Fortress

Fortress (1992) is Stuart Gordon's sci-fi action movie, and you can watch it online on iFILM. In a near future of overpopulation, a single law rules family life: one child per couple. Break it, and you go to prison.

John Brennick (Christopher Lambert) and his pregnant wife Karen try to slip across the border and land inside the Fortress, a private prison buried dozens of levels under the desert. There are no ordinary bars here. Cameras track everything, machines read the inmates' dreams, and a swallowed device called the Intestinator detonates at the first sign of trouble. Running this pit is the icy director Poe (Kurtwood Smith) and a governing computer named Zed. Brennick decides he will get out at any cost before his child is born behind these walls.

Gordon, the man behind Re-Animator, mixed a prison drama with cyberpunk and a generous helping of gore. Jeffrey Combs and Vernon Wells fill out the cast. It's blunt, inventive and unmistakably nineties, a story about escaping a machine. Stream Fortress (1992) online on iFILM.