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List Price: $29.95Amazon.com's Price: $26.99 You Save: $2.96 (10%)Prices subject to change.
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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
Brand: WATKINS,PETER
EAN: 9781567303964
Format: Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
ISBN: 156730396X
Label: New Yorker Video
Manufacturer: New Yorker Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: New Yorker Video
Region Code: 1
Release Date: November 22, 2005
Running Time: 88 minutes
Sales Rank: 43148
Studio: New Yorker Video
Theatrical Release Date: 1971
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Editorial Review:
Description:
"One of the finest films about dissent in America." —Rolling Stone
"Intense, outrageous and still relevant… a cult hit waiting to happen." —The Boston Phoenix
"Paralyzing. A devastating indictment and a chilling prognosis." —The San Francisco Chronicle
1970. The war in Vietnam is escalating. There is massive public protest in the United States and elsewhere. President Nixon declares a state of national emergency and the Federal authorities are given the power to detain persons judged to be "a risk to national security."
In a desert zone in southwest California, a civilian tribunal passes sentence on groups of dissidents and gives them the option of participating in law enforcement training exercises in the Bear Mountain National Punishment Park. In an atmosphere of aggression and intimidation and in soaring temperatures, the prisoners have to fight for their lives as they are hunted down by the forces of law and order.
Amazon.com:
Call it a pseudo-documentary, an outrageous piece of propaganda, perhaps even a paranoid fantasy, but one description that definitely does not apply to Punishment Park is "light entertainment." Brit director Peter Watkins offers a chilling scenario, set in the early '70s, in which, according to an edict called the McCarran Act (which did exist, albeit in different form), the U.S. government has the right to detain (without bail, evidence, or anything resembling a fair trial) anyone who "probably will engage in certain future acts of sabotage." The detainees, most of them '60s radicals, are offered a choice between long prison sentences or three days in "Punishment Park," a scorching stretch of the Southern California desert; should they choose the latter, they will be released upon reaching an American flag planted many miles away, all the while avoiding capture (or, more likely, death) at the hands of a bunch of gung-ho cops, National Guardsmen, and other law enforcement types. The film alternates between the "tribunals" where the radicals' fates are decided (and where the shrill hectoring and sloganeering--on both sides--come fast and furious) and the grim scenes in the desert. And although Watkins clearly takes the side of the prisoners (as does the fictional film crew on hand to document the proceedings), no one emerges entirely unscathed: the politicians, "average" Americans, and others holding forth at the tribunals are all right-wing blockheads ("more spank and less Spock" would have taught those whippersnappers a lesson, says one), the cops and guardsmen are all trigger-happy jerks, and the young radicals are mostly callow, rhetoric-spouting stereotypes. Violent, provocative, and convincingly shot in cinema verite style, Punishment Park will leave many viewers muttering that it can't happen here. Opponents of the Patriot Act and its perceived attack on civil liberties, however, will likely take another view. --Sam Graham
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
This "underground" pseudo-documentary unfortunately has not lost any relevance since its inception 36 years ago until today. At its core is an at the time of the movie's making fictitious law but sounding eerily familiar today in view of the Patriot Act, which involves the right to detain and arrest anybody by the police of whom can be assumed they will commit some terrorist act in the future.
A number of accused, hippies, draft dodgers (Vietnam war was still going on in 1971), left ... Read More
Rating: -
Possibly the most extreme example of 1970s-style "us vs. them"/political radicals vs. the Establishment movie, Punishment Park, directed by notorious social commentator Peter Watkins, uses violence--both verbal and physical--to smash its message home. This is an intense dystopian vision of both the present and the future simultaneously--and whether that future is near or far is hard to say.
Hippie-radical types, all in their late teens/early 20s, are tried and found guilty of conspiracy/treason, ... Read More
Rating: -
In 1971, Director Peter Watkins became one of the unfortunate few to make a prophecy which came true--in this case, in the form of a film. I know not how it was received at the time or how it was reviewed. I suspect not well, since the film virtually disappeared from sight for a number of years. Rumor-mongers even claimed that the government had banned it--whether true or not I have no idea. More likely, the graphic violence and language, which are common enough now but still far from easy to watch, were ... Read More
Rating:  -
Punishment Park (1971) by Peter Watkins is one of the hardest hitting political movies you can see which is to be expected given its low-budget antiestablishment bases which was condemned by the media who did not want any form of "anti-American" propaganda. Punishment Park is the story of two film crews who follow the army and the police in a desert zone, 60 miles long, called Punishment Park. The film is told in non-linear format between a court hearing type political debate were after the defendants are charged ... Read More
Rating: -
I first saw Peter Watkins's Punishment Park the year of its release and I have never forgotten my visceral almost painful reaction to it. At that time the film was a politically charged document with just enough narrative to carry the weight of its polemics through to its disconcerting conclusion. It was 1971, Nixon was in the White House and the Vietnam War dragged on, leaving many of us to feel that the politics of the day had doomed the social revolution of the late 60s. Despite some uncanny contemporary resonances, ... Read More
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