Red Heat is also a very dark spy thriller. The CIA is undertaking a major espionage operation in Germany involving a female East German scientist who has turned traitor and is selling secrets to the West. The CIA, being the CIA, make an unholy mess of the operation which ends in complete failure and with both the lady scientist and an innocent bystander sentenced to long terms of imprisonment in a horrific East German prison.
The innocent bystander is American college student Christine Carlson (Linda Blair). She has zero interest in politics and was not involved in the operation at all. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Christine’s boyfriend is an American soldier, Mike (William Ostrander). In his innocence he assumes. That the US Government will try to rescue his girlfriend. He soon finds out the truth. The CIA doesn’t give a damn about Christine. They’re too busy covering their own asses and trying to cover up their failure.
As a spy movie this belongs the dark gritty cynical school of spy movies. The East Germans are the bad guys, but the CIA are the bad guys as well. There are no good guys in the worlds of espionage and international politics.
This is a women-in-prison movie so of course there are lesbians. At this point I should perhaps say that if you’re the type of person who expects 80s movies to conform to 2020s political ideologies or if you’re a sensitive soul you are going to hate this movie and you’re going to be upset by it. In which case you should watch some other movie.
Firstly there’s the sadistic lesbian chief warder. There’s also Sofia (Sylvia Kristel). Sofia is serving a life sentence and she’s the queen bee. She shares the lesbian chief warder’s bed and she and her lesbian gang exercise a reign of terror over the other prisoners.
That lady spy mentioned earlier is in the same prison. The East Germans want Christine to befriend her to get her secrets out of her.
Sofia sees Christine as a threat. Christine is a sweet innocent girl but she does have an underlying strength of character that Sofia senses, and that makes Sofia determined to destroy her. Somehow Christine will have to survive, and with only the vaguest hope of eventually, maybe, getting out alive.
Christine’s boyfriend wants to find her but he has no idea where she is and the CIA absolutely refuse to help. It all seems hopeless but he really loves Christine and he’s not going to give up.
This movie starts as a spy thriller. Then for most of its running time it’s a very dark women-in-prison movie. And then at the end it becomes an action thriller. The action scenes come as a relief after the relentless grimness.
There is not a hint of camp to this movie. The spy thriller element is cynical, the prison scenes are harrowing and the climactic action scenes are bloody. This is a tough movie.
This is the sort of thing Linda Blair did so well - playing a nice girl who is pushed too far and learns to become a tough chick avenging angel. Blair had a knack for doing this in a totally convincing way.
One thing I love about Blair is that she didn’t look like a movie star. She was attractive, but in a girl-next-door kind of way rather than a glamorous movie star kind of way. And she could be sexy in a tough-but-sensitive way, and sexy in the way that a regular woman is sexy rather than in a glamourised supermodel or movie star way. She has to convince us that Christine really is a very ordinary girl who learns to do what she has to do in order to survive. Blair does this successfully.
I have heard it suggested that Sylvia Kristel was miscast as Sofia. I totally disagree. She was a fine actress and playing a sadistic psycho bitch was something she was quite capable of doing and she does an excellent job here.
In order to work this movie needed two actresses with charisma, but with the right sort of slightly unconventional charisma. Blair and Kristel work perfectly together. You know that when these two chicks have their final showdown it will be memorable.
It’s a somber film but it’s well-paced and the tension is built up effectively and relentlessly. It’s gripping and it’s entertaining. A must-see for Linda Blair fans, and I’d say it’s a must-see for Sylvia Kristel fans as well as a demonstration of her considerable versatility as an actress. Red Heat is highly recommended.
Red Heat is included in a Women in Prison Triple Feature DVD set. The DVD transfer for Red Heat is rather dark but I suspect that that is actually how the movie was shot. I like the dark scuzzy look the film has.
Red Heat was a follow-up to the excellent 1983 Linda Blair women-in-prison movie Chained Heat. They’re both delightfully sleazy but with a subtly different vibe. Maybe Chained Heat is slightly the better film but both are worth seeing.
No comments:
Post a Comment