Rating:
(0 out of 5)
Starring: Rhonda Shear, Mary Woronov, Laurie Walton, Traiv Willingham, Lauren Graham, Mike Wiebe, Louisa Lawless, Ilram Choi, and Lloyd Kaufman.
Directed by: Barak Epstein
Unwatchable. I don’t say that often about a movie, but there you go. It is unfunny, badly paced, poor acted. There are a couple of bare boobs, but in this age of ubiquitous internet porn, that just isn’t enough. Heck, if I turn off my spam filter for half an hour, my inbox will fill up with bare boobs — as well a get-rich-quick offers (much needed, since I am as poor as a church mouse) and penile enlargement ads (not at all needed, since I am hung like a horse) — and I won’t have to sit through bad attempts at humor as an added benefit.
I actually hate giving this movie a bad review. I really, really wanted to like it. I am absolutely, 100% the target audience. This is actually the kind of movie I’d probably end up making it I ever tried, and I can see how much effort went into it, but I can also see how it went horribly wrong.
First a quick plot summary: Janie’s sister gets abducted and sent to a prison in the Philippines. Janie (Laurie Walton) gets arrested in order to get inside and find her sister. Once inside, she meets up with all sorts of wacky characters — hardened lifers, menacing prison matron, crazed prison doctor doing medical experiments. etc. There are a few spins on the characters, playing off cliches I guess, but nothing really interesting. The warden is a low-key slacker. The doctor is more looney than menacing. Oh yeah, and there are ninjas. It is all played as a spoof, which is a hard, hard row to hoe. Bad spoofs are just deadly, since there is nothing tangible other than the jokes.
The movie’s bid for originality comes in its general “wackiness.” Epstein uses deliberate and over-the-top continuity errors repeatedly. Cute the first time, tedious thereafter. And anyway, what’s the point? Yeah, some of the classics of the WiP genre had some sloppy continuity work (and visible boom mics and incoherent editing), but where is the joke? Then there is the shower scene timer that appears on screen occasionally announcing the time until the next bit of nudity. This is a cute idea, although it breaks the fourth-wall so completely that it backfires I think. Worse, the shower scenes themselves are just lame, lame, lame. If you are going to highlight these scenes so much, do something with them. The characters vamp for the camera shamelessly. Yeah, we get it, it is a spoof. Good grief, we don’t need to be beat over the head with it.
Anyway, I can see how this went horribly wrong. You and your buddies get some cash to make a movie. You manage to lure a couple of interesting leads (poor, poor Mary Woronov, is this really the best you can do?). Spoofs are supposed to be outrageous, but outrageous just doesn’t seem outrageous enough after a bunch of 16 hour, caffein-fueled days. You get punchy. You try to turn it up a notch. And in the end, while you just know that the cast and crew were laughing hysterically at the antics they captured on screen, it turns out to be one of those, “I guess you had to be there” moments.
Just a thought for would-be women-in-prison spoofers… dudes the movies were mostly camp to begin with. Onlay a few of the European rough-trade WiPs were played straight. And anyway, you have two solid spoofs out there already in Reform School Girls (1986) and Slammer Girls (1987), so this is not original ground.
And before you jump down my throat and say this is Tromaesque and that I just don’t get it, let me note that I was probably watching and enjoying the Toxic Avenger before you were. I just don’t think Prison-A-Go-Go! matches up despite Lloyd Kaufman’s cameo.
If you really want to buy it…
