Bare Behind Bars (1980)

Director: Oswaldo de Oliveira

Starring: Naked women and LOTS of them

More Info: IMDB

Plot: In a Brazilian prison, women rebel against the guards' sadism and sexual abuse and decide to run away. Some manage to escape and are chased by the Police.

My Rating: 5/10 and all of it for the sleaze factor alone

Would I watch it again? Uh...no.

This might be the first sleazy Women In Prison (WIP) film I've seen. I can't think of any offhand. I've got a few on DVD but I just haven't gotten around to them until now. I was over at the forum at one of my absolute favorite mondo movie websites, http://www.dvdmaniacs.com/, reading a thread on "name your 3 favorite sleazy movies" or something like that. There were some great titles in there like:

PINK FLAMINGOS

CALIGULA

CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST

HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER

I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE

ILSA: SHE WOLF OF THE SS (this one has a jaw-dropping trailer you just HAVE to see)

PORNO HOLOCAUST
SINFUL DWARF

THUNDERCRACK!

THE TIT AND THE MOON

So the other night when I was in the mood for something sleazy to go with my cocktail I just made I thought, "Hey, how about BARE BEHIND BARS?" I mean, it's got a reputation for being a classic WIP and it's on the unofficial sleaze movie list. What the hell.

Woof. Now I likes me some nudity and all but this takes it way past the point of anything fun and turns it into something natural as if we humans are naked in our everyday lives and we get aroused when we see someone WITH clothes on. There's A LOT of nudity in this. I'm not going to go back and take notes but I'd swear that every single character in this film until the final 20 minutes gets naked or stays naked. If you were to take a Super Wal-Mart, empty it and then fill it with just boobs, you'd see more in this picture. It's almost numbing how abundant they are.

Now wait just a minute. Again, I likes me some boobs but this is over the top. The screen shots I have here are about the few moments without the girls showing their "girls". I haven't seen this many lady lumps since I was backstage at an Aerosmith concert. I'm just sayin'.

This movie's got it all when it comes to the staples you find in a WIP. Like...a tough as nails warden (female here), lesbian guards, lesbian prisoners, showers, rape, and so on.

Despite all of that I was getting bored after the first half hour. There's so much repetition. For example, how many soaped-up shower scenes do you need? Apparently writer/director de Oliveira felt he needed at least 3. But it gets better.

For the kids, it's got girls concealing folding shaving razors all up in their vag, a vagina-sniffing nurse, more bush than in the White House (gotta love that 70s/80s Euro-bush), bra-less prison guards, a bra-less warden with her blouse unbuttoned most of the way, naked calisthenics, girls being sold into slavery to wealthy jet-setting lesbians, a PINEAPPLE (!) carved into the fattest dildo you've ever seen. And that's before three of the girls escape.

Once the escapees make their way to a poor family's house they cut off the father's cock and feed it to the dog, kill the mother, kill the father and then gang rape their 10-year-old son and it ain't pretty.

But wait, there's more? You betcha. They leave that house and go their separate ways and one girl starts prostituting herself out. With one of her Johns she cuts his crank off and stuff's it down his throat.

And the acting? What? There's acting? Everyone is acting so loud and over-the-top you'd think:

A) They're in a John Waters movie (and i LOVE me some JW movies)

or

B) This is the same cast from the hit Brazilian stage play, BARE BEHIND BARS where they couldn't afford sound amplification and had to project their voices farther on their own.

The music literally sounds like a child banging at random on a piano. Erroll Flynn, so it's told, used to get wasted at parties and play "You are My Sunshine" on the piano with his dick. Maybe that's what they were going for only it was Beethoven during his deaf years doing it instead but even that would have been better.

Damn, to write about this it seems like an awesome flick I wouldn't want to miss. It's got some truly great sleaze thrown about but it moves so slowly I was ready for it to end. I'll blame de Oliveira on that one. The pacing is terrible which isn't helped by the static camera just sitting there all the bloody time doing nothing. But then what am I asking for? An Orson Welles WIP flic?

Despite my less than enthusiastic experience with BARE BEHIND BARS, if they ever make a sequel...I wanna direct it. Viva la Sweater Meat!