Prisoners of the Ghostland (2021)

Plot of Prisoners in the Ghostland: The Ghostland is an area of the country, which could be Japan, which has been subject to radioactive contamination due to a crash between two vehicles, a prison bus and an atomic waste transport.  A warlord, the Governor has a lot of has a harem of young sex slaves, but one of them, Bernice, with two friends escapes to the Ghostland in a car. The Governor frees a convict who has been imprisoned after a failed bank robbery to rescue Bernice. The prisoner is clad in a leather suit which is rigged with explosives intended to blow bits of him off, including his head if he fails to recover her within five days, is sent off to the ghostland where he is confronted with a whole series of strange sights, although he does find Bernice but soe of his suit explosives go off, blowing off one of his nuts and injuring one arm. However, Bernice is enlivened and together they start a movement to march out of ghostland.

Content: I must say that if you look through the photos on IMDb this looks like a really interesting film. The scenes are amazing. There is no sex or nudity but everything seems just a bit edgy. In the bank robbery everyone is surreally dressed. The Governors ‘girls’ are all in traditional Japanese costume. Once Hero, the convict, is in ghostland there is a lot of stuff happening to whole groups of people. There are people who are more or less encased in sort of humanoid pottery covers. There is a bunch on the end of a rope preventing the small hand of a large clock from getting to the vertical and so on. When one of the girls returns to the Governor she is beheaded – but off camera. There are a number of sword fights with Japanese swords.

A View: When I started watching this film it seemed sort of interesting although even at the start you can see it is an art house outing. For the first ten minutes really interesting but my enthusiasm gradually fell away until I had to switch it off. I did return to it and watch the rest but remained unenthusiastic about it. I prefer my films to tell a story in a straightforward way and no interesting or unusual images can substitute for that in my opinion. But if you like that sort of thing then it is a good example.

Fun fact: Nicolas Cage met his fifth wife while making this film.