Wonderland Burlesque's Let's All Go To The Movies: Women Behind Bars Part I: Chained And Caged

Wonderland Burlesque's 

Let's All Go To The Movies

Women Behind Bars. Part I

Chained and Caged

This week, we begin a series of seven posts exploring women in prison films from 1931-1987. It's an interesting genre which started out meaning well but, as censorship laws went the way of the Edsel and mores relaxed during the sexual revolution of the 1970's, quickly devolved and became exploitative. 

In the next two months, we'll be looking at as many of these films as I can find. 

Yes, what can I say... I'm a completest. No, I may not find or mention every single film credited to the genre...

...but I sure damn well intend to try!

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Girls In Chains

(1943)

(Arline Judge was a B-movie actress who appeared in 48 films during her career. She was a bit addicted to getting married - she did it seven times - once granted a divorce from one man and marrying another a few hours later.)

(In this film, she goes undercover as an inmate in order to undercover a system of abuse overseen by a mob boss.) 

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Caged!

(1950)

"The story of a women's prison today!"

(Featuring a great cast, including Eleanor Parker, Agnes Moorehead, Ellen Corby, Hope Emerson, and Jan Sterling. The film was nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress nods for Parker and Emerson respectively.)

"Every hushed-up evil in a woman's prison exposed!"

(Originally intended as a vehicle for Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, but Davis didn't want to make a 'dyke movie' and turned it down.)

"She was part good before - she's all bad now!"

"Women without men... except their memories!"

(Iowa-born Hope Emerson, who portrays the sadistic prison matron, was a strong, imposing presence who stood 6'2" and weighed between 190 and 230 lbs. In 1949's Adam's Rib, she played a circus performer who lifts actor Spencer Tracy over her head!)

(This was the first of three Oscar nominations for Eleanor Parker. In addition to this film, she would be nominated for 1951's The Detective Story and 1955's Interrupted Melody. During her time under contract to Warner Bros. she was suspended three times for refusing to do the films offered her. Because she no longer wished to play roles that had little to do with reality, when she heard Warner Bros. was making Caged!, she actively lobbied for the role.)

(Agnes Moorehead's sexuality has certainly been the subject of speculation over the years. Paul Lynde is on record, saying, "Well, the whole world knows Agnes was a lesbian – I mean classy as hell, but one of the all-time Hollywood dykes." And it was reported that, upon catching one of her husbands in the act of cheating on her, "Agnes screamed at him that if he could have a mistress, so could she.")

(However, best friend Debbie Reynolds and several of her former employees and longtime friends dispute such claims, dismissing it all as nothing more than vicious rumors spread by the poison tongue of Lynde.)

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Women In Cages

(1971)

"White skin on the black market."

"The dirty dolls of devil's island. You can meet them for a price!"

(Co-produced by Roger Corman, this is a favorite of director Quentin Tarantino. who said, "I'm a huge, huge fan.... the film is just harsh, harsh, harsh."

(This is the first of three women in prison films Roberta Collins appears in and is one of two women in prison films starring Pam Grier in 1971.)

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Women In Chains

(1971)

AKA: Black Mama White Mama/Hot Hard And Mean

"Chicks in chains - where they come from, this is fun!"

(Shot in the Philippines for budgetary reasons, this film is supposedly based on the Sidney Poitier/Tony Curtis 1958 film, The Defiant Ones. Director Jonathan Demme - Silence Of The Lambs - co-wrote the story. It's original title was Chains Of Hate. One of four women in prison films starring Pam Grier. Her co-star, Margaret Markov, was also no stranger to the genre. The two would be paired up again in the 1974 female gladiator movie, The Arena.)

(Grier, who was working on the horror film The Twilight People in the Philippines at the same time, grew deathly ill from ingesting a parasite or virus which took up residence in her brain. For over a month she had a fever of 105 degrees and lost all her hair.  "It was a tropical disease you get from ingestion, either from food or from the virus going through your skin in water. We were in a lot of rivers, rice paddies, where there are leeches and bacteria. So it was just a matter of time before it went through a cut and into your brain – and it could kill you!" A doctor finally 'froze' her, in order to kill whatever it was that was causing the illness.)

(Director Eddie Romero said of Grier: "Pam Grier was the gamest actor I ever worked with. She was willing to do anything- jump off a cliff, whatever. I'd be talking to a stuntwoman and Pam would say, 'Oh I can do that.' Ha!")

(Initially marketed under this title because... pitting the races against one another is fun and profitable!)

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Chain Gang Women

(1971)

"Chained like animals - treated like trash. Even the filth and sweat couldn't stop their primitive cravings!"

(The title of this exploitation film is a bit misleading. It's actually about a pair of male prisoners who escape from prison and do all sorts of nasty things to the women they happen upon.)  

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Caged Heat!

(1974)

AKA: Renegade Girls

"Women's prison U.S.A - rape, riot & revenge!"

"White hot desires melting cold prison steel!"

(Directed by Jonathan Demme of Silence Of The Lambs fame, this film features Barbara Steele, known as 'The Queen Of Screams' thanks to her many 1960's gothic horror films, as the prison's superintendent.)

(The soundtrack is by The Velvet Underground's John Cale.)

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Caged Women

AKA: Le Corps Et Le Fouet

(1980)

(Sadistic warden Carla oversees an island of 'delinquent women.'  who are forced to perform acts of sexual perversion, violence and torture. Eventually, the prisoners have enough of it, get organized and attempt to overthrow Carla in order to escape the island.)

(Karina Gambier, who plays Carla, can also be seen in another women in prison film, the Swiss film, 1977's Women In Cell Block 9. Gambier was incredibly prolific, appearing in 24 films in 1979 alone.)

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Caged Women

(1982/1984)

AKA: Violence In A Women's Prison/Women's Penitentiary 4

(An Italian film about a social worker who goes undercover as an inmate to gather information for Amnesty International. Directed by Bruno Mattei - using various pseudonyms, depending on the poster. One critic's comment: "Mattei doesn't skimp on the nastiness, presenting a three-way catfight on a floor full of feces, Gemser nibbled by rats in solitary confinement, a homosexual who is sodomized to death after his straight cellmates are aroused by a striptease, and various rapes, tortures, and vomit scenes." Yes... fun for the whole family.) 

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Caged Fury

(1983)

"Alone they're dangerous... together they're deadly!

(Set in a Filipino POW camp where the women are brainwashed into becoming suicide bombers. Remade in 1989, starring Erik Estrada.)

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Chained Heat

(1984)

(One of three women in prison films starring lovely Linda Blair. This one offers all sorts of nasty going-ons inside a woman's penitentiary. The warden, played by John Vernon, has a hot tub in his office, while matron Stella Stevens runs a prostitution ring and shares a lover with inmate Sybil Danning. The white prisoners, led by Danning and the black prisoners, led by Tamara Dobson, eventually have enough of it, end their feud and band together to overthrow their keepers. Also features drug dealing lesbian rapists!) 

(Made for just under a million, the film grossed more than twice that in its opening weekend. It would spin-off two totally unrelated sequels.)

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The Naked Cage

(1986)

(The formula of these films doesn't vary much. This one is about an inmate, wrongly accused of a bank robbery, who must navigate through a sewer of drugs, bullying, and sexual assault.)

(Angel Tomkins was discovered by Woody Allen and signed to Universal Pictures. She was nominated for a Golden Globe for her work in 1972's I Love My Wife and then went on to do a spread in Playboy magazine. Her co-star, Shari Shuttuck, also appeared in Playboy and was featured in .38 Special's video for the song Caught Up In You.)

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And that's all for now!

Tune in next week...

Same time, same channel!

Chain Reaction - Diana Ross