Homage to/parody of/new entry in the 1980s 'women in prison' trash-flick genre.
"An innocent college student who is in South America to 'save the turtles' is tossed into a jungle hellhole where she must fight for her life against an evil depraved wardress in the style of Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS, perverse psycho inmates, voodoo experiments and the incredible torture machine. Features insane amounts of nudity, violence and gore, including hearts getting ripped out, genital mutilation, throat slashings, stabbings, shootings, torture, and nude shower fist fights."
It's obviously very low budget. There are no 'names' in the cast (although all the main actors have a background in horror or exploitation B movies), and the majority of performances are barely passable, but there are two real standouts; Ellie Church (superbly channelling the late Dyanne Thorne) as sadistic wardress Inga Von Krupp, and Jett Bryant as a hapless dope smuggler named... Jett Bryant(!). Bryant is a dead ringer for an older, not so tall, Jason Momoa, and he's just so God-damn entertaining. He also wrote and sings the song over the end credits. Talented guy.
Technically the gore is there, although most of it is more cartoonish than shocking, and not all of it is directly shown. Some of the fight choreography is poor, in a way that almost feels deliberate, although parts of the shower fight are pretty good. The end result is that - for better, or worse - it really does have a feel of the films it's aping. There's also a strangely touching montage sequence near the end where we get to see the fates of most of the principal characters. Oh, and there are zombies.
It's really hard to rate it. Just judging it on quality of film making the current IMDb rating of 3.9 seems fair (maybe a little low). But if I was to rate it on how much I enjoyed it I'd maybe go with a 7.
Entertaining if you like trashy 'women in prison' flicks (and who doesn't enjoy a trashy 'women in prison' flick at least once in a while?). On reflection I'll stick with 7/10.
