Bad Girls Dormitory (1986)

Director: Tim Kincaid

Writer: Tim Kincaid

Composer: Man Parrish

Starring: Carey Zuris, Teresa Farley, Natalie O'Connell, Rick Gianasi, Marita, Jennifer Delora, Donna Eskra, Dan Barclay, Rebecca Rothbaum, Frances Raines, Jane Donadio, Jeffrey R. Iorio

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Too Young for Maximum Security ... Too Dangerous for Juvenile Hall!

Plot: Inmates at a women's prison run by a corrupt warden and her gang of sadistic guards plan a breakout.

My rating: 6.5/10

Will I watch it again?  Yes.

This late entry into the Women In Prison (WIP) genre is pretty darn good.  It feels like either writer/director Kincaid set out to make a WIP picture that has a strong message and a heaping dose of social commentary combined with all of the trappings of an WIP like shower scenes, fights, gratuitous nudity, corrupt warden and guards and even more boobs.  The acting isn't any better than you'd expect and sometimes it's so bad it's good.  And then you get crazy shit like this that appears out of nowhere that had me puzzled yet laughing...(watch it at least until the dance party starts and listen to the lyrics)

WIP fans who want a shitload of boobs won't be disappointed.  What surprised me most (besides enjoying it) was the seriousness Kincaid gives the girls' back stories and their struggles in the "dormitory" to play to the gravity of the problems that some folks deal with in the real world.  I didn't expect that.  Some of these scenes have a lot of weight to them and it's a nice change of pace to the standard WIP flick.  But then again...titties!

Caged Heat (1974)

Director: Jonathan Demme

Writer: Jonathan Demme

Composer: John Cale

Starring: Juanita Brown, Roberta Collins, Erica Gavin, Ella Reid, Cheryl Smith, Warren Miller, Barbara Steele, Crystin Sinclaire, Mickey Fox

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Women's prison U.S.A. - Rape Riot and Revenge! White Hot Desires melting cold prison steel!

Plot: In a women's prison, a group of inmates band together to combat the repressive and abusive policies of the warden.

My rating:

Will I watch it again?  No.

Hey, kids!  From the future director and cinematographer that made SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991), it's a mediocre but something a little different entry in the Women in Prison (WIP) genre.  It's Jonathan Demme's first film and Tak Fujimoto's third.  We all have to start somewhere, right?   This Roger Corman produced trashy picture has some social value besides the abundance of nudity and shower scenes.  What does it have to say?  That there's a lot of fucked up shit that goes down in prison.  It's especially hard on the helpless.  But you're not going to watch this for that mess, right?  You're here for the T&A and Demme (who also wrote it) made sure there was plenty of that.  He also added some action in and out of the prison.  The ending was nice.  Watching this, it probably didn't hurt my experience knowing who Demme and Fujimoto were.  That had me looking at it through a different filter of sorts.  But they still had to make a film that lived up to the promise of the genre even if they did sneak in a little more than boobs, bush and butts.

The Island of the Bloody Plantation (1983)

Original title: Die Insel der Blutigen Plantage

AKA: Escape from Blood Plantation

Director: Kurt Raab

Writer: Kurt Raab

Composers: Jurgen Marcus, Warner B. Ryder

Starring: Udo Kier, Barbara Valentin, Tet Antiquiera, Karl-Otto Alberty, Karen Lopez, Hans Zander, Karina Fallenstein, Mike Monty, Rosemarie Sarita, Kurt Raab, Peter Kern, Fouad Mediouni-Zaoudi, Ronald Buenaventura

More info: IMDb


Plot: A women's prison on a tropical island is a hellhole where the inmates are raped, tortured and otherwise abused by the evil commandant and brutal guards. However, one of the guards falls in love with a beautiful inmate, and decides to help her and all the other prisoners escape.

My rating: 4/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

Wow!  Where to start?  This picture looks fantastic!  The cinematography is very good and it's probably the best looking WIP (Women In Prison) film I've seen that was set in a jungle.  This film is the sole feature film from Kurt Raab and I"m not sure what he was going for.  He died young in '88 so I'm sure I'll never find out.  It's a little different than your standard WIP pictures.  One way is that there's barely any nudity.  I know, right?  There's just enough to say, "Yeah, we know this is probably why you're watching this but we don't want you to like it.".  It's like when you get really shitty service at a restaurant and you leave a few coins to let the server know that this was intentional and we didn't forget to leave a tip.  I've done that.  Anyway, it's a crime about the lack of boobs.  Just by making a movie about this subject, you're already in exploitation territory so you might as well go there.  Raab didn't and we're worse off for it.  I watched the English dubbed version which is bad.  It's not so much the line readings that suck but more the choice of voice actors for each part.  Udo Kier's dub sounds like a naive fourteen year old.  The voice doesn't suit the face at all and there are examples like this almost across the board (at least with the male actors).  The story is OK but shit balls, the movie is missing the violence, gore, nudity and sleaze that this genre commands.  The anamorphic widescreen print looked amazing but I can't recommend this movie on that alone.  Fans of this genre will want to see it for completist reasons but other need to avoid this one.  It is worth noting that the film opens with a song called 'The Island of the Bloody Plantation'.  You might want to watch the first two minutes just to see how those words in that order can possibly be sung with a straight face.

Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion (1972)

Original title: Joshu 701-go: Sasori

Director: Shun'ya Ito

Writers: Fumio Konami, Hiro Matsuda, Tooru Shinohara

Composer: Shunsuke Kikuchi

Starring: Meiko Kaji, Rie Yokoyama, Yayoi Watanabe, Yoko Mihara, Akemi Negishi, Keiko Kuni, Yumiko Katayama, Emi Jo, Sue Mitobe, Chie Kobayashi

More info: IMDb


Plot: After being used and betrayed by the detective she had fallen in love with, young Matsu is sent to a female prison full of sadistic guards and disobedient prisoners.

My rating: 7.5/10

Will I watch it again?  Yes!

I loves me some Pinky Violence movies and this is one of the better ones.  Big time Pinky star Meiko Kaji stars in this PV pic that gives you everything you want that this genre has to offer...lots of nudity, cruelty, action and revenge for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

And that's just during the opening credits!  These films, while relatively few, are a gas to watch.  They're generally well made and have a great sense of style with not only the production design but with the camerawork.  And almost always the music scores are a blast! I haven't seen this series (there are four of them) in a very long time so it was nice to revisit the first one again.  It's such a unique and fun genre and it's hard not to like these pictures.

Strike of the Tortured Angels (1982)

Director: Roy Rosenberg

Writers: Dick O'Nell, Gary Capra Jr.

Composer: Ricky Chan

Starring: Susan Lee, Stella Jone, Laura Sode-Matteson, George Bill, Larry Moore, Jim Man

More info: IMDb

Tagline: ACTION! BETRAYAL! HATRED! BLOODSHED! GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS!

Plot:  Three girls in a women's prison escape and have a difficult time staying a live and free on the run.

My rating: 4/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

This overly dramatic Women In Prison (WIP) film from Hong Kong has each of the three escapees out to either wrong a right, get revenge or take care of business before they die.  The 'black' girl has TB and one of them is pregnant or something.  And by black I mean an Asian woman in blackface.

Yup. For a WIP picture I don't recall a single frame of nudity although there is a hint at the obligatory group shower scene as the girls arrive at the jungle camp.  There's also no torture or much of any of the edgy staples of WIP films.  It's mildly entertaining but I've got to say that I was bored enough that a day after watching it I forgot almost everything about it.  That's not good.  The crappy fullscreen VHS tape with Dutch subs isn't the way to go but it's the only way you're probably going to find it.  It's one of several crap movies in the Fortune 5 DVD set called Grindhouse Experience that comes with 20 lousy movies.  I've been through them all and there's only one now that I would consider watching again.  Really.

Women in Cellblock 9 (1978)

Original title: Frauen fur Zellenblock 9

AKA: Tropical Inferno

Director: Jesus Franco

Writer: Jesus Franco

Composer: Walter Baumgartner

Starring: Karine Gambier, Howard Vernon, Susan Hemingway, Aida Gouveia, Esther Studer

Plot: A group of female freedom-fighters led by Karine (Gambier) is caught by the war-den of a women’s prison, located some-where in the South American jungle. None of them will reveal the secrets of their organization or the names of their collaborators in the cities, so they are handed over to Dr. Costa (Vernon) who, after four years inactivity in Europe, is delighted to be able to practice his torture techniques once more.  Karine fails to resist the inhuman treatments and reveals all. The only hope of saving the organization is for the girls to warn the city cell before it’s too late. They trick the prison guard into having sex with them, knock him out and break out of prison. The warden and Dr. Costa must prevent them from revealing the practices inside the prison. The hunt is on and it’s shoot to kill.

My rating: 7/10

Will I watch it again? Probably.

Women In Prison (WIP) films are usually pretty boring but they generally offer LOTS of eye candy and, if you're lucky, some blood and guts.  They're usually done on the cheap and are loaded with filler (hence the boring). The same can be said about an awful lot of Jess Franco's pictures, too. But then the dude directed 201 pictures and worked until he died at the age of 82 (one year ago next week).  That's fucking impressive.  If I started now I'd have to crank out a little more than 5 pictures a year for the rest of my life.  I'm getting side tracked when it should be this that tests my ability to stay focused...

Starring Ricky Gervais' sister as The Warden!

Oh, NO!  Not the Gere Run!!!

Don't mind us gals.  We're just hanging around...

and MAKING OUT!!!

Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom never had anything like this.

Look out, girls, GATORS!!!

HURRY!  HURRY!!!!!  We need you to last until the end of the picture...and not find clothes.

WHEW! That was close!

 Ahhhhhhhhh.

How about that product placement?

It's a surprisingly good picture and not just because of the gratuitous amount of nudity.  These gals spend 96% of the picture completely nude.  I honestly commend them for having to run around the jungle and in the river like that.  Honorary Oscars, anyone?  The picture's only 78 minutes long but it feels shorter.  Really.  Usually these kinds of films drag on forever no matter how short they are but this one manages to move the action (there's very little story to tell) at a nice, brisk pace. Within the first 15 minutes the girls are captured, sent to the prison and prepared for torture.  We meet all of the characters we need to know by then.  The next 15 gives us more detail about how sadistic and perverted the warden and the doctor are...

which sets us up for the torture.  That's another 15 minutes.  10 minutes after that the girls have seduced the guard and have escaped.  All that's left is 20 minutes of surviving and being chased through the jungle.  It's a very economic picture.  I'm impressed with that aspect alone.  Then you consider the fun torture scenes, evil bad gal and guy and a wonderfully abundant amount of gorgeous nudity.  That's entertainment.  And what's more, it's a good looking, nicely shot film.  Not bad for total exploitation.  This genre needs more quality pictures like this and it gives me hope for watching more of them even though I know I'm in for a world of shit...but with boobs and paper thin plots.

Nightmare in Badham County (1976)

Director: John Llewellyn Moxey

Writer: Jo Heims

Composer: Charles Bernstein

Starring: Deborah Raffin, Lynne Moody, Chuck Connors, Fionnula Flanagan, Tina Louise, Robert Reed, Della Reese, Lana Wood, Ralph Bellamy, Leslie Albers, Denise Dillaway, Simpson Hemphill

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Where Innocence Is a Punishable Crime

Plot: Two UCLA coeds have engine trouble in small Southern town. When they spurn the local sheriff's advances he arranges for them to be taken to the women's prison on trivial charges (the judge is a cousin), where they must endure atrocities at the hands of the administrators of the prison and the prison guards.

My rating: 6.5/10

Will I watch it again? No.

Wow.  Who would have thought that a Women In Prison (WIP) TV movie would be pretty good?  There was an R rated version released overseas (the one that I watched) that added swearing and nudity.  How about those prison guard uniforms?

Nice.  A lot of the Southern accents are atrocious but that's not why you watch these things.  The drama is pretty solid with a nice downbeat ending. Probably what I liked most was how wronged the girls were and how much it looked like they'd never get out of the prison farm. It was neat seeing some familiar faces in the cast, too.  Connors, for one, plays a mean sonofabitch sheriff that can't take jokes and rapes his female prisoners.  He's got a taste for the brown sugar.  I didn't even recognize Tina Louise (Ginger from GILLIGAN'S ISLAND).  Geez, I just noticed she's going to be 80 in 3 months.  Even though there is an R rated cut out there it's not nearly as sleazy as other WIP films of the 70s but it is one of the better ones.  Tits and swearing or not, it's one of the better examples of the genre.

Correctional Facility for Raped Girls (1977)

Director: Antonio Meliande

Starring: Meiry Vieira, Sergio Hingst, Zilda Mayo, Edgard Franco, Arlete Moreira, Genesio de Carvalho, Regina Helena Pinheiro, Zelia Martins, Sueli Aoki, Luis Mewes, Nicole Puzzi

More info: IMDb


Plot: Young female delinquents are sent to a correctional facility run by a lesbian, depraved and sadistic nun.

My rating: 4/10

Will I watch it again? No.

Part of the Nunsploitation Project (July & August 2013). Click here for more naughty nun insanity!  

Full disclosure here.  I was a prison guard at a correctional facility for raped girls in Brazil during my late teens and it was just like this.  It was very painful for me to watch this film.  Too close to home, man, too close to home.

This Nunsploitation entry is just what it looks like...a Women in Prison (WIP) film complete with the obligatory shower scene.

And torture...

Even though this was dubbed in Portuguese with no English option it wasn't hard to follow.  It's not good as a Nunsploitation film, a WIP film or a film in general.  It's easy to say there are better examples of each of those genres but this really is a run of the mill, middle of the road picture for any genre it fits into.  There's not the abundance of nudity that you get in your standard WIP picture nor is there much nun on nun action but what's there is OK at best.