★★
“Is that a machete?”
I completely get what the director here is trying to do: make a homage to the seventies women-in-prison movies, made by the likes of director Jack Hill (who has a cameo here as a judge). The plot here, certainly, feels like it’s almost a straight-up copy, in particular from Bruno Mattei’s 1982 film, Violence in a Women’s Prison. Both have undercover journalists who get themselves sent to prison as an inmate, in order to expose the corruption of those running the facility. In this case, it’s TV reporter Valerie March (Anderson), who is asked to look into the dubious Sugar State Women’s Prison by the aunt of an inmate.
Naturally, it turns out the prisoners get sent there in order to become prostitutes for the warden, Beverly Buckner (Dona), who has a cosy arrangement with various suppliers to the jail. March, in her incarcerated alter ego, becomes part of the out-call service, though matters are complicated by one of the suppliers, chicken magnate Gilbert Sackry (Hunter), being the subject of one of her previous exposes. After tragedy strikes, the scheme is revealed, only for it to be swept under the carpet by authorities. March is having none of this, the system having failed to bring them justice, and with the help of former inmate pal Loretta (Brown, in the Pam Grier role) and a repentant guard, sets out to take revenge on Buckner and the rest of her cronies.
The films which inspired this were never high-end product. But in comparison to this, they are Avatar. The paucity of the resources here is all too often painfully obvious. The “prison” consists of a couple of tents in a field; while this could be a nod to infamous Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio and his “Tent City”, the absence of… oh, I dunno: fences or bars, is glaring. In the early going, I was prepared to overlook this, since there’s enough energy (and, let’s be honest, gratuitous nudity) to sustain interest. As well as Hill, there’s a cameo by GWG goddess Tura Satana, also playing a judge; another Russ Meyer muse, Kitten Natividad, plays a prison guard, and is fun to watch in that role.
However, the previously mentioned tragedy flicks a cinematic switch. Valerie’s reaction to it is laughably bad, and she’s then taken to a “hospital”, which we only know is a hospital, because it has a large Red Cross flag tacked to the wall. As hospitals do. The lack of effort put in finally overpowered my goodwill, and there was little thereafter which proved capable of taking up the slack. It really needed more actresses capable of going full-throttle into their roles here. While Brown seems to have a decent handle on her role – even if she’s no Grier – Anderson is too anodyne to make the necessary impact. The further we get into the film, the less her ability to hold the audience’s attention, and interest withers and eventually dies, as a direct result.
Dir: Cody Jarrett
Star: Geneviere Anderson, The’la Brown, Linda Dona, Jack Hunter