Death Warrant

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Jean-Claude Van Damme is heading behind bars this November as 88 Films brings the 1990 action thriller Death Warrant to Limited Edition Blu-ray.

Directed by Deran Sarafian, Death Warrant arrived during the period that saw Van Damme rapidly establishing himself as one of the biggest martial-arts action stars of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

This time, however, the Belgian action star swaps the fighting tournaments of Bloodsport and Kickboxer for the considerably less welcoming surroundings of a maximum-security prison.

Van Damme stars as Los Angeles police detective Louis Burke, who opens the film hunting a psychotic serial killer known as The Sandman. Burke eventually tracks his target, Christian Naylor (Patrick Kilpatrick), to an abandoned building and, following a violent confrontation, believes that particular nightmare is over. Several months later, Burke is handed a rather different assignment.

A series of inmates have been murdered inside Harrison Penitentiary and the authorities suspect something considerably more sinister is happening behind the prison walls. With conventional investigations getting nowhere, Burke is given a new identity and sent into the maximum-security facility posing as a convicted criminal. His task is straightforward enough on paper: discover who is killing the prisoners and why. Surviving long enough to find the answers proves rather more difficult.

Burke begins navigating the prison's brutal hierarchy while secretly investigating the deaths with help from Amanda Beckett (Cynthia Gibb), an attorney working on the outside. He also finds an unlikely ally in Hawkins (Robert Guillaume), a veteran inmate who understands considerably more about life inside Harrison than Burke does.

As the investigation develops, Burke discovers evidence suggesting that the murdered inmates are connected by something more disturbing than ordinary prison violence. But his undercover operation takes an even more dangerous turn when he discovers that Harrison Penitentiary has acquired another inmate. The Sandman.

Very much alive and now sharing the same prison as the detective who put him there, Naylor has no intention of allowing Burke to leave. What begins as an undercover investigation consequently develops into a mixture of prison thriller, conspiracy mystery and martial-arts action as Burke attempts to uncover the truth while his identity - and his chances of surviving Harrison - become increasingly precarious.

Death Warrant will be released as a Limited Edition Blu-ray on 16th November 2026 by 88 Films.