Femmes en cages

NOTE: This review was written and published (in print!) in 1990, pre-IMDb, and when this movie had floating around video stores on VHS tape for several years.

• - - - - - -

As a double bill, Oswaldo de Oliveira's AMAZON JAIL and Jess Franco's HELLHOLE WOMEN can't be beat. They're practically identical.

In AMAZON JAIL, some nubile (and, for the most part, suspiciously not lesbian) slave-chicks have been abducted from gawd-knows-where by an evil slaver who looks a lot like David Crosby on a pure Crisco diet. He in turn sells them to the highest bidder during orgies he holds in his Italian-deco living room. Here, more slobbering fat guys shove their faces into the continually shimmying asses of the limboing lovelies.

Of course, where there's women being dominated, there's always a subset who're just itchin' for liberation. So would you after several days of sex through bamboo cage bars. The broad squad heads out into the jungle, where they survive by sweating, arguing, and revealing their breasts to nature.

AMAZON JAIL is so cheap it makes the similarly rated HELLHOLE WOMEN (and most Jess Franco sleaze for that matter) look like a masterpiece of eroticism. Plenty of zooms and out-of-focus shots means you can tell your parents (who're bound to catch you watching this crap) that this piece-o-crap is art! The english dubbing (done in Berlin) seems to frequently disagree with the action on screen. As with HELLHOLE WOMEN, AMAZON JAIL often feels like it might have originated as hardcore piece of Brazilian adventure-sleaze edited down to softcore Brazilian adventure-sleaze, but alas we may never know.

Plenty of skin and lots of gruelling babes-in-the-woods material do not a B-movie make, though. If this wasn't so damned derivative and predictable, it might be a good rental. HELLHOLE WOMEN tries much more valiantly to achieve trashdom and largely succeeds. Since these flicks should be judged equally by their shock values - gratuitous tits, lesbians and chicks-in-chains - AMAZON JAIL just doesn't cut it.

Sexy Brazilian women are lured to the Amazon with a promise of a high paying job as a tour guide.When they arrive,they are taken captive by a white slavery ring.One of the girls escapes during the orgy,but she is killed in the jungle.Meanwhile,the gals in the corral make their big break and escape into the jungle."Amazon Jail" by Oswaldo De Oliviera is an absolute sleaze.The script is ridiculous,the acting is utterly bad,the characters are one-dimensional,but who cares.The film provides tons of full-frontal nudity and sleaze,so as a exploitation fan I wasn't disappointed.It is loaded with lesbian sex,showers,cat fights and naked women in the jungle.A must-see for fans of WIP flicks set in the jungle.7 out of 10.

Lured by bogus employment proposals women are kidnapped and forced into sex slavery for wealthy businessmen who fly deep into the Amazon jungle to satisfy their lust. The mastermind of this operation is a man by the name of "Edgar" (Sergio Hingst) and along with his wife "Helena" (Elizabeth Hartman) they represent the dregs of humanity and seem only interested in fulfilling their carnal desires. Yet while their debauchery continues night and day the leader of the imprisoned women, "Betty" (Sandra Graffi), has come up with a daring plan to escape. At any rate, so much for the general plot which might have amounted to something if the director (Osvaldo de Oliveira) had made even a half-hearted attempt to create something bordering on average. Instead, all this movie offers has to offer is nudity, sex and more nudity. Now, considering that some of the women--most notably Elys Cardoso (as "Liz"), Shirley Benny ("Mary") and the aforementioned Sandra Graffi--weren't at all bad-looking, this film certainly had possibilities. But the acting and the script were extremely basic, and it lacked the necessary character development and direction required for even a mediocre film. In essence, the entire movie seemed created simply to set up one sexual scenario after another with no concern at all for a quality picture. That said, while I appreciate the efforts of the young ladies who graced the screen, I still must rate this movie as below average.

Oswaldo de Oliveira made this film a couple of years after he made his awful Bare Behind Bars. One would think that he would have learned from his mistakes and he did, but unfortunately, not much. There is the obligatory nudity at various junctures and the rampant lesbianism that seems to take over any hot young girl who gets locked up with any other hot young girl, or who just happen to splash about in a jungle stream.

There is a plot of sorts to this film. The girls actually manage to escape but these girls just cannot strike it lucky, running foul of more human traffickers and an illegal mining operation. The one good guy gets some men to launch a rescue mission but they seem as useless as everyone else's acting ability.

It takes more than a lot of nudity to make a good film although some may say that lots of nudity makes a good film. Some scenes were overly long, especially the dancing scene that ended up as an orgy scene that also went on too long. If you want sleaze and do not mind the failures in all the other departments of film making, then give it a go.

Young women are kidnapped in the amazon by Brazilian satanists, whose goal is to sell them to the highest foreign bidder. Some of the girls manage to escape but are pursued by their captors. In order to gain their freedom, the girls must outwit their captors. Bringing the film to a sleazy climax. Lots of nudity, lesbianism, and chessy dance numbers, the usual stuff you see in a good WIP film. Thats 'Women in Prison' for all you cinema illiterates.