Wonderland Burlesque's Let's All Go To The Movies: Women Behind Bars Part IV: Prison Schisms And Jail Tales

Wonderland Burlesque's 

Let's All Go To The Movies

Women Behind Bars Part IV

Prison Schisms And Jail Tales

Today, as we continue taking a look at women in prison films, circa 1931-1987, we find ourselves examining a classic line up of movies which put it right there in the title. 

So, rattle those cages, jingle those keys. Let's unlock the past and learn a bit about these finely made major motion pictures!

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Women In Prison

(1938)

(A French drama directed by Roger Richebé and starring Viviane Romance, Renée Saint-Cyr and Marguerite Deval. Based on the 1930 novel of the same title by Francis Carco, it was remade twice:  the 1947 Swedish film Two Women and the 1958 French film Women's Prison.)

(Viviane Romance was Miss Paris of 1930. She was offered a Hollywood contract but turned it down, preferring to do films in Europe.)

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Women In Prison

(1938)

"Women without names.

Women without love.

Women without hope.

Thrills without end.

(When the superintendent of a women's prison refuses to pardon a member of a criminal gang, the gang retaliates by framing her daughter, who is found guilty of manslaughter and incarcerated.)

(Actress Ann Doran started her film career when she was four years old. As a child, she appeared in numerous silent films. As an adult, she made a career as a supporting player. A favorite of director Frank Capra's, Doran appeared in many of his productions.)

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Jail Bait

(1954)

AKA: Hidden Face

"Danger! These girls are hot!"

(Directed by Ed Wood, Jr. and starring his girlfriend Delores Fuller. This film marks the screen debut of muscle hunk Steve Reeves. It's one of the few films where he gets to use his own voice, as his subsequent roles, in Italian movies, were frequently dubbed in postproduction.)

(Herbert Rawlinson, a leading man from the days of silent film, was brought in to sub for an ailing Bela Lugosi. Rawlinson, too, was in ill-health; he died of lung cancer the night after filming completed.)

Women's Prison

(1955)

"Sensational scandal rocks women's prison!"

"Reveal Love Nest Alley!"

"With money you can buy anything in here."

"Even behind bars, a smart gal can have a ball."

"The fix was in, but the price got too high."

(This one sports a star-turn by Ida Lupino as the strict warden. Lupino is lauded as someone who directed major films during a time when a woman behind the camera was almost unheard of. It all came about because Lupino, who dubbed herself 'the poor man's Bette Davis' had a habit of, not only taking on the roles turned down by Davis, but also butting heads with the boys at Warner Bros. She often incurred the ire of studio boss Jack Warner by objecting to her casting, refusing poorly written roles that she felt were beneath her dignity as an actress, and making script revisions deemed unacceptable by the studio. As a result, she spent a great deal of her time at Warner Bros. suspended. This gave her ample time to pick up  a few directing jobs. Lupino's best known directorial effort, The Hitch-Hiker, a 1953 RKO release, is the only film noir from the genre's classic period directed by a woman.)

"Gals on rampage in prison riot!"

"Real raw truth about man-smuggling."

"Inside the big house for women."

(Jan Sterling received a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress for her work in The High and the Mighty (1954), as well as an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress nomination. Her best performance is considered to be as Kirk Douglas' opportunistic wife in Billy Wilder's 1951 film Ace in the Hole.)

(Cleo Moore, a blonde bombshell, was a popular pin-up girl, who starred in a string of successful B-movies. She married a wealthy real estate developer and died at home, in bed, at the age of 43!)

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Girls In Prison

(1956)

"What happens to girls without men?"

"The shocking story of one man against 1,000 women!"

(In the early 1950's, Joan Taylor was a member of Paramount Picture's 'Golden Circle'; a group of unusually talented young actors for whom the studio held high hopes. She eventually married Leonard Freeman, creator of Hawaii Five-O. After his death in 1974, she assumed his position and ran the production company.)

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Women's Prison

(1958)

(A remake of the 1938 French film, Women In Prison.)

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Riot In Juvenile Prison

(1959)

"The shock-by-shock story of a co-ed reform school for delinquents!"

"Wild and wayward girl-cons and boy-cons... inmates together under one roof!"

(Jerome Thor was a Broadway actor who broke into pictures and television. His starring role as detective Robert Cannon in Foreign Intrigue, 1951-1955, popularized the trench coat, cementing intrigue with the garb in the public consciousness. The coat he wore in the film is part of the collection at the Smithsonian Institution.)

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Prison Girls

(1972)

"Special equipment has been installed to bring you this sensational new process!"

"Optovision 3D"

"Guaranteed to be the most controversial movie ever made based on confidential prison sex reports!"

(A prison psychiatrist grants a weekend furlough to six female inmates up for parole. The girls waste no time; each one quickly finding their own sexual adventure. Directed by Tom DeSimone - Chatterbox, Reform School Girls - who is primarily remembered for all the golden age gay porn he directed.)

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Jackson County Jail

(1976)

"The cops are there to protect her... but wo will protect her from the cops?"

"What they do to her in the Jackson County Jail is a crime."

(This one isn't nearly as cheesy as that advertising would have you believe. With Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Carradine on board, it ended up being quite the crowd pleaser. It is part of a series of films supposedly based on true stories - 1972's The Legend of Boggy Creek, 1974's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, 1975's Macon County Line and 1976's The Town That Dreaded Sundown - but padded out with sensational details. This one was so popular, it almost made the leap to the small screen; a tv pilot starring Yvette Mimieux was ordered and aired on CBS, but failed to get picked up as a series.)

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Escape From Women's Prison

(1978)

"Chained to their cells, stripped of all possessions, beaten, abused... and now... they're bustin' out!!!"

(A quartet of escaped female convicts kidnap a bus full of young female athletes taking refuge in a judge's house. Police surround the house, but the savvy prisoners vow to fight to the bitter end. An Italian film featuring Czech born Zora Kerova, who made a career appearing in numerous Italian horror films.)

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Violence In A Women's Prison

(1982)

(The seventh film in the series, in this one softcore diva Emanuelle, as played by Laura Gemser, goes undercover on behalf of Amnesty International in order to uncover crimes against humanity in an all-women prison. If this sounds familiar, that's because it's the same film, more or less - the various versions were edited differently - as Caged Women, one of many titles the film was marketed as.) 

Caged Women

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Women's Prison Massacre

AKA: Blade Violent

(1983)

(Shot back-to-back with the aforementioned Violence In A Women's Prison, this film, while featuring the same cast, director and crew, is actually a different film. Gemser is back as Emanuelle, who is shipped off to a violent women's prison where she crosses the path of top dog Ursula Flores, ending in a wig-ripping, arm-breaking cat fight. However, the arrival of four male death row prisoners, who proceed to rape, pillage, torture, and kill their way through the female prisoners, cause the two women to shift focus. One of the convicts is killed when a female prisoner hides a razor blade in her vagina! It leads to a bloody showdown with a SWAT Team, leaving only Emanuelle and a wounded Sheriff left alive.)

(The film's producers owned an undergarments factory, so all the actresses model the company's bras and panties throughout the film.)

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And that's all for now.

Tune in next week...

Same time, same channel!

Jailbreak - AC/DC