely) and applied to a mentally disturbed patient in a hospital run by a doctor of dubious sanity himself. The patient (Burton) offers the innocent orderly (...

Actors : Hughie Restorick, Jean Taylor Smith, Stephen Archibald, Karl Fieseler,
Directors : Bill Douglas,

The second part (My ain folk) of Bill Douglas' influential trilogy harks back to his impoverished upbringing in early-'40s Scotland. Cinema was his only escape - he paid for it with the ...

Actors : Mayumi Nagisa, Bunta Sugawara, Asao Koike, Noboru Andô,
Directors : Kinji Fukasaku,

A yakuza, who has an untamed rage and lack of respect for authority, finds himself leading the remnants of the gang he once belonged to in order to secure an area of their own.

Actors : Vangelis Kazan, Thanos Grammenos, Kostas Pavlou, Giorgos Kyritsis,
Directors : Theodoros Angelopoulos,

It is 1936 in Greece, shortly before the Metaxas' dictatorship. A former drug trafficker and police informer, Sofianos, is in prison because of the assassination of a trade unionist during ...

Actors : Antonio Iranzo, Alberto Dalbés, Claudio Undari, Emma Cohen,
Directors : Joaquín Luis Romero Marchent,

A wagon load of convicts on their way to prison is being escorted through the mountains by a cavalry troop. They are attacked by a bandit gang, and only a sergeant, his beautiful young ...

Actors : Philip Kenneally, John Dullaghan, John Dennis, Duncan McLeod,
Directors : John Hayes,

Convicts on a chain gang sniff experimental formaldehyde fumes to get high. They attempt a prison break, are shot down by the guards and buried in the prison garden. Soon, they rise from ...

Actors : Giuliano Gemma, Wolfgang Preiss, Florinda Bolkan, Kirk Douglas,
Directors : Michele Lupo,

A just released from prison professional thief decides to do one last high-risk heist, which could settle him for life or land him behind bars again.

Actors : Annik Borel, Maria Arnold, Tracy Handfuss, Jacqueline Giroux,
Directors : Tom DeSimone,

Six female prisoners are given a weekend furlough to prepare them for their upcoming parole. While out, they all have miscellaneous sexual experiences, some good, some bad. One returns to ...

Actors : Margaret Markov, Carmen Argenziano, Andrea Cagan, Rickey Richardson,
Directors : Joe Viola,

Hot action and lust in the steamy tropical jungle, as heroines break out of a women's prison and start a local revolution.

Actors : Giuliano Gemma, George Eastman, Vittorio Congia, Giacomo Rossi Stuart,
Directors : Michele Lupo,

When, after serving a three-year sentence, Ben Bellow is released from prison, Charlie Logan is waiting for him. Not to hug him. Not to welcome him. Just to let him know, a bit bluntly for ...