Prison Flicks

Rating: (2 out of 5)

Starring: Vonetta McGee, Karen Carter, Linda Fox, Monica Taylor, Gordon Mitchell, Christin Thorn, Tony Kendall, Mara Krup, Herb Andress, and Rose Margaret Keil.

Directed by: Richard Jackson (a.k.a. Ernst R. von Theumer)

Inga and Gail behind bars

You know, as I watched this movie, I kept thinking one thing: “Where are Tom Servo and Crow when you really need them?” Actually, I was also thinking: “Warden, are you sure this whole Prison Flicks thing is a good idea?” Then I started thinking: “Mmm, I wonder if Pop Tarts and Pop Rocks form a distinct food group?” Because you see, this movie is so confusing, ridiculous, and absurd that is liable to cause temporary insanity. That said, it is short (about 70 minutes) and pretty fun to watch in a twisted, “so bad it’s good” way.

Ernst von Theumer is the genius behind Jungle Warriors (1984), a trashy but excellent example of early-1980s women-in-prison/women-enslaved cinema. All I can say is that he apparently grew a great deal as a filmmaker in the 12 intervening years after he made The Big Bust Out (BBO), because Jungle Warriors is at least coherent and reasonably well-made. BBO is, well, hard to describe….

The first you will you notice if you watch BBO is that it is horribly dubbed. Although filmed in Italy, I think most of the actors are speaking in English throughout. So what’s with the dubbing? Was it filmed in English, dubbed into Italian, and then redubbed later into English? If anyone knows, please let me know. Another thing you will notice is the paucity of opening credits, and the complete lack of closing credits. As a result, I have no idea who played each of the characters, and frankly my grasp of the names of the character is a little hazy. IMDb doesn’t help much here because (a) they only have three character names listed, and (b) I’m pretty sure the listed names were submitted by someone as a joke because they don’t match any of the names I heard while watching the movie.

The guard threatens Gail with what lots a little like a tire iron.

Alright, the plot… Well, we begin in a women’s prison (woo hoo), where we meet seven prisoners. Since the women are already in prison when the movie begins, we don’t get the clichéd “welcome to prison” speech or the new prisoner gauntlet. We do get a scene where the warden helpfully identifies each of the prisoners and their crimes, however. Not that it makes much difference. The characters are essentially interchangeable, though they meet the early 1970s ideal of diversity. You’ve got a couple of blondes, a couple of brunettes, a redhead, a Latin chick, and an African-American.

This is a pretty brutal prison. The head guard is a sadist. At one point, she punishes one of the main characters by letting an insane prisoner attack her bloodily (!). At another, she performs a rough cavity search after finding a joint in one of the cells. The only person looking out for the inmates is Sister Maria, a nun who apparently counsels the prisoners at times. Concerned about their rough treatment at the hands of prison officials, Sister Maria manages to get the women assigned to work at her convent.

Saddam? In a convent?

Now, I don’t quite understand this convent, frankly, because in addition to nuns, there are a number of armed men wearing Arab headdresses present. Now, even though the movie is filmed in Italy, with a largely American cast, it is set in some unspecified Arab, probably North African, country (Libya? Algeria?), but that does not really explain the existence of a convent, nor why the convent would have armed men within it, especially armed Arab men. Well, anyway, the girls barely arrive at the convent when they more or less spontaneous rise up and disarm several men armed with submachine guns. These are some tough broads, and pretty ungrateful ones if you ask me considering that poor Sister Maria put herself on the line to get them away from the nasty prison guards. Not only do the women abuse Maria’s trust, they threaten to shoot up the nuns unless they hand over their habits so the women can escape. Maria feels responsible for the women, and insists on accompanying them. Maria, Maria, Maria… can you say “bad idea?”

Hmmm… seems to me that it probably isn’t a good idea to interrupt a prison break to frolic in a pool.

Dressing as nuns may seem like a good plan, but actually, eight “nuns,” tooling around in a van in the middle of some Arab city is probably not as inconspicuous as you might think. The gals realize this, and one of them calls her friend Nadia and asks for help. After a bit of hesitation, she invites them over to the house (mansion?) she shares with her boyfriend(?). At the house, the women quickly shed their habits, and frolic naked in Nadia’s large indoor pool. They even have a beach ball to play with.

Unfortunately, Nadia’s boyfriend is not just an extremely lucky man (I mean, my wife never brings home seven cute female friends to run around our house naked, no matter have many times I ask), he’s also a white slaver! Seeing a chance for quick profit, he quickly sells the women to the highest bidder, a local potentate of sorts who sometimes dresses like an Eastern Orthodox priest and lives in a big castle. The women don’t go quietly, but they are surrounded by armed men and driven to the docks so they can be loaded onto a ship and delivered to their destination. Unfortunately for the white slavers, the captain of the ship (Jeff) does not trade in human cargo. The slavers try to convince him to go along, but he refuses, and in the ensuing scuffle (which reminded me of nothing more than a fight from the old Batman series), he and his crew men manage to overpower most of the slavers. Jeff hops in the truck and tries to drive the women to safety (remember, the police are looking for them too as escaped convicts).

Splat! Pow! Crash!

At nightfall they stop to camp. Jeff tells the girls that they need to get over the mountains to get to safety. We learn later that the plan is to get across “the border.” It is hard to tell whether this is a good plan or not. They’ll need to walk across harsh terrain, through sweltering days and freezing nights. I’m not sure what exists on the other side of the border anyway, although presumably Jeff has contacts there who will help the women escape.

The very next day, this plan starts looking a little questionable. The party finds a small river, and naturally, this being a women-in-prison movie (sort of), the gals decide they have to bathe. So they frolic around in various states of undress for a while. This is all well and good, until bandits spot the women and decide to take advantage of the situation. Though the women try to run and fight, they are quickly overpowered. Most are raped. One is killed. Sister Maria, though scant yards from the site of one assault, manages to sleep through the whole thing. (Ah yes, the slumber of the innocent… well, she’ll pay for it later.) Amazingly, enough, as quickly as they appeared, the bandits disappear. The women pull themselves together remarkably well considering they’ve all just been gang raped. Indeed, their biggest concern is that Nadia seems to have disappeared. The bandit apparently took her, although why they left the others is pretty unclear. They barely mention the fact that one of their group is dead, and aside from one sarcastic comment later, the whole rape thing is more or less forgotten.

Um, frolicking in a stream isn’t much smarter.

Before going after Nadia, the women pause to practice their shooting and martial arts skills…. It isn’t clear how long this goes on, or how this is going to help them in any case. Anyway once they start looking, they quickly stumble upon a town set in the hills. It seems pretty quiet, and one of the girls opines, “They must have exhausted themselves with us.” Hmmm…. Well, that is a pretty cavalier attitude all things considered, but in any case didn’t they have time to rest up while you were practicing judo moves? Anyway, Jeff starts to head down into the town, but Maria stops him, and insists that she should go alone because, after all, who would look after the girls if Jeff weren’t around…. which might be a good argument if Jeff hadn’t allowed the women to be attacked by bandits in the first place. I mean, the guy was pretty much next to useless then, right?

Sister Maria meets a dancing dwarf, and then gets stoned… Wasn’t that a Twin Peaks episode?

What follows is one of the most bizarre sequences I think I’ve ever seen in a movie, sort of a cross between Fellini and David Lynch. Sister Maria, still in her habit, roams around the town. Everywhere she goes, men, women, and children flee from her. Why? Who knows? Personally, I don’t find nuns that scary… clowns yes, what with that creepy makeup and the big feet, but nuns not really. But people are so terrified of her that they even leave behind dozens of loaves of freshly baked bread. As Maria is munching on this unexpected bounty (um, isn’t that stealing?), a strangely dressed dwarf approaches(!). He does a bizarre little dance (!!), and beckons Maria to follow him (!!!). She does(!!!!). He leads her through a dilapidated gate, and there is Nadia, chained by her arms, her back bloody from being whipped. As Maria goes to help her, the dwarf starts flogging Nadia (!!!!!). Now, I guess one question is what is the relationship between the dwarf and the bandits? (We later see some of the bandits hanged by the side of the road, although that too raises more questions than it answers.) Anyway Maria brains the dwarf with a rock, but as she does, she notices that she’s being stalked by locals, dressed in black. As Maria backs away, another group appears to cut off her retreat. She goes down another alley, and is again cut off. Her mysterious pursuers finally corner her and start stoning her. Have I managed to convey how surreal this whole sequence is? It quite literally could pass for a dream/nightmare sequence. All we’d need is a quick cut to Maria waking up with a start….

Anyway, our intrepid nun is saved by the sudden arrival of Jeff and the girls. Although they drive off Maria’s attackers, they suddenly find themselves in a nasty firefight with armed men. Luckily, they have a seemingly unlimited supply of ammo and grenades, so they are able to rescue Nadia and escape on a bunch of conveniently available horses (although one gal gets shot and killed during the fight). They ride around for a while, but as they approach the border, they decide to camp for the night before going on. And where do they decide to stop? Why, the castle of course, where the guy who purchased the women in the first place lives. Good planning Jeff. Needless to say, the gals are quickly captured and Jeff tossed into a cell.

Zouaves and dancing men. This sort of reminds me of a party I attended on Fire Island back in the 1970s.

Besides the oddly dressed ruler, the castle also has a large complement of guards dressed as Zouaves, dancing men straight out of Zorba wearing golden shoes, and a large assortment of drunken cutthroats and thugs. Oddly enough the scene reminded me of Jabba the Hutt’s complex in Return of the Jedi (1983), but more colorful and less well acted (although in fairness, Mark Hamill wasn’t winning any Oscars either). Just when it seems that the girls are going to be forced to service dozens of soldiers, and even poor Maria is being nastily abused by a local arms merchant, all hell breaks loose. It turns out that the original slavers (Nadia’s boyfriend and his buddy) are in the castle too, settling business. But before they leave, they spot a roomful of gold, so they attack the palace, and massacre most of the guards. Although they are after loot, they quickly turn homicidal (although why that happens isn’t clear), and it becomes a battle of all against all. At the climactic moment, Sister Maria picks up an automatic weapon and shoots Nadia’s boyfriend at the same time as he shoots her. The bloodshed ended, Jeff and the two girls left standing bury the others, and then ride off into desert, presumably over the border to freedom.

I know it is horrible cliché, but this one is actually so bad it is good… or at least fun in a twisted way. I mean, the whole plot has an undeniable absurdist appeal: seven women escape prison, disguise themselves as nuns, get sold into white slavery, go on the lam, are assaulted by bandits, fight for their lives several time, finally do in the bad guys, and at least a couple escape. Admit it, that’s not a bad plot. Then we have that whole sequence in the town with Maria and the dwarf and the ominous pursuers. Then finally, the castle… Zouaves, harems, lunatic white slavers… and I know this is twisted, but you’ve sort of got to admire a movie that has the balls to show a man abusing a nun. Especially, since it is all presented in such a confused, badly acted, incoherent manner that you never believe any of it for even a moment. When you add in the bad dubbing, well…. This is certainly not a classic, but if you’ve got some bad movie aficionados in the house, a case of cold beer, and it’s raining outside, you can put The Big Bust Out into the VCR and have the makings of a fun Saturday afternoon.

A closing treat: golden shoes on the dancing men, and a gratuitous panty shot.