Jungle Warriors (1984)

Jungle Warriors is included in a women-in-prison boxed set but it’s not quite a women-in-prison movie although it has affinities with that delightfully scuzzy genre. 

The presence of John Vernon, Alex Cord and Sybil Danning in the cast makes this one sound promising.

Two groups of people are heading for an unnamed South American country. There’s Mafia kingpin Vito Mastranga (John Vernon) who, accompanied by his lawyer and nephew Nick Spilotro (Alex Cord), is there to organise a distribution deal with big-time local drug lord Cesar Santiago (Paul L. Smith).

The second group is a bunch of models heading for a jungle photo shoot.

There is no way these two groups should come in contact with each other, but they do.

The drug lord has his own private army and when the models’ Grumman amphibian flies a bit too close to their jungle headquarters they shoot it down. The models end up as prisoners of the drug lord and as you might expect they have a very unpleasant time. First he gives the girls to his psycho half-sister Angel (Sybil Danning) to play with. She likes playing cruel games with girls. When Angel grows tired of the games she gives the girls to Santiago’s foot soldiers. You can imagine what happens to the girls then.

Santiago thinks Mastranga plans to double-cross him. Mastranga thinks Santiago plans to double-cross him. When the girls get loose and start shooting up bad guys both men think their suspicions have been confirmed. What follows is an epic running battle between these three armed factions. Much blood is shed.

While this is happening US Federal agents are busy trying to locate the drug lord’s jungle lair. The Feds have an agent on the inside but that agent’s cover gets blown.

One thing I learnt from this movie - in the 80s all fashion models had extensive combat training and could handle automatic weapons with ease.

There’s as much violent action as you could ask for.

Surprisingly this film is relatively tame when it comes to sleaze. There is some but nowhere near as much as you would expect. The movie did run into censorship problems and was heavily cut so the original version was probably sleazier.

John Vernon is of course great fun, as are Alex Cord and Paul L. Smith. There is an abundance of overacting. Sybil Danning does the psycho bitch thing very well.

The supporting players vary in quality but they all overact and that’s what matters.

The low budget is evident and technically it’s just a tad slipshod at times.

The pacing however is taut and the action scenes have a lot of energy.

I believe this film was shot in Mexico. The locations are pretty impressive.

The theme song is sung by Marina Arcangeli and it’s stupendously awful.

Jungle Warriors isn’t great but it’s reasonably enjoyable. Worth a look if you’re going to buy the boxed set.

The Panik House DVD looks a bit rough around the edges and this does seem to be a slightly cut version. There are no extras. A restored uncut version on Blu-Ray would be nice and while it seems unlikely stranger things have happened.

The women-in-prison DVD set also includes Chained Heat and Red Heat (both with Linda Blair). Jungle Warriors is certainly the weakest of the three movies.

Red Heat (1985)

Red Heat is a 1985 women-in-prison movie starring Linda Blair. I have to be upfront about this - I’m a major Linda Blair fan. If it’s a sleazy, violent, scuzzy 80s exploitation flick and she’s in it I will watch it.

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.

Turkey Shoot (1982)

Turkey Shoot is a 1982 ozploitation movie. When you see “produced by Antony I. Ginnane” and “directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith”it always gives one a feeling of confidence. At least the movie is unlikely to be dull.

The setting is a totalitarian future Australia in which absolute social conformity is enforced. This is a movie that seems much more chilling today than it was in 1982. It’s all very Orwellian, complete with very Orwellian slogans. All dissent is forbidden.

Chris Walters (Olivia Hussey) is a very ordinary woman who finds herself suspected of wrongthink and is sent to a re-education camp. The camp is run by the sadistic Charles Thatcher (Michael Craig). His political boss is Secretary Mallory (Noel Ferrier) whose sexual tastes seem to be more than a little outré. Mallory takes an immediate interest in Chris. She is terrified. That excites him.

The main protagonist is Paul Anders (Steve Railsback) who is convinced he cannot be broken. Thatcher intends to break him.

Also caught up in the net is Rita Daniels (Lynda Stoner). She’s been accused of sexcrime.

Anders is awaiting a chance to escape, as is Griff (Bill Young) who also believes that Thatcher cannot break him.

Life in the camp is an endless round of brutality and humiliation.

Thatcher is putting on an entertainment for a couple of important people. One is Mallory. The other is the very rich very sophisticated and very depraved Jennifer (Carmen Duncan). The entertainment will be a hunt, with five prisoners as the prey. The prisoners are told that if they are still alive and have not been captured by sundown they will be freed. Maybe it’s true, poor Chris desperately wants to believe it’s true, but it seems very unlikely.

The hunters are Thatcher, Mallory, Jennifer, several of the camp guards and a circus freak. I have no idea where he came from but he adds an extra exploitation element.

Most of the hunters are armed with guns but Jennifer prefers a crossbow. She likes to kill her victims slowly.

There’s plenty of graphic violence and gore and a very nasty sadistic tone. There’s some nudity as well, because this is after all an exploitation movie.

The action scenes are lively and energetic and over-the-top, as you’d expect from Trenchard-Smith.

The characterisations are all wafer-thin but this a straightforward violent action movie so who needs characterisation? The acting is mostly cartoonish which suits the feel of the movie. Olivia Hussey seems out of place in this movie but her performance works in the sense that she’s playing a woman who finds herself in a situation in which she really is hopelessly out of place. The standout performer is Carmen Duncan as Jennifer. She’s deliciously wicked and perverse.

Steve Railsback does his best but he isn’t quite convincing as an action hero. He’s a bit too weedy.

This is not a women-in-prison movie as such but will probably have some appeal to fans of that genre.

Turkey Shoot has all the violence that fans of violent action movies could hope for and it’s nothing if not entertaining.

The Umbrella DVD (they’ve released in on Blu-Ray as well) offers a very nice transfer without any extras.

This was approximately the 10,000th screen adaptation of Richard Connell’s 1924 short story The Most Dangerous Game. The best of these is The Most Dangerous Game (1932) although Seven Women for Satan (1976) is definitely worth seeing as is Herb Stanley’s completely off-the-wall 1968 Confessions of a Psycho Cat.

Female Prisoner Scorpion: Beast Stable (1973)

Female Prisoner Scorpion: Beast Stable, released in 1973, was the third of the Female Prisoner Scorpion movies. Once again Meiko Kaji is the star and Shunya Itō is the director.

One of the cool things about the Japanese pinky violence movies is that there are often considerable differences between the various entries in a series.

If you haven’t seen the first two Female Prisoner Scorpion movies you won’t have the remotest idea what’s going on in this movie. You’ll be wondering why this girl is such a psycho bitch. If you have seen the first two movies you’ll understand. We do get snippets of her backstory in the course of the movie but nowhere near enough to make her personality comprehensible.

Matsu (Meiko Kaji), who gained the nickname Scorpion in prison, is on the run. The cops, led by Detective Kondo (Mikio Narita), almost catch her on the train. Poor Kondo has no idea what he is dealing with. There are two cops and one lone girl but if the girl is the Scorpion the odds are all on her side. The way she escapes is a fine illustration of the breathtaking excesses that make pinky violence movies so addictive. When you think you have Matsu cornered and helpless that’s when you should be really scared.

Matsu makes a friend. Yuki (Yayoi Watanabe) is a prostitute. She lives with her brain-damaged brother. She has sex with him regularly because it makes him happy.

Yuki has gangster problems. Those problems become Matsu’s problems. The first problem is Tanida (Takashi Fujiki). He knows Matsu is an escaped convict. He is going to force Matsu to provide him with regular sexual services. If she doesn’t play along he’ll turn her in. That annoys Matsu. Annoying Matsu is a seriously bad idea. The method Matsu adopts to deal with this problem is delightfully fiendish. It’s a woman’s revenge.

The other problem is sinister crazy sadistic procuress Katsu. Katsu had been in prison with Matsu. Katsu is a very tough very mean lady but she’s terrified of Matsu. She decides that Matsu will have to be dealt with.

Meanwhile Matsu still has the cops to deal with.

It all leads up to an extended pursuit through the city’s sewers, or at least we think that’s the finale but then we get a whole new subplot. And an amazing ending.

Stylistically this movie switches between gritty realism and outrageous theatricality.

One thing I like about the Female Prisoner Scorpion movies is that Matsu is not a typical kickass action heroine. She doesn’t have superpowers. She’s no stronger than any normal woman. She has no advanced unarmed combat skills. There are several factors that make her a formidable opponent. Firstly there’s her patience. She has the ability to withdraw into her shell and wait. She doesn’t care how long she has to wait. Eventually her chance will come. Then she strikes like a scorpion. And there’s her will to survive and her crazed savagery. When cornered she fights like a wounded panther at bay. She will do whatever it takes to survive. If she has to kill she will do so without hesitation. She will strike the death-blow without flinching. And she goes into a killing frenzy.

There’s a lot of emphasis in this film on Matsu’s utter aloneness. She cannot form emotional relationships with men. She cannot form friendships with other women. She trusts no-one. Yuki has some of the same problems. Both Matsu and Yuki need the friendship of another woman but can they learn to trust each other?

There’s a temptation to see Matsu as a feminist icon but in fact she’s a tragic figure. She has lost her humanity. She has been pursued and mistreated (often by other women) for so long that she has developed the personality of a hunted animal. We admire her extraordinary determination to survive but we feel desperately sorry for her. She was once a perfectly ordinary young woman. Now only a shell remains. She has survived in one sense, but perhaps not in other senses.

Female Prisoner Scorpion: Beast Stable is a weird disturbing movie but that description applies to all the movies of this series (and it applies to pinky violence movies in general). Highly recommended, but see the first two movies first.

All four movies in this cycle are included in Arrow’s Female Prisoner Scorpion Blu-Ray boxed set. The transfers are excellent. There are some extras, for those who bother with such things.

I’ve reviewed the first two movies in this series, Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion (1972) and Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (1972). These movies absolutely have to be seen in production order.

Linda (1981)

Linda is a 1981 Jess Franco Spanish-German co-production that has a few surprises in store. It seems like it’s going to be a full-on orgy of sleaze but that’s not how it plays out.

Sheila (Raquel Evans) owns and operates a major hotel on a small Mediterranean island. Her boyfriend Ron (Antonio Mayans) manages the hotel for her. Ron is two-timing Sheila with one of the employees, Betsy (Ursula Buchfellner). Sheila knows how to take her revenge. Sheila has another business on the island, Rio Amore. This is a very high-class brothel. The girls cater for all tastes. Sheila forces Betsy to work as one of the girls in the brothel, where she is subjected to various indignities and tortures. Sheila does not want to kill Betsy. Humiliating her is much more satisfying, and serves the double purpose of teaching Ron to be a good boy in future.

Betsy’s kid sister Linda (Katja Bienert) attends a convent school in Switzerland. She’s about to arrive on the island for a holiday. The nuns warn her that she will have to try hard to retain her virtue in the outside world. Linda however has no intention of retaining her virtue. In fact she has a steamy bedroom frolic with one of the other girls before packing her bags for her holiday. She’s tried women and now she’s keen to try men.

Ron would like to rescue Betsy but he’s scared of Sheila and he wants to keep his job. Sheila is a very possessive vengeful woman.

Ron doesn’t know what has happened to Betsy but he knows Linda is about to arrive so he goes to the airport to pick her up.

You know what’s going to happen. Poor innocent Linda is going to be drawn into the decadent debauched world of Rio Amore. But that’s not what happens at all. Linda meets a really nice boy. They fall in love. The movie has two totally separate plot strands and the Linda plot strand is a tender sensitive love story. Yes really.

The Betsy plot strand doesn’t play out quite as expected either.

This is a movie that constantly seems to be on the verge of tipping over the edge into real nastiness but it doesn’t really happen.

That’s not to say that this is not a sleazy movie. There’s an astounding amount of nudity and a lot of sex. There’s kinkiness. There’s torture. There’s sex slavery. But weirdly it somehow manages to avoid that real nastiness. The torture scenes turn out to be very tame. The sex is strictly softcore. The violence is quite restrained and it doesn’t escalate to anything like the levels you might anticipate.

You could almost say this is a lighthearted feelgood movie about sex slavery and torture. That sounds weird, but that’s how it turns out.

And the main focus is on the love story. In fact two love stories. And they’re both genuinely romantic love stories involving nice people. It’s a “lovers walking hand-in-hand on the beach” movie and it’s a “true love will triumph” movie.

This is definitely Franco Lite. Which is not a bad thing. It’s an erotic movie that celebrates eroticism as a good thing. Even the kinkiness is mostly hinted at, or it’s done in a lyrical rather than grimy way.

There are orgy scenes but they don’t get overly explicit. There’s certainly an atmosphere of decadence and that’s Franco’s focus, rather than graphic sex. And he achieves the decadent feel very effectively.

It’s obviously a very low-budget production but Franco manages to make it visually quite impressive. The glass cage in which Betsy is imprisoned is a nice touch and would have cost almost nothing.

Franco loved erotically charged nightclub scenes with a hint of kink and the floor shows Sheila provides for her clients serve much the same purpose in this film.

The highlight of the movie is the very arch performance by Raquel Evans as Sheila. She spends a lot of time naked and while her sex scenes are not overly graphic she manages to generate plenty of sexual heat. She totally and effortlessly dominates the movie.

Linda isn’t top-tier Franco but its mix of romance and low-key sleaze is rather engaging. Recommended for Franco fans.

Linda had a DVD release which is still available.

Star Slammer (1986)

Star Slammer (AKA Prison Ship) is a 1986 Fred Olen Ray movie so you know it’s going to be crazy goofy fun. It’s a women-in-prison movie set on a prison spaceship but done in tongue-in-cheek fashion.

The fact that the movie is divided into chapters and carries the subtitle Adventures of Taura is the result of Ray’s enthusiasm at the time for old movie serials. He wanted to capture the same sort of flavour and to an extent he succeeds.

Taura (Sandy Brooke) is a miner on a remote planet and her problems begin when Bantor (Ross Hagen) arrives with his henchmen. Bantor is collecting taxes on behalf of The Sovereign, who rules this part of the galaxy. During a struggle Taura plunged Bantor’s hand into an acid bath. Bantor was evil and crazy to begin with but this pushes him over the edge into out-and-out madness.

Taura finds herself sentenced to the prison ship Vehement. She was convicted of murdering a crazy old priest who was actually murdered by Bantor.

The prisoners are all women and they’re the tough lot you expect in a women-in-prison movie. The toughest is Mike (Suzy Stokey). Against the odds Taura and Mike become friends.

The Vehement is run by sex-crazed head warder Exene (Marya Gant) although day-to-day discipline is in the hands of insane and sadistic trusty Muffin (Dawn Wildsmith).

Experiments in mind control are being conducted on the Vehement.

Things start to get violent and crazy when Bantor arrives. He’s out for revenge. He’s also completely insane and obsessed with the idea that he’s battling demons. The girls are going to have to find a way to get off that prison ship.

Lots of mayhem ensues, with a great deal of running down corridors blasting away with zap guns.

This movie lacks some of the features you generally expect in a women-in-prison movie. There’s very little nudity and very little sex. Ray had hired a bunch of girls to make the movie without really knowing what kind of movie he was going to make so he didn’t have girls willing to do nudity.

They might not have been prepared to take their clothes off but they give enthusiastic performances and are obviously having fun doing the bad girl stuff.

Ross Hagen is wildly over-the-top as Bantor and he’s a joy to watch. The two standout performances are by Dawn Wildsmith and Marya Gant. Wildsmith is delightfully unhinged as Muffin. Marya Gant oozes twisted degenerate sexuality as Exene. These two performances are enough to justify the price of admission on their own.

The movie was going to need some cool space battle scenes but that was hopelessly beyond the limits of the available budget so Ray cut a deal with Roger Corman to use footage from Battle Beyond the Stars. It is cool footage and it’s integrated perfectly in the movie. There’s also at least one shot from John Carpenter’s Dark Star.

The costumes were done on the cheap or rented or borrowed from other productions but they look right and they look fun.

There was enough money to build a couple of sets which look quite OK. The prison ship is supposed to be dark and grungy and claustrophobic so having small sets that look dark and grungy works just fine.

The movie works because Fred Olen Ray understands that if you have a really small budget the things to do is to keep the pacing as frantic as possible. That way people won’t notice the plot holes and cheap sets and iffy production values. And in this movie the pace never lets up.

A sequel which would continue Taura's adventures, Chain Gang Planet, was planned but never made (although a script was written).

The Kino Lorber Blu-Ray offers a lovely anamorphic transfer with a typically entertaining and informative audio commentary by Fred Olen Ray.

Star Slammer is fun and silly and exciting and amusing. It does manage to have a bit of a serial feel, but like an old movie serial done with an 80s sensibility. It works for me. Highly recommended.

Helga, She Wolf of Stilberg (1978)

Helga, She Wolf of Stilberg is a 1978 French Eurocine production and it’s clearly in part at least an attempt to cash in on that other notorious 70s exploitation movie with a similar title. You know the movie, the one whose title we dare not mention. But the similarities are largely superficial. Helga She Wolf of Stilberg belongs firmly to the European women-in-prison movie genre, a genre that was already well established long before that other infamous movie was made. It’s a genre that was kick-started by Jess Franco’s 99 Women in 1969.

There are no nazis in Helga, She Wolf of Stilberg. The setting is a South American banana republic in the 1970s. It’s a dictatorship but it appears to be a non-ideological dictatorship. President Steiner seems to be interested purely in money and power. No-one in the movie ever mentions ideology. There are rebels, but the issues at stake do not appear to be especially political. There are political prisoners, but their crime is simply that they oppose the current regime.

Helga (Malisa Longo) is some kind of adviser to the president. He fears that she is too ambitious so he offers her a job to keep her out of the way. He appoints her commandant of the castle of Stilberg, where female political prisoners are housed.

Helga intends to tighten up discipline at Stilberg.

Helga is sleeping with the prison’s head guard, captain Lombardi, but it’s obvious that Helga prefers girls.

Helga has what she thinks is a stroke of good fortune when a new prisoner arrives. Elisabeth Vogel (Patrizia Gori) is the daughter of the rebel leader Vogel. If she can find a way to use Elisabeth to trap Vogel this could be an opportunity for Helga to get back into the president’s good books.

Helga thinks it’s a stroke of luck for another reason. She thinks she can persuade Elisabeth to share her bed. Helga would like that. She’d like that a lot.

The bad news for Helga is that some of the prisoners are hatching an escape plan. That will get Helga into the president’s bad books in a big way.

Helga is vaguely aware that one of her officers is disloyal to her but for some reason she doesn’t do anything about it, apart from sulking.

Of course the escape plan is going to offer the opportunity for some action scenes, but the movie fails make the most of that opportunity. There is also a revolution brewing, a fine opportunity to use some stock footage, which looks out of place.

The acting is adequate. Malisa Longo is quite good but for reasons that I”ll go into in a moment her performance falls a little flat.

There are some major problems with this movie. We are given no reason to feel any particular sympathy for the rebels. Steiner’s government is apparently corrupt (like most governments) but we’re shown no evidence that it’s all that oppressive. We have no reason to think that a revolution is going to be any great improvement.

While we’re expecting Stilberg to be a hell-hole it isn’t really. It’s more like a moderately strict girls’ boarding school than a brutal prison.

Helga is not especially evil. She’s not a psychopath or a sadist. She’s more like a slightly spoilt slightly petulant head girl at a girls’ school. Mostly she’s remarkably indulgent towards the prisoners. Her punishments are generally not much worse than detention and extra homework. She commits a handful of acts of cruelty, but only under severe provocation. The viewer is likely to end up feeling that if only these girls would behave better the headmistress wouldn’t get cross with them.

And although she beds several of the women prisoners, once she seduces them she treats them remarkably well.

It’s not that easy to hate Helga. And if we don’t hate her the movie is not going to work.

It’s interesting to compare Helga, She Wolf of Stilberg with the German-Swiss women-in-prison movie Women of Inferno Island (AKA Caged Women AKA Gefangene Frauen). There are major similarities. Both seemed to be attempts to make women-in-prison movies that were rather non-brutal and rather tame and almost wholesome (by women-in-prison movie standards). Both movies feature acres of bare female flesh. Women of Inferno Island has more energy and style, it has a better script with a much better twist at the end and it has two female stars with both genuine charisma and genuine acting ability - Brigitte Lahaie and the extraordinary Karine Gambier (who should have become a major cult movie icon).

Women of Inferno Island is clever and consistently entertaining and it works. Helga, She Wolf of Stilberg just falls rather flat.

Amusingly the Maison Rouge DVD release includes eight minutes of alternative clothed scenes. Given that the one major thing that Helga, She Wolf of Stilberg has going for it is lots of pretty girls without their clothes on I’m not sure why anyone would want to watch alternative scenes in which they’re wearing clothes.

Helga, She Wolf of Stilberg turns out to be a bit of a toothless doggie rather than a fearsome wolf. It’s OK and maybe worth a look if you’re a fan of Malisa Longo but seriously, watch Women of Inferno Island instead.

Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity (1987)

Most of the time I watch movies purely for entertainment. But occasionally I want a movie with a bit more substance and depth to it. Something a bit arty and intellectual. Which of course made Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity an ideal choice for tonight’s viewing.

This movie is one of countless movie adaptations of Richard Connell’s classic 1924 adventure thriller story The Most Dangerous Game.

The movie does indeed begin with two slave girls, Daria (Elizabeth Kaitan) and Tisa (Cindy Beal). They’re being held in a dungeon on a prison planet. But they don’t remain prisoners very long. They escape with ridiculous ease and steal a spaceship with even more ridiculous ease.

Sadly things go wrong and the girls crash-land on a remote uncharted planet. To be more specific, on an island on a remote planet.

The girls are unharmed and there’s a house on the island. Zed (Don Scribner) tells them they’re welcome to stay. Zed lives alone in the house with two robot servants but at the moment he was two other guests, Rik (Carl Honer) and his sister Shala (Brinke Stevens). Zed entertains his guest with hunting stories. He likes to hunt. He has lots of trophies.

If you’ve read Connell’s story or seen any of the multitude of movie and TV adaptations you’ll already have figured out that this is yet another version and you’ll know what it is that Zed likes to hunt.

Rik has his suspicions which he confides to out two heroines. There were four people on the ship in which he and his sister were wrecked. All four survived but two have since disappeared after joining Zed on hunting trips. Rik suspects that he’ll be next.

His suspicions are well founded. And then Daria and Tisa find themselves as Zed’s intended prey. He gives them a sporting chance. There’s a ruined temple containing a cache of sophisticated weaponry. If they can reach the temple the odds will shift in their favour. Zed likes a challenge, and he believes that women can be even more dangerous than men so he expects to enjoy that challenge.

The acting is what you expect. Don Scribner tries to play Zed as a charming psychopath, with some success. Elizabeth Kaitan and Cindy Beal can’t really act at all but they’re likeable.

There are several ways in which a movie such as this could have been approached. It could have been done as a gorefest, or as a sleazefest. I was rather expecting a sleazy women-in-prison movie but it contains absolutely none of the features that define that scuzzy but entertaining genre. This movie does not take any of these obvious approaches. The gore quotient is extremely low. There are a couple of brief topless scenes but that’s the extent of the nudity. There’s one sex scene but the guy keeps his trousers on and the girl keeps her panties on. The girls have some scary experiences but they’re not brutalised.

This is an extraordinarily tame movie. I can only surmise that the idea was to avoid an R rating at all costs.

Amazingly this ultra-tame movie aroused controversy in the U.S. Senate when it was shown on cable.

Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity doesn’t offer buckets of blood or any more than very mild nudity and it doesn’t boast spectacular action sequences so what does it have to offer? Mostly it’s the sheer likeability of the two girls and the good-natured tongue-in-cheek cheerful silliness of the whole exercise.

It’s a movie that offers mildly amusing mildly exciting fun which doesn’t make you feel like you need to take a shower afterwards. The two lead actresses do wear very skimpy costumes and they are pretty. Pretty in a natural way - there are no silicon-enhanced breasts in this movie.

The first significant film adaptation of Connell’s story was made in the pre-code era - The Most Dangerous Game (1932). Other versions which added varying degrees of trashiness (in a good way) are Bloodlust! (1961) and Seven Women for Satan (1976).

Full Moon’s DVD presentation offers a good anamorphic transfer. The only extra is a collection of snippets from Elizabeth Kaitan’s other movies. And Full Moon have released this movie on Blu-Ray as well!

Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity is pretty mild stuff but it has a certain goofy charm. Plus Zed's robots and the cheesy special effects are fun. It’s entertaining if you’re in the mood. I was in the right mood so I enjoyed it. It will never make anybody’s greatest movies of all time list but I’m still going to recommend it.

Women in Cellblock 9 (1978)

Women in Cellblock 9 (Frauen für Zellenblock 9) is a 1978 Jess Franco women-in-prison movie so you pretty much know what to expect. Franco made a ton of these movies. He could churn them out very quickly more or less on autopilot and there was a ready market for them. This one follows the established formula fairly closely. It was made by Elite Films and produced by Erwin C. Dietrich, a name very familiar indeed to fans of eurocult cinema.

Rebels are trying to smuggle six women into an unnamed South American country. The women are hidden in a truck but they encounter a military check point and the women are discovered. Three of the women, identified as guilt of subversive acts, end up in the prison (in Cellblock 9) run by Loba (Dora Doll). Loba’s assistant and torturer-in-chief is Dr Milton Costa (Howard Vernon). Loba and Dr Costa are apparently lovers although Loba has a liking for women.

The three women are joined by a fourth woman, Maria. They are tortured. Karin (Karine Gambier) breaks under the torture. It’s a particularly fiendish torture which would make any woman break. The women plan an escape. Their plan relies on a ruse which always works in women-in-prison movies. The four of them are chained up naked but they pretend to be pleasuring each other which drives their guard wild with lust. When he tries to join in their game they overcome him.

This happens fairly on so the bulk of the movie is actually a pursuit through the jungle movie, with four naked women being hunted by soldiers led by Loba and Dr Costa.

The torture scenes aren’t as graphic as you’d expect. It’s the idea of what is happening to the girls that is shocking rather than what’s actually shown. It still got banned in Britain and is still banned.

There’s a stupendous amount of female frontal nudity. The lead actresses keep their clothes on for the first five minutes. After that they’re totally nude for the rest of the film. If seeing naked women running through the jungle is your thing you’ll have fun with this one.

Oddly enough there’s very little sex. Mostly the girls just run about without their clothes on.

Karine Gambier gave a memorable performance as the sexy but corrupt warden in Erwin C. Dietrich’s Women of Inferno Island (one of the more interesting and clever 70s women-in-prison movies). This time she’s the heroine. Apart from being a striking beauty she was a competent actress, certainly more than good enough to handle a role such as this.

Howard Vernon resists the temptation to chew the scenery. He plays Dr Costa as a man who is evil and insane but in a disturbingly quiet manner, with the madness constantly bubbling away beneath the surface. He’s seriously creepy. Dora Doll as Loba the sadistic lesbian warden (yes of course there’s a sadistic lesbian warden) adopts a similar approach. She’s quietly chilling. It’s a very effective performance. The other actresses are adequate enough and since the actresses playing the prisoners are in their birthday suits for the whole movie I imagine that audiences wouldn’t have been concentrating on their acting skills.

Franco keeps it simple stylistically. He’s not trying to be surreal or to capture a dream-like atmosphere as he would be doing in his more personal projects. Mostly he just relies on the locations (and the nude women) to keep the viewer interested and the location shooting (it was filmed in Portugal) really is quite impressive. There are no zooms. It’s shot in a surprisingly straightforward manner.

The women confined in Cellblock 9 are political prisoners so you might think this is going to be a political film but it isn’t. The ruling regime which Loba and Dr Costa serve is clearly nasty but we are never told if it’s a left-wing or a right-wing regime. We never find out if the rebels are left-wing or right-wing. There are no political speeches. Karin is actually involved with the rebels but she never utters a word about politics. Franco intensely disliked political films. To the extent that there is anything vaguely political in this movie it simply has (like Franco) an anti-authoritarian tone.

Franco disliked gore and there’s none in this movie. There’s virtually no blood. Apart from a couple of scenes of torture that are pretty horrifying it’s a movie that relies on remorseless building an atmosphere of cruelty and despair.

Full Moon’s DVD release looks sensational. I very much doubt whether this movie would look any better on Blu-Ray, that’s how good the DVD is. Extras include a lengthy audio interview with Franco, apparently dating from the late 70s. Franco doesn’t mention Women in Cellblock 9 at all, he talks about horror movie and offers some strong opinions on horror cinema. He expresses his distaste for Paul Naschy’s films, his strong dislike of Hammer films (he admits that Terence Fisher was a skilled technician but finds him cold). He also expresses his extreme admiration for Roger Corman and especially for Corman’s Poe films.

Women in Cellblock 9 is not a great movie of its type. Unless you’re a dedicated Francophile and you’ve seen all his notable movies or you’re totally obsessed with women-in-prison movies there’s probably no pressing reason to see this one. It’s very definitely a lesser Franco film.

House of Cruel Dolls (1974)

House of Cruel Dolls is a very sleazy but engagingly weird slice of European sexploitation cinema.

M. Gaston arrives at the infamous whorehouse the House of Lost Dolls, which seems to be located in some unnamed exotic country. As usual Gaston chooses his favourite prostitute, Yvette (Magda Mundari). He’s a somewhat romantic middle-aged man and he’s fallen in love with Yvette. She’s fallen for him as well, since he always treats her well. He asks her the obvious question, what such a nice girl is doing in such a terrible place. She informs him that she was kidnapped by white slavers. All the girls working at the House of Lost Dolls are prisoners.

Gaston is outraged and decides that he is going to rescue the poor girl.

The story of how Yvette came to the infamous brothel is told in flashback. She was innocently hitch-hiking. She was kidnapped, raped, drugged, raped again and transported somewhere on a ship. She was then raped again and taken to the House of Lost Dolls.

Gaston and Yvette go to the police. The police are sympathetic but they need evidence. That’s where secret agent Sigma (Jack Taylor) enters the picture. And the movie suddenly switches from an exploitation sleazefest to an action thriller.

If it sounds like a movie with a split personality that’s apparently because many of the action scenes were lifted from a 1967 spy thriller starring Jack Taylor. The result should be a disjointed mess but really it just adds to the fun. And the 1967 footage is matched in pretty well with the later 1974 footage. Well, let’s put it this way - I’ve never it done much more badly than this.

Secret agent Sigma leaves a trail of mayhem behind him. What he really needs is evidence from one of the girls and he thinks he may be able to get it, if the goons working for the madam of the brothel don’t get to her first.

Meanwhile Yvette tries to play amateur detective and gets into predictable trouble (and yes, she gets raped again).

This is very low-budget stuff and obviously there was no money for really elaborate action se-pieces The movie compensates for that by having lots and lots of fight scenes. And the fight scenes are done reasonably well. Yvette even gets a couple of fright scenes, and even wins one of her fights. Both Sigma and Yvette get captured by the bad guys and escape and get captured again. It’s a bit like a 1940s movie serial.

The movie doesn’t look quite as cheap or shoddy as you might fear. It’s competently made, if lacking in any real inspiration. Pierre Chevalier was not the world’s greatest director. You’d probably notice that there aren’t too many sets, that is you’d notice if you weren’t distracted by the endless fight scenes and the wall-to-wall naked women. But that’s what exploitation movie-making is all about.

There’s an enormous amount of female frontal nudity. It’s all strictly softcore. What makes the rape scenes shocking is not their explicitness (they’re not explicit at all) but their casualness and relentlessness. The moment the madam leaves them alone with the girls for five minutes the goons just start raping them. And the girls don’t struggle much because they realise there’s no point. They just accept that they’re going to be raped over and over again. It’s the resigned despair of the girls that makes those scenes harrowing, and the fact that the goons rape the girls with no more thought or passion than they’d put into pouring themselves a beer.

The acting is less than outstanding. I know Jack Taylor is a bit of a cult movie icon due to his appearance in several Jess Franco films but as an actor it has to be said that acting was not his forte. Magda Mundari can’t really act either (presumably she was cast because she was gorgeous and willing to take her clothes off) but she does have a high likeability factor. We want this girl to get out of the jam she’s in. The chief villain is the madam of the brothel - she’s beautiful, glamorous and coldly evil, a fine villainess.

Full Moon’s DVD release (there’s a Blu-Ray as well) offers a good anamorphic transfer with no extras. It offers only the English dubbed version. The dubbing is pretty horrendous but it does add an extra layer of outrageousness. The print is uncut.

I’m not going to try to persuade you that House of Cruel Dolls is a neglected cinematic masterpiece. It’s cheap, trashy and sleazy. It’s not quite as sleazy as some of the more extreme European women-in-prison movies of that era but it’s still plenty sleazy. But if you’re in the mood for cheap, trashy and sleazy it delivers the goods.