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It's made of concrete and bamboo in a "fucking banana republic," the playthings within toil and revolt and escape until the jungle outside returns them. The newest addition to the penitentiary is the trophy wife (Judy Brown), amid her cellmates is the political prisoner (Pat Woodell), the lush snitch (Pam Grier) and the dazed junkie (Brooke Mills) who does interpretative pirouettes once she gets her fix. The tough blonde (Roberta Collins) is named after the author of Little Women, famished for male companion she corners a deliveryman (Jerry Franks) with shiv in hand: "Get it up or I'll cut it off!" Showers and floggings are constant, labor in the fields is interrupted by bouts of mud wrestling and machine-guns negotiate "a high wall and a hard run." For his rough hothouse atmosphere, Jack Hills avails himself of Cromwell's Caged, Stalag 17 and, when the fellows are around, the nympho ward from Shock Corridor. (Sid Haig feels the force of Grier's cooch through the bars, "it's like a vise.") The heroines appropriate masculine violence for their survival, the villainesses have their identities ruled by it—the sadistic head guard (Kathryn Loder) keeps a torture chamber stocked with dangling cobras, the warden (Christiane Schmidtmer) vacillates between concerned principal and masked commandant on top of a barbed-wire throne. A rip-snorting production of the Corman school, filmed by Hill with a luxuriant eye for the Philippines, an appreciation for offhand poesy ("Don't let your alligator mouth override your humming-bird ass"), and a rather Sirkian handling of actresses. "Well look at me, I'll never be free..." (Tarantino's Jackie Brown). With Gina Stuart, Jack Davis, and Letty Mirasol.
--- Fernando F. Croce |