Change Your Image
andypurshottam
Reviews
Prison Heat (1993)
Great women in prison movie that does not pretend to be serious social drama
(small spoilers about the characters and the troubles they get into. Fussy people should see the flick first.) If you are a politically correct person who would be upset by scenes of naked women or stereotypically nasty portrayals of followers of Mohammed doing nasty things to above mentioned women, please skip this movie. But if you like WIP movies, this movie has all the requisite elements of such movies combined with great greaser villains and nice Turkish background music, plus an awesome lesbo queen bee. Playboy model Lori Jo Hendrix is cast as the big tit bimbo who "protects" herself by wearing a babydoll nightgown, and Rebecca Chambers is cast as the brunette brain (following the Charlie's Angels Theory of Hair Color and Intelligence) who plots the escape, and fights with the evil queen bee in the shower.
Today WIP pictures seem to require a serious social drama plot to make them PC; they don't make 'em like this any more, and I wish they did!
The Magdalene Sisters (2002)
Also a great nun-exploitation / women in prison movie!
Most of the reviews present here describe this movie as an expose of the abuse of young women by the Catholic Church in Ireland, not so long ago. (50-60s?). They go on to praise the movie for its honesty and great acting, making us identify with the women and feel outrage at what was done to them. All of this is true.
But _The Magdalene Sisters_ can also be appreciated as women in prison / nun - exploitation movie - perhaps the best of such movies ever made! By the usual standards of such movies is rather restrained: there is no hot metal torture as in Franco's classic "Love Letters of a Portugese Nun", nor topless floggings as in "The Sinful Nuns of St. Valentine," no live pig nastiness as in "Flavia the Heretic," but the realism conveyed by the restraint makes the movie much more frightening to me. This really happened, and (some of ) the men and women of the Catholic Church who did it are still alive and probably still in positions of authority.
The brit region 2 version (not sure about USA version) of the DVD has a documentary feature, "Sex in a Cold Climate" that served as inspiration for the drama. It consists of interviews with middle aged and old women who were once Magdalene inmates, and is to me more frightening (though less fun as WIP movie of course.) than the drama. I highly recommend it, and also the director's commentary which I think is missing from the USA DVD.
I realize some people will object to my classifying this movie as a NUNEX/WIP because it is "too good" to be entertainment, in the same way some refuse to classify "Shaft" as BLAX. Such judgments are a matter of personal taste and argument is probably not fruitful. But to women in prison movie fans who have been avoiding seeing MS because it sounds too dark and serious, I suggest they consider seeing it, for both the fun genre elements and the inspiring acting by the women prisoners and the evil Big Matron guard/mother superior who is also a famous brit actress.
Unfortunately in these politically correct times, straightforward fun women in prison movies do not get general distribution in the USA. If one wants to encourage the creation of quality high budget WIP movies, supporting films like MS may be the best thing fans can do in our current dark age.
Prey for Rock & Roll (2003)
Don't need to be punk fan to enjoy this movie / also wondering why never saw it before video...
Really enjoyed this movie, found for the first time in B&N video store the other night. Was wary of it because had never heard of it though am GG fan and also like girl-group movies (even is JAPC! though my fav is old Brit series Rock Follies).
As not a fan of punk (well, except for Joe Strummer and Ramones and Joan Jett but they know how to play guitar so they are not really punk right? ;-) did not care that much for the songs though "Every 6 minutes" is pretty affecting. GG and all the other actresses are both babely and convincing, Riley is not as whiny and irritating as on his TV show, and even the evil bad guy is so real that one felt some sympathy for him. If you like movies about music, give this one a try.
What does puzzle me is why I never heard of this movie before. It apparently did show at a LGBT film festival in SF, but do not recall hearing about regular theatrical opening or seeing reviews. Maybe that was a busy month/week/day, or maybe it got weird/bad reviews like "Bound" (another great little movie staring GG) did, possibly for its lezbo characters?
If you are interesting in indie film making the directors commentary is fun, and the end credits are cute.