That Time Viggo Mortensen Came to Wyoming to Film a Movie

It's been nearly four decades since the B-rated horror film "Prison" hit the big screen featuring Viggo Mortensen and the Wyoming Frontier Prison in Rawlins. How does he still look so young!?

In an interview with Industrial Movies, Mortensen said, "It was fun to shoot in Rawlins, Wyoming. I got married during the shoot, travelling to Fort Robinso, Nebraska to do so."

"The ceremony, witnessed by three good friends, took place on the very spot where Crazy Horse was betrayed and murdered. We had a good time working in the old Wyoming State Penitentiary, which had been closed for about six years."

"Supposedly Butch Cassidy did some time in it. In one of the abandoned cells we used for the filming, a prisoner had written out the lyrics to Dylan’s 'All Along The Watchtower'”.

"The letters were faded, but you could still make out the words. There were a couple of old-fashioned cowboy bars I used to frequent in that town, sometimes to play pool and sometimes just to have a drink. The Rifleman was one of them."

In the same interview he said he used to go fishing for trout not far from Sinclair, on the North Platte River, and he would grill trout on a public barbecue stand at a Rawlins motel.

"I have returned to Wyoming many times over the years, but usually crossing the northern part of the state, through the Bighorn Mountains on the way to and from the Northwest."

Prison (1987) Storyline

A convict is executed via electric chair for a murder he did not commit. Later, when the prison is closed, the dead convict's soul returns from the afterlife to take revenge, but goes on a killing spree when the prison is reopened after thirty years.

The horror film is R rated. There is no sex or nudity, but the violence and gore level is "severe," the profanity is "severe," and the fright level "moderate" —this per IMBD.