Now here's a weak link. The first "Penitentiary" is a classic of low budget filmmaking, a classic boxing movie and a classic of blaxploitation. The third is a classic of an entirely different stripe, a truly bizarre, off-the-wall cult movie that must be seen to be believed.
This second one, though? Perhaps we needed some kind of bridge between the first and third, so different are they, and so good for completely opposite reasons.
It's hard to think of any other reason for "Penitentiary II" to exist.
In this one, Leon Isaac Kennedy of course reprises his role as Too Sweet, now out of jail. The movie has nothing to say about anything this time around and just goes through the motions of a sequel: obviously the first movie ended with a climactic fight sequence, and so too must this. Further we get some of the same characters repeated (aside from Too Sweet) though they are played by different actors and are apparently only in the movie for the call-back. An actor called Floyd Chatman made the character of Seldom Seen a force to be reckoned with in the first "Penitentiary". Here some other actor takes the role, but barely gets any screen time, and barely does anything other than appear for a few scenes.
Half Dead was the big bad guy in the first movie, and so too is he here, though his presence doesn't really make sense and is poorly explained. Now he is portrayed by the beloved character actor Ernie Hudson, whom audiences worldwide know as Winston Zeddimore from the "Ghostbusters" movies, and the cop from "The Crow". It's certainly unusual seeing him in a bad guy role - here he is a rapist and a murderer - but he could have done so much more with the part if they hadn't just made it a lame call-back to the first movie.
The only other actor in the movie I recognized is the immortal Tony Cox, who only has a couple of scenes but steals them nonetheless.
Oh, and of course, there's Mr T, who barely says or does anything, except for a fight scene at the end which follows the climactic boxing match and upstages it in terms of realism.
This movie was, more than anything else, boring. It seems to be running on fumes, like everybody involved knew there was no reason for it to exist, and were all just going through the motions.
