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Movie Reviews
Women in Prison
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The Big Doll House (1971) |
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| Arriving at the prison |
Anyway, the movie opens with a shot of our heroine, Collier (Judith Brown) being taken to the prison in a large, obviously hand-made, bamboo cage mounted on the back of a pickup truck. I like the inventiveness of this, even if it is absurd. I mean, the bamboo bars are probably just about wide enough to squeeze through, and away, who'd go through the effort of building this sort of open-aired contraption? Arriving at the prison, we see the first punishment implement (and there will be many for the girls): another big bamboo cage, this one has narrower opening between the bars, and is suspended about 10 feet in the air. Didn't Checkov say that if you see a hanging bamboo cage in the first act, you will see one of the main characters imprisoned in it by the third?
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| Short skirts, machine guns, and kepis... an irresistible look. Lucian, flanked by two guards. |
Collier is our ingénue. She's not actually innocent (i.e. not guilty), but she is innocent (i.e. not a hardened con). She's a murderer, you see. 99 year sentence. Her introduction to prison life is ominous (duh). She gets led through what looks like a prison sweat shop, where the women are manufacturing cheap looking blankets and things you can buy at roadside stands in the southwest. We meet a couple of other prisoners at this point too. They don't reappear, but are worth mentioning for their crimes: one is in for kidnapping, the other for prostitution and espionage! I like that later combo, an homage, if you will, to Mata Hari. Then we meet the head guard, Lucian (Katheryn Loder). Lucian exists mostly to torture the prisoners at various times. Oh, and to wear short skirts. All of the women guards wear really short, really tight skirts.... and heels.... and carry submachine guns. It's quite a look. Lucian gives the "welcome to prison speech," you know, where she warns the new arrivals to follow orders or else. Anyway, before Collier can get too settled in, she's forced to strip and subjected to a cavity search, before being sent off the prison doctor for a medical examination. Dr. Philips (Charles Davis) is sort of a strange character. He's just starting work as the movie begins, and he's sort of an idealist. At various times he tries to intercede on the girls' behalf, although frankly, never with much conviction. His main interest throughout seems to be to romance the German warden, Miss Dietrich (Christiane Schmidtmer). Dr. Philips, um, admires Collier's healthy glow, but before he can do much of an examination, Lucian leads Collier off to her cell.
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| The dolls: Collier, Bodine, Alcott, Grear, Harrad... |
There we meet her cellmates. First up is Alcott (Roberta Collins, also Belle in Caged Heat (1974) and Stoke in Women in Cages). Alcott is a pretty blond, but also a tough character. She clucks at the appearance of the innocent Collier, "Ho ho ho, we're going to have fun." She actually does that "ho ho ho" thing twice, sort of like she's channeling the spirit of Santa Claus. Then we meet Pam Grier, whose character is funnily enough named Grear. What do you think, did the original script have a character named Grear, and Pam Grier just happened to win the part? Or did they name the character after Pam? And if so, why did they change the spelling? Besides Alcott and Grear, we have the tough Bodine ("not even Grear messes with Bodine," says Alcott). Bodine (Pat Woodell, Bobbi Jo from TV's Petticoat Junction) is apparently the girlfriend of a rebel leader, although he never appears in the movie. Rounding out the crew are Harrad (Brooke Mills), a junkie; and the somewhat mysterious Ferina (Gina Stuart), whose main distinguishing characteristics are that she has scrawled "A Dead Bee Makes No Honey" over her bunk (no, I don't know what that means either, besides the obvious) and that she has a cat. Didn't Checkov say that if you see a cat in the first act, it will help the prisoners escape by crawling through an air duct by the third?
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| ...and Ferina with her cryptic scrawl. |
Now, what do we make of this assortment of women? Well, first of all, they are all quite attractive. Their short, tight, prison uniforms certainly bear that out. They are surprisingly well groomed, with long, luxuriant hair and makeup. There is a nice mix of appearances and ethnicities: Alcott the blond, Bodine the brunette, Grear who is black, Collier and Harrad have that redhead thing going on, and I guess Farina is sort of the Latin type. The amusing thing is that all of the characters, with the possible exception of Farina, are obviously American. The doctor is American. The warden (who we meet later) is German. Meanwhile, all of the extras are Philippino, and the movie is obviously set there. But no one ever mention this weird fact, and no one ever explains why these six women, who would obviously be more at home on a photo shoot than in a prison are housed together. At one level, you have to admire the director's (Jack Hill) willingness to simply leave something unexplained. (I think we all got a kick out of Marsellus' band-aid in Pulp Fiction, right? Why was it there? Who knows?) At another level, it is sort of quirky. You'd think they could give us some back story on this one. I mean, maybe this is a special prison for foreigners.... anything. Throw us a bone.
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| Stoner ballet |
Well, anyway, poor Collier immediately attracts Grear's attention. Grear insists that Collier share her bunk bed, moving Harrad in the process. When Collier offers her the lower bunk, Grear replies, "I like to be on top." Ho ho ho! Then in the middle of the night, Harrad suddenly gets up and tries to set Collier on fire. When Collier objects, the rest of the girls attack her and put her head down the toilet while accusing her of being a spy. Who they think she's spying for is never explained. But at this point, Collier has got to be wondering what sort of an insane asylum she's landed in. Luckily for her, Bodine intercedes on her behalf, leading to this exchange: Bodine: "Leave her alone, she's just a scared kid." Grear: "Oh, it's all in fun." Wow, if setting people on fire is just fun for Grear, I'd hate to see what happens when she really get mad.
I'd like to say the plot starts here, but really the movie just sort of drifts along. The next day, there is a cremation in the prison, with the warden performing the services with her thick German accent. Alcott thinks the prisoner was murdered, and she decides to confront the warden publicly about this. Needless to say, this sets Lucian off, but the warden promises to "look into the matter." Now, I gotta say, if I'm Alcott, I'd probably just keep my big yap shut, because I'm guessing that if there is foul play going on, the warden is probably in on it. I mean, a German woman warden in the Philippines? Seems fishy to me.
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| Fred and Harry discuss a proposal to establish a national sales tax. |
Anyway, we now meet our comic relief (um, sort of): Harry (Sid Haig) and Fred (Jerry Frank). Harry is sort of a Deadhead, and I guess Fred is a surfer dude. Harry's a comedian. He tells Fred that the girls in the prison are "so horny... you can sometimes hear them honking." Get it? Horn? Honk? Ho ho ho. It isn't completely clear what Fred and Harry do, but they seem to sell or deliver goods to the prison, and they are also allowed into the prison itself to sell fruit and other items to the prisoners themselves. Fruit.
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| Cockroach racing... the next WWF? |
We also get a scene of Alcott and Grear racing cockroaches as Collier looks on. As Alcott's roach pulls ahead, Grear squishes him. "That's no fair!" Alcott whines, "and I was going to put Mendoza out to stud." Um, can you breed roaches? Anyway, this allows us to segue into a discussion of Col. Mendoza (the roach's namesake), who is apparently some sort of shadowy figure who runs the prison, but has never actually been seen by anyone who has lived to tell about it. Hmmmm. While the other girls are yapping, Harrad is shooting up. She then dances around the cell, 60s stoner style, arms flapping and spinning around. As Harrad finished her little recital, Fred and Harry arrive at the cell. Harry tells Grear he has something for her, but he insists on copping a feel before he hands it over. Grear reluctantly agrees... which turns out to be a mistake since the "something" turns out to be a smuggled letter for Bodine. "All men are filthy!" Pam Grier shrieks, giving the scene more life than it deserves. I gotta say, this movie really is a showcase from Pam Grier. I mean, she's a beautiful woman, a passionate actress, and a class act. She could have added to a lot of movies if she hadn't ended up trapped in exploitation films. I mean, this isn't Maria Ford whining about always having to do nude scenes... Hey Maria, it's better than working at Mickey D's, know what I mean?
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| The key for any prison is generating multiple revenue streams: the sweatshop and the rice paddy. |
Anyway, the next scene has the women working in a rice paddy. Sweatshop, rice paddy... this prison is quite the diversified enterprise. Grear disappears for a moment into a patch of sugar cane. A moment later, Lucian halts work, and calls Bodine over. Reaching into her bra, she finds the letter, and makes a big speech about "uncensored mail." As Lucian is leaving, she turns to Alcott, "You'll be the next one, I promise you," she hisses. The next one to get a letter from outside? I guess Lucian is still sore about that murdered inmate incident at the cremation. Moments later Grear reappears from the brush with a packet of smack for Harrad. Remember this sequence of events, it actually has significance for the rest of the movie.
The next scene has Bodine hanging in the air in the bamboo cage as the other women are driven off to a work detail. Once the others are gone, sun-baked Bodine is tied to a table in some sort of a dungeon. Lucian lets her hair down, and goes to work on Bodine as a mysterious masked figure watches over the scene from a throne in a separate room. First, comes the water torture, then she's hanged by her wrists and flogged with what looks like a towel (with Bodine's long hair strategically draped over her boobs... nice of Lucian to arrange that). Each new torture is separated from the last with a wavy dissolve. Lucian stops at one point to question Bodine about the location of the rebels, but Bodine refuses to talk, and anyway, Lucian seems more interested in abusing Bodine than extracting any information.
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| Lucian flogging Bodine... notice the tilted camera angle used to symbolize the disorienting effects of Bodine's abuse... or something like that. |
The guards dump Bodine's battered body back in the cell. Alcott helps her into her bunk. The two now have a heart-to-heart. Bodine tries to convince Alcott to try to escape, but Alcott is afraid of dying while trying. Is it better to live in captivity, or die striving for freedom? I think screenwriter Don Spencer was reading Camus while working on this scene. Up until the end that is, when Alcott looks up and sighs wistfully: "More than anything else, I miss having a man."
On that note, we cut to the next scene, which features the girls in the shower. The camera stays on Harrad for a good long time, as she preens and giggles. Collier has apparently became Grear's girltoy, because Grear orders Collier to wash her back. Collier doesn't seem pleased with this arrangement because after Grear leaves, she tries to wash Alcott's back, but Alcott doesn't swing that way and sends Collier away. In the meantime, Fred walks past the shower room, and peers at the women through the frosted glass. As Alcott is lathering up, she sees him, and puts on a little show. Remember what she said about missing men? Well, Alcott is a woman of action. Her shower done, she sneaks into the kitchen and steals a knife, and as Fred walks past an empty storeroom, she drags him inside. Brandishing the knife, she threatens to Bobbitt him unless he performs: "Get it up or I'll cut it off," she snaps. As a public service announcement to any gals who might be reading this, let me note this is probably not the best way to get a guy in the mood. Anyway, Fred acquits himself well enough to remain intact, but before they can finish, Lucian walks in on them.
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| "Get it up or I'll cut it off!" |
Apparently raping the delivery man is against prison rules (who'd a thunk it?), and now it is Alcott's turn on the rack. This time, however, the torture is electrocution. As she's being led back to her cell, the doctor spots her. He suspects she's been abused, but Lucian denies it. The doctor goes to see the warden, ostensibly to ask her to look into abuse at the prison, but he quickly gets distracted and ends up flirting with the warden instead. The girls are sure lucky he's looking out for them, eh?
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| Little known fact: this was the original design of the Wonder Bra™. |
Okay, now thing begin to heat up. Having been tortured seems to change Alcott's thinking on the whole escape business. Alcott and Bodine decide they need help, and given her rocky relationship with Grear, Collier seems like a good possibility. But when the gals try to talk to Collier, Grear tries to chase them away. Collier sticks with Bodine and Alcott, and now Grear challenges Alcott to a fight. The next day, Alcott and Grear head off into the sugar cane field, and duke it out. And by duke it out, I mean, duke it out. This isn't your usual hair-pulling, arms-flailing catfight, but rather a reasonably disciplined boxing exposition. At least it is at first. Grear basically beats up on Alcott, finally sending her sprawling into the mud. "Ha, now I'm in my own natural element," gloats Alcott, who proceeds to kick Grear's butt in a classic mud-wrestling match.
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| Grear has mastered the Marquis de Queensbury rules, but Alcott knows how to get down and dirty. | |
Now back in their cell, Alcott and Bodine lay down the law. They plan to escape, and they warn the others either to join in or stay quiet. Collier goes along, as does Ferina. Harrad says she'll do whatever Grear does. Grear is pretty suspicious, at least until Alcott and Bodine spell out their plan, which is... I'm not sure. Something about taking down Lucian, although how that is going to get them over the wall or through the main gate is pretty unclear, and the escape as it happens seems to rely as much on luck as anything else frankly.
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| Bodine teaches Alcott how to chamber a round... and to think, the Army needs two months of basic training. |
Anyhow, we get a hysterical scene where Bodine teaches the girls how to handle a submachine gun by drawing one on a sheet of paper and making them practice chambering a round by learning the proper motion without a gun. Apparently, just pulling back on an imaginary bolt is sufficient to learn how to handle a weapon. If that is how the rebels are training, no wonder Bodine is in the joint. While this training is going on, Harrad starts jonesing, which brings out Grear's maternal instinct. She promises to get her more drugs as soon as possible.
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| Fire hoses aren't just to put out fires. |
The plot goes into motion the next day with a food fight in the cafetaria. The guards break it up by turning a fire hose on the inmates (as far as I can tell, this is standard riot control procedure in women's prisons). Bodine, Alcott, Collier, and Ferina get themselves thrown into the hotbox, which is basically a jail house version of a steam bath, but with no exit. In the meantime, Grear is nosing around Lucian's office. She keeps a bunch of snakes (cliché alert), and Grear finds herself face-to-face with a cobra. Lucian returns just in time to save Grear. It turns out Grear was coming to get drugs for Harrad. But Lucian plays hardball. She insists that Grear tell her what was going on with the food fight before she'll hand over any "heroin powder," a phrase she uses three times, and which had me wondering what other kind of heroin there is. Heroin liquid? Heroin paste? I gotta admit, I'm a neophyte as far as smack goes, but it just sounded odd. Anyway, Grear sort of rats out her cellmates, telling Lucian that "there is going to be an escape." To which Lucian replies reasonably, "There's always going to be an escape. That's why we have guards." Hmmmm, hadn't thought of it that way. Anyway, Lucian presses Grear for more details, but Grear either can't or won't provide them, so she leaves empty handed.
With Harrad cracking up, Grear starts getting desperate. Luckily Harry and Fred show up just now. Grear strips off her dress, and wearing only a thin robe, she approaches Harry. She grabs his hand through the bars, and... well, let's just say she demonstrates her eagerness for him to return that night to her cell with some heroin for Harrad. I gotta say, Grear doesn't really have this Queen Bitch act down pat. I mean, she's always putting her ass on the line (literally in this case) to get dope for Harrad. But it seems to me that the whole point of being top dog is that she could get Harrad to put out to get her whatever she wanted instead.
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| I don't have anything to say here... I just like pictures of sweaty women. |
Harry and Fred leave, with Harry determined to return that night. In the meantime, the other girls are in the hot box. The plan, apparently, is for Grear to put some wire into a pouch, tie it around the cat's body, and then send the cat out to find the others in the hot box. Considering Grear's hostility towards Alcott, you'd think they wouldn't trust her with such a crucial part in the plan.... In any case, this may seem like a fine plan to anyone who has never owed a cat. Cat owners, by contrast, know that the first thing said kitty would do is roll around until he got the damn pouch off, and then go off and chase a mouse before taking a long nap while the girls turned into prunes. Anyway, Grear's got bigger problems, namely the fact that Harrad's withdrawal symptoms push her over the edge, and when Grear turns her back for a second, Harrad plunges a shiv into her jugular. Ouch, I hate when that happens.
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| Collier, threatened by snakes |
While all this is going on, Lucian has again let down her hair in preparation for another torture session. This time, poor Collier is on the rack, and the torture involves a poisonous snake taped a mechanical arm which is counter-balanced by a jar of water that is gradually filling and lowering the snake. (Didn't King Tut try the same thing with Batman?) Lucian wants details about the escape plan, and paints a gruesome picture of the effects of snake venom. Collier responds by screaming for help, which is both an understandable and obviously ineffective response. Just to recap, so far we've seen the following tortures: Bodine was hung in a tiny cage ten feet off the ground in the sweltering sun, she was also given the wet cloth over the mouth treatment, and was then hung by her wrists and flogged; Alcott was electrocuted; Alcott, Bodine, and Ferina were placed in a steam room; and now Collier is strapped to a table naked and threatened with a snake. At one level, you've got to admire the sheer ingenuity of all this, even if at another level it is completely twisted.
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| The girls force Lucian to free them. |
Well, luckily for Collier the cat shows up right about now. The girls form the wire into a makeshift noose. They then call Lucian over by offering to tell her anything she wants to know. Lucian walks right up to the door, oblivious to the wire noose above her head. Now captured, Lucian opens the door rather than allow herself to be garroted. Bodine frees Collier just in time, and handcuffs Lucian to the rack leaving her to face the snake. Just then the mysterious masked watcher from before walks into the chamber. The girls quickly capture him and rip off the mask. Surprise! The mysterious watcher was none other than Warden Dietrich. Now armed with a Lucian's gun and a submachine gun, the girls also take the prison doctor hostage.
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| Warden Dietrich showing off the latest fashions from Paris. |
Now, as this is all going on, Harry and Fred have returned to the prison. Harry manages to get back to the cells by plying one of the guards with some sort of a potent native drink. But when he gets to Grear's cell, he, of course, finds her dead. Harry and Fred hightail it back to truck, only to find Alcott, Bodine, Collier, and Ferina hiding inside with the warden and doctor tied up in the back. Bodine orders Harry to drive them out of the prison, but as they are pulling out, Harrad stumbles out of her cell. When the guard sees her, she starts shooting, which alerts all the other guards to the escape in progress.
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| Alcott knows that it is important to motivate people in order to get top performance: Harry crashes the gate... |
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The girls think that they can use their hostages to force their way through the gate, but when they ungag the warden, she orders her guards to shoot the prisoners instead. Wow, now that is job commitment... especially since if they shoot the prisoners, they are bound to hit her too. Alcott order Harry to ram the gate. Harry refuses, saying that the gate is too strong. Undaunted, Alcott aims her pistol at Harry's crotch: "You won't die from this bullet Harry, but you'll wish you had." Now, I'm not a psychologist, but I think it is pretty obvious that Alcott has a few unresolved issues considering this is the second time she's threatened grievous harm to a man's privates this movie. As Harry is preparing to ram the gate, Ferina's cat jumps out of the truck. Ferina jumps out after it, and is promptly gunned down, just as Harry guns the engine and crashes through the gate.
The next scene has the truck parked by a running stream. The girls strip Harry and Fred of their clothes. Sitting by the stream, Bodine writes a note to her boyfriend. It turns out she took a bullet during the escape, and now she thinks she's going to die. While this is going on, the warden manages to loosen her handcuffs and gets a hold of a pistol. When Alcott comes to check on her, Dietrich gets the drop on her, and like any good villain throws away her advantage by making a long speech, which culminates in "You are an infection that must be wiped out." Dietrich pulls the trigger, but ha ha, the gun is empty. Now we get another glimpse into Alcott's twisted psyche as she orders Harry to rape the warden.
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| ...now ordering Harry to rape the warden. |
Before he's able to complete the act, however, army troops show up. They surround the truck and order the girls to surrender. Over by the stream, Bodine hands Collier the note for Rafael and asks her to deliver it. Collier refuses to leave Bodine, but Bodine slaps Collier across the face. "You stupid bitch, do what you're told!" she snaps. Collier gets the message and scurries off into the underbrush. Bodine, a submachine gun under each arm, jumps into the clearing and blasts most of the troops. Unfortunately, she doesn't get all of them, and in the ensuing fire fight both Alcott and Bodine get shot. One of the prison guards jumps into the truck to free Dietrich, but before she can, Alcott manages with her last gasp to throw a lighter on the gas leaking from the truck's shot-up fuel tank, sending it up in a big fire ball.
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| The climactic moments: Bodine goes Rambo (better legs though) and Alcott fries the warden. |
Collier, in the meantime, manages to make it out to a road. She stops a passing jeep and hops in. "Hi where are you headed?" the driver asks. "Anywhere you want to go," she replies brightly. Then the kicker, an obvious last minute voice-over add in: "Glad to hear you say that miss Collier, 'cause I'm taking you right straight back to prison. We've been looking for you all day." Cue closing credits.
So just to summarize the fates of the characters: Grear is killed by Harrad; Harrad is shot by the guard; Ferina is shot chasing after her cat; Bodine is killed in the final gun fight; Alcott is badly wounded in the same gun fight; Collier is taken back to prison; Lucian is killed by a poisonous snake; and Warden Dietrich is burned alive when the truck blows up. But despite that, the movie has a sort of light, campy style. It is certainly anything but morose, despite its ironic ending.
I'm sure you can see what I mean by its off-kilter sensibilities. The ironic ending, Alcott's constant intimidation of Harry and Fred, Bodine's laconic tough-guy role. If you cast this movie with men, you could almost get away with playing it straight (well some of the dialogue would have to go), and get a decent prison break movie out of it. But with women, it turns things upside down and skews the whole thing in interesting ways. In short, this is a really fun movie. It has all the women-in-prison standard features, and more. Definitely a classic of the genre.
One last note. This movie has been recently released on DVD, and it just looks great. The picture is sharp, colors bright, and soundtrack perfect. For those of you who may have seen this movie on video, it is worth another look. These Roger Corman drive-in movies were surprisingly well made given their limited budgets, quirky subject matter, and intended audience.
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(4.5 out of 5)