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

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

Wonderland Burlesque's Let's All Go To The Movies: Women Behind Bars Part II: Big, Betrayed, Convicted and Condemned

Wonderland Burlesque's

Let's All Go To The Movies

Women Behind Bars Part II

Big, Betrayed, Convicted and Condemned

This week's Let's All Go To The Movies is all about women who are big, betrayed convicted and condemned. A mixture of film classics starring some of the loveliest ladies to light up the silver screen during the golden age of Hollywood, and drive-in move fare featuring some of our favorite blaxploitation and exploitation movie heroines, these films both preached morality and titillated the viewers. 

Now let's experience the clank and terror of metal bars, and learn a bit more about these scandalous movies and their big name stars..

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Ladies Of The Big House

(1931)

(Newlywed Kathleen Storm, as played by Sylvia Sidney, finds herself  and her husband, who has been sentenced to the death penalty, framed by her criminal ex-boyfriend. In prison she meets an ex-girlfriend of the man who framed her and her husband who eventually agrees to help clear the couple's names.)

(Sylvia Sydney remains one of my all-time favorite actresses. She was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress for her work in Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams, but you may remember her best as the chain-smoking receptionist in hell from the film Beetlejuice.)

(This was an advertisement in Film Daily,)

(Gene Raymond made a career appearing in light musicals and films with the likes of Loretta Young, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, and Ann Sothern. He also wrote a number of songs, one of which, Will You?, he sang on screen to Sothern, while others were sung on screen by his real life wife, the celebrated Jeanette McDonald.)

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Condemned Women

(1938)

(Linda Wilson, played by Sally Eilers, doesn't give a damn about life until she falls in love with Dr. Phillip, the prison psychiatrist. However, her turnabout is short-lived when she's asked to break up with the doctor, as her presence in his life stands in the way of his career.)

(Eilers was one of Mack Sennet's 'flaming youth' comedians, along with school chum Carole Lombard. She was a vivacious and much beloved presence in 1930's era Hollywood.)

(Anne Shirley is another favorite actress of mine. A true beauty, she appeared in a number of film noirs and was nominated as Best Supporting Actress for her work in the classic, Stella Dallas. She began her career as a popular child actress under the name Dawn O'Day.)

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Convicted Woman

(1940)

AKA: Dames/Daughters Of Today

"Caged women! What would they do if they were turned loose for a day?"

"Would they use their fleeting freedom for home and dear ones... for love... for crime?"

(Rochelle Hudson played both Shirley Temple's older sister in Curly Top, Claudette Colbert's adult daughter in Imitation Of Life, and James Dean's mother in Rebel Without A Cause. She also appeared in films opposite both  W.C. Fields and Mae West.)

"Women weep... but not for their sins... as tear gas quells female prison riots!"

(This film also includes 24 year-old Glenn Ford as reporter Jim Brent)

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Girls Of The Big House

(1945)

(This drama stars Lynne Roberts who appeared opposite the likes of Roy Rogers, Sonje Henie, Linda Darnell, Cesar Romero, Jane Withers, Lloyd Bridges, Loretta Young, Agnes Moorehead, and Gene Autry in 64 films.)

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The Ship Of Condemned Women

(1953)

"Adventure and excitement you will long remember!"

"The fury of 100 love -starved women!

"Caged for the sins of their past... their break for freedom climaxed by an orgy of wanton lust and revenge!"

"The screen explodes violently with the unleashed emotions of suppressed desires."

"A story so daring they said it could never be filmed."

(An Italian historical adventure-melodrama concerning a ship filled with imprisoned women being transported to a penal colony. French actress Kierma had made a name for herself playing a native girl in Outcasts Of The Island, while May Britt appeared in a number of films from 1953 until 1960, when she retired from film to take on the real life role of Mrs. Sammy Davis, Jr.)

(Reportedly, both John and Robert Kennedy told Frank Sinatra to tell Sammy not to get married before the 1960 Presidential Election, as interracial marriage was still illegal and neither Kennedy wanted a scandal. Sammy duly waited and then tied the knot five days after the election.)

(After making a slew of movies in Italy, Britt was imported to Hollywood where she appeared opposite the likes of Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Robert Wagner, Robert Mitchum, and Peter Falk. She also starred in a universally-panned remake of the Marlene Dietrich classic, The Blue Angel.)

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Betrayed Women

(1955)

"Women in solitary!"

"What happens behind the barrack walls of the female Devil's Island?"

"The girls who take the rap for the big shots of crime!"

(This British film stars B-movie queen, Beverly Michaels. Michaels made a career out of playing 'bad girl' types. In an interview she once said, "One of the penalties... is that some people, especially the wolf type, can't forget it was just a movie. I get my share of wisecracks. But I ignore them. You have to. If you're going to play roles like I have, you have to expect to be a target for such remarks. I just pretend I don't hear them. If you're going to be supersensitive, you had better get out of the business. I always have hope that my next picture will make me a decent woman." She was married to an executive at MGM and then  a director who cast her as the lead in her best remembered film, 1954's film noir Wicked Women. In the 1980's, when vintage bad girls like Diana Dors and Mamie Van Doren experienced renewed popularity, Michaels resisted all offers and attempts made to cash in on her former notoriety, preferring her privacy, instead.) 

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 Big Doll House

(1971)

"Their bodies were caged, but not their desires."

"They would do anything for a man - or to him."

(Another with Pam Grier and Roberta Collins, who appeared together in Caged Women/Black Mama White Mama that same year. Both films were shot in the Philippines at the same time, using the same buildings and sets.)

"Soft young girls behind hard prison bars... they'd do anything for a man or to him!"

"Boiling passions confined behind concrete walls."

"Naked lust that builds to a climax of death."

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The Big Bust-Out

(1972)

AKA: The Crucified Girls of San Ramon

"Soft skin bursting through hard prison walls!"

"Locked in a cage of wild desire."

"The chain their bodies but not their lust!"

(Renamed The Big Bust-Out in 1973 when B-movie king Roger Corman bought the US film rights. He trimmed 20 minutes off the film, later commenting that it wasn't a very good film but he still managed to make some money off of it.)

(Featuring blaxploitation star, Venetta McGee. McGee would star opposite Clint Eastwood in The Eiger Sanction among many other films.)

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The Big Bird Cage

(1972)

"Lashed to a terrible machine that maims tender young bodies and cripples innocent young minds."

"Men who are only half men and women who are more than all woman."

(This is the third of four prison films starring exploitation film queen Pam Grier. It also features  blaxploitation star Carol Speed and Anita Ford, most famous for her time, from 1972 to 1976, as a model on The Price Is Right and starring opposite Burt Reynolds in The Longest Yard.  )

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Convict Women

AKA: Thunder County

(1974)

To stay alive they have to kill..."

(Four women escape from prison only to be hunted in the swamp by a lecherous redneck.)

(Starring Mickey Rooney and Ted Cassidy, who is best remembered as Lurch in the television version of The Addams Family.)

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And that's all for now.

Tune in next week...

Same time, same channel.

The Big House - Tina Fey and Kermit The Frog

from the motion picture Muppets Most Wanted