Also known as Caged Women and Gefangene Frauen, Women of Inferno Island is a Swiss production, made in German and shot in Spain (and set in South America). It was released in 1980.
The movie opens with a beauty contest. It’s the Miss Beautiful Breast pageant, not quite as prestigious as the Miss World pageant perhaps but with a lot more bare flesh. You might be wondering what this has to do with a WiP movie. The answer is, nothing at all. It’s just an excuse to show us nine topless girls while the opening credits roll.
The scene then moves to an unnamed South American country. El Presidente has a problem. The UN is ending a team to investigate reports of girls being forced to work in the capital’s brothels against their will. This is worrying because El Presidente knows that the reports are true, because he runs the brothels. It’s essential that the investigators don’t get to talk to the women. El Presidente’s mistress, Carla (Karine Gambier), comes up with a clever scheme. Why not ship the girls, temporarily, to the old prison on Rat Island? She’s so excited by her idea that she has to immediately masturbate.
This must be a very small country since the huge nation-wide roundup of prostitutes only nets seventeen girls. They’re bewildered and indignant but they’re not frightened. Not yet. But maybe they will be when they get to know the prison warden. The warden is of course Carla. Carla intends to have some fun. She has a shiny leather slightly fetishistic uniform. She has a whole squad of soldiers to enforce her will. And she has seventeen helpless girls at her mercy.
Naturally when they arrive at the prison they’re sent to the showers. What would a WiP movie be without a shower scene? The girls also get subjected a medical examination. It’s supposed to be a complete checkup but the doctor seems to think that a gynaecological examination (which is filmed surprisingly graphically) is all that is required.
The three prettiest girls, Rita (Brigitte Lahaie), Rosi (Nadina Pascal) and Lisa (France Lomay), find themselves sharing a cell. Three women stuck in a bare cell with nothing to do. And they’re surrounded by bored soldiers, cut off from contact with any women apart from the prisoners, with nothing to do. Fortunately the three girls and three of the soldiers hit on a solution. It’s a solution that they all find to be thoroughly enjoyable.
Meanwhile Carla is filling her time having sex with her chief warder and cooking up political schemes.
At first it looks like it’s going to be a straightforward WiP movie that ticks all the usual boxes. But it isn’t. Carla isn’t brutal and sadistic. The most cruel punishment she can think up for the girls is to force them to discard their boring prison dresses and remain naked all the time. The girls think this is terrific. They like being naked.
The soldiers just want to have sex with the women, and the women just want to have sex with the soldiers. The women don’t get raped. In fact they’re almost tearing the trousers off the soldiers in their eagerness to get some lovin’.
Two of the girls do try to escape, and get whipped for their trouble. But that brief whipping scene is the only moment of brutality and the girls don’t seem to be too worried about. They did try to escape after all.
This is a movie that relies on wackiness rather than sadism. Carla and her chief warder indulge in some clay pigeon shooting. They don’t have one of those machines to launch the clay pigeons into the air so they get a couple of nude girls to hurl them into the air. For the two girls it’s basically a bit of outdoor leisure. Carla decides that she and the chief warder will have a shooting competition. The loser will have to take on the strongest prisoner in unarmed combat. The warder loses but he’s not too worried since after all the strongest prisoner on the island is a pretty young woman. The girl proceeds to demonstrate how unarmed combat is done. She beats the daylights out of him. Carla ominously instructs the victorious girl to join her in her quarters later. But instead of some awful punishment, all Carla has in mind is a bedroom romp with the girl (which the girl enjoys).
Rita, Rosi and Lisa do eventually decide to make an escape attempt, but it’s not clear why since they’re actually having a good time on the island. Then we get a few amusing and actually quite clever plot twists (there hasn’t been any actual plot up to this point).
Erwin C. Dietrich understood his market very well. He knows what the movie wants in a softcore movie is some fun and lots and lots of naked women. And the women have to be beautiful. That’s what Dietrich gives them. This is a softcore movie but there’s a truly incredible amount of very explicit female nudity. It’s like Let’s Play Gynaecologist. But the girls are quite pretty and the three girls on whom most of the action focuses are absolutely gorgeous. Miss Lahaie does get one brief clothed scene. She puts on a rather fetching red dress, then discards it ten seconds later. Apart from that she and the other girls are pretty much naked for the entire movie. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a softcore feature from this era with more female frontal nudity. And there’s plenty of very obviously simulated sex. Karine Gambier is also frequently nude.
The acting is OK considering that this movie is pretty undemanding stuff. Karine Gambier gives the standout performance as the sex and power-crazed Carla.
Full Moon’s DVD release offers an excellent anamorphic transfer. The colours are bright and they look right. Only the English dubbed version is offered.
This might sound strange but this is a light-hearted feelgood women-in-prison movie. It’s bright and cheerful. Yes, really. It has a bright cheerful look (gorgeous locations and lots of sunshine) and the content matches the look. This is really a “nude girls having fun in the sun movie” - it’s more like Club Med than a prison. It manages to pack an extraordinary amount of political incorrectness into its 80 minute running time but there’s nothing misogynistic about it. The female prisoners are whores but they’re actually really nice girls. Women of Inferno Island is more of an exercise in goofy fun than a conventional women-in-prison movie. It’s a women-in-prison movie you don’t have to feel guilty about enjoying. Highly recommended.
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