Rating: 3/5
Cult Movie Challenge 2024 | 14/52 | Psychotronic Encyclopedia
The cops knock on Jacqueline’s door. She and her friends run out past them. The cops shoot. One friend takes a bullet wound and falls behind. Another jumps a fence. The cops trap Jacqueline in an alley and arrest her.
Because Jacqueline won’t reveal her partners, the judge sentences her to a minimum stint of 10 years in prison. She does her time at a women’s prison just outside of Connerville.
Roberta, a prisoner, has a dream about a guy feeling her up through the prison bars while she stabs at him with a cartoonishly large kitchen knife. The movie has several of these dream sequences from different perspectives.
Since this is a women-in-prison film, we need a sadistic warden for prisoners to rebel against. Here, we get the inimitable Barbara Steele as Superintendent McQueen. In her dream, she performs vaudeville for prisoners and receives a standing ovation.
But the actual villain is the prison doctor, who sedates the women and does reprehensible shit. Don’t worry — he gets his comeuppance.
Director Jonathan Demme came through the Roger Corman machine, producing a few films for Corman. Corman had produced several women-in-prison films but wanted a fresh angle on it.
Corman gave the project to Demme as his first directorial project, with the stipulation that his movie keeps the violence and nudity that makes women-in-prison films sell.
Some scenes are playfully exaggerated, hinting at satire or genre play. For example, a prisoner seems to pleasure herself, but it turns out she’s about to roll some dice.
However, Demme’s inexperience may explain the unusual elements rather than any deliberate commentary. I’m a bit of a dipshit — you could convince me either way.
Still, the film’s undeniable weirdness sets it apart.