Best Prison movies of 1980s

Actors : Harold Sakata, Jang Lee Hwang, Bruce Le, André Koob,

Reformed criminal and ace martial artist Bruce decides to go straight and settle down with his girlfriend after being released from prison. The gang he used to be part of kidnap the ...

Actors : Christoph Eichhorn, Lydia Billiet, Badema, Sevimbike Elibay,
Directors : Ulrike Ottinger,

A group of cosmopolitan women passengers aboard the Trans-Siberian/Mongolian Railway are taken prisoner by Ulan Iga, a warrior princess.

Actors : Carey Zuris, Rick Gianasi, Natalie O'Connell, Teresa Farley,
Directors : Tim Kincaid,

Inmates at a women's prison run by a corrupt warden and her gang of sadistic guards plan a breakout.

Actors : Diogo Dória, Teresa Menezes, Mário Barroso, Francisco Brás,
Directors : Manoel de Oliveira,

The life of a young man, son of an English officer who lets himself become a prisoner of love resulting in fatalism and disgrace.

Actors : Rajinikanth, Pandiyan, Gautami, Prabhu,
Directors : S.P. Muthuraman,

On their release from prison, two criminals join forces to prove the innocence of a wrongfully convicted fellow prisoner and in the process, also learn the truth about their own missing parents.

Actors : Victoria Abril, Richard Bohringer, Richard Berry, Farid Chopel,
Directors : Denis Amar,

Conflict between a hardened prison inmate and a ruthless prison guard.

Actors : Svetlana Gaytan, Vladimir Kosyrev, Kseniya Nazarova, Aleksandr Bureyev,
Directors : Sergei Bodrov,

Young Sasha is brought into a state-run children's home because his mother died early and his father spends most of his life in prison. The conditions are like in a penal institution. Sasha...

Actors : Pierre Curzi, Marie Tifo, Robert Gravel, Jacques Godin,
Directors : Yves Simoneau,

A government ministry's fast-rising head of security asks a shadowy fixer, Meursault, to steal a bag from an armored truck. Meursault goes to Théo, a former night club owner, in prison for ...

Actors : John Putch, Kyle Richards, Wendell Wellman, Frank Miller,
Directors : Gary Winick,

Two escaped brothers track down the people who sentenced them to death row, including a doctor and the judge. But when they get to the D.A. and his family they have an especially lengthy revenge plot in mind for them.

Actors : Burt Young, Lance Kinsey, Allen Garfield, Judy Landers,
Directors : Nat Christian,

A gangster's girlfriend is framed and sent to a minimum-security prison.

Actors : Pirkko Hämäläinen, Soli Labbart, Hannu Lauri, Tiina Björkman,
Directors : Mika Kaurismäki,

Anna Kelanen is an ex-model, who just has been released from prison. She thinks back on her life, when she was a rather successful model, and on the things that went wrong.

Actors : Chema Muñoz, Xabier Elorriaga, Mario Pardo, Ramón Balenziaga,
Directors : Imanol Uribe,

In the summer of 1977, a political prisoner, living in exile, recounts the circumstances of his escape to a journalist: in April 76, a group of ETA members planned to escape from prison, ...

Actors : Jorge Emilio Salazar, Sebastián Ospina, María Eugenia Dávila, Gustavo Angarita,
Directors : Jorge Alí Triana,

A man is released from prison, and after 18 years, returns to his "pueblo" (village). But in this village, time, in many ways, has stood still. The time served by Juan complied with the ...

Actors : Kenneth Glenaan, Iain Glen, Andrew Barr, Steve Hotchkiss,
Directors : David Hayman,

In London's seedy Soho district in 1963, Larry Winters (Iain Glen) murders a bartender with shocking violence. Sentenced to life behind bars, Winters has towering fits of rage that continue...

Actors : Karine Gambier, Brigitte Lahaie, Nadine Pascal, France Lomay,
Directors : Erwin C. Dietrich,

A bunch of delinquent women are shipped to an island prison run by the sadistic warden Carla. Forced into situations of sexual perversion and violence and torture, the prisoners band ...

Actors : Sergi Mateu, Assumpta Serna, Raul Solnado, Patrick Bauchau,
Directors : José Fonseca e Costa,

In Portugal, in the 60s, the corpse of a man appears on Dog's Beach. The corpse is identified as the major Dantas, a man wanted by authorities after his escape from a military prison where he was awaiting trial for insurrection.

Actors : Gary Waddell, Bryan Brown, Max Phipps, Dennis Miller,
Directors : Stephen Wallace,

Filmed in the Clare Valley, Gladstone and the Flinders Ranges in South Australia, this prison movie was inspired by the true life prison riot at Bathurst Jail in 1974 and its subsequent Royal Commission into New South Wales Prisons.

Actors : Michael McCleery, Charity Staley, Gina Mastrogiacomo, Robert Prichard,
Directors : Richard W. Haines,

In 1939 a spaceship carrying four alien escaped prisoners crash-lands on Earth and the aliens take over the bodies of four locals. Fifty years later the aliens find out that an artist has ...

Actors : Karen Kirishima, Bunta Sugawara, Takeshi Yamato, Toshiya Fujita,
Directors : Junji Sakamoto,

A directionless young man, recently released from prison, tries to make a new start in life as a boxer.

Actors : James Wilder, Henry Thomas, Errol Slue, Stephen Shellen,
Directors : Graeme Campbell,

Fresly escaped from prison, Isaac is picked up by his brothers, and the entire brood embarks on a crime spree that claims the lives of six people.