The ’90s Explosive Sci-Fi Crime Thriller Being Left Completely In The Past, See It Right Now
The rise of the modern streaming era has created a major gap for cult films in recent years, with movies that failed to make massive cultural waves often falling between the cracks of the streaming system and being forgotten entirely. One such film, 1991’s Wedlock, is currently in danger of seeing this fate, as the only way to catch the film at the time of this writing is to watch the full upload on YouTube.
The channel, which posted Wedlock in its entirety on the video-sharing platform, touts fewer than 200 subscribers, meaning the film could be taken down at any time.
Wedlock
Wedlock was originally produced by HBO and distributed by Spectacor Films, which is owned by Comcast, meaning the film should be available to add to the Max streaming library.
Of course, corporate partners of Max are known to be some of the worst in terms of distributing their own projects to viewers, with Warner Brothers Discovery recently taking to unceremoniously shelving fully completed and highly anticipated films.
Rutger Hauer And Mimi Rogers
The film was written by Broderick Miller and directed by Lewis Teague, who is best known for helming the 1983 Stephen King adaptation Cujo.
Wedlock stars Rutger Hauer, Mimi Rogers, Joan Chen, Stephen Tobolowsky, Basil Wallace, and Oppenheimer‘s James Remar. Despite the film flying mostly under the radar, it was initially nominated for an Emmy award for sound editing after premiering on HBO.
Experimental Prison
Wedlock centers on a diamond thief named Frank Warren, who is served a 12-year prison sentence after being betrayed by his girlfriend Noelle and his best friend Sam.
Warren is placed in an experimental prison called Camp Holiday, which outfits each of its prisoners with an explosive device around their neck, connected electronically to another inmate.
The devices are made to ensure that no prisoner can escape the facility because any two collars that stray more than 100 yards from one another are rigged to explode.
An Easy Loophole
Obviously, the crucial flaw in this design means that two prisoners can buddy-up and easily escape, as long as they don’t get separated with their collars on.
Needless to say, Warren quickly partners with another inmate named Tracy, and the pair make their escape while remaining close together. The Wedlock device was parodied in the 1999 Will Smith movie Wild Wild West, and expanded upon in the 2016 film Suicide Squad.
Wedlock Only Streaming One Place
Wedlock received a DVD release from Xenon Pictures in 2004, though no Blu-ray rerelease has been issued in the 20 years since. The film is not currently available to stream on any platform, save for the YouTube channel of a kind stranger.
In the three decades since its release, the film has managed to fly so far under the radar that it currently has no critic score on Rotten Tomatoes due to a lack of overall reviews.
Wedlock Is A Campy Film
While Wedlock is an undeniably campy film loaded with the exact kind of over-the-top tomfoolery you would expect from a made-for-TV movie in the early 1990s, the film still has its merit, and makes an excellent case for more grounded dystopian tales.
The film was, in some ways, ahead of its time, and is certainly worth catching on YouTube if you have the chance.
