Le evase - Storie di sesso e di violenze

This movie has kind of a bad reputation, largely because people expect it to be an American WIP movie (it was released on video in a double bill with "Sweet Sugar") when really it is an Italian "terror film" along the lines of "Late Night Trains", "The Last House on the Beach", and the notorious "House by the Edge of the Park". These films, inspired by the seminal American horror movie "Last House on the Left", typically involve often young and always comfortably middle-class protagonists being held captive and/or terrorized by lower-class miscreants until they find the strength to fight back, often proving even more vicious than their tormentors. This film is an interesting variation on this in that the captives are a girls' tennis team being held in a judge's isolated villa and the tormentors are four escaped female convicts. And while some elements, like the Marxist terrorist leader of the gang, may seem strange to the terminal Americans out there, you have to remember this movie was made in Europe in the 1970's when the Bader-Meinhoff cells in Germany and Red Army cells in Italy were still running loose.

This movie is actually somewhat realistic with decent character development and pretty good acting (especially considering that two of the leads, Lili Karati and Dirce Funari, would later move to hardcore sex films, and two others, Zora Kerova and Marina D'Ania, were usually reduced to piece-of-tail supporting roles in the more vile Italian cannibal and Nazi prison camp flicks). It does, of course, have to make the standard nods to the demands of sexploitation--most of the female cast have (usually pretty gratuitous)nude scenes and there is a whole variety of ridiculous rape scenes--man by woman, woman by woman, the female Marxist terrorist by a bourgeois judge (the latter is either incisive political commentary or a sorry excuse to get the luscious Lili Karati naked again). On the other hand, this movie is nowhere near as violent or harrowing as many films of it's kind (it's a Disney film compared to "House by the Edge of the Park"). It's kind of like "Terror Express" with its over-the-top sexscapades, but more realistic with a nice cynical ending. It's a decent movie if you know what you're in for, even though it will probably disappoint American WIP fans.

JAILBIRDS is a movie whose storyline is appealing for sick fans like me : 4 women who just broke out of prison get a lift from a bus full of young and innocent female tennis players. They take hostages and bring them all into a judge's house. Then the fun begins.

Beautifully photographed, but badly written and poorly acted, this "carceral drama" mixes a political content with some gratuitous sex and rape scenes. We get to see every actress undress and I wouldn't complain if it wasn't so softcore...

The music, as I recall, is hilarious, and the ending is not really surprising. Well, this one's not bad but it is just another of those numerous 70's plotless softcore sleaze numbers... For lovers only.

ATTENTION : In Canada, the movie is released under the title WOMEN AGAINST WOMEN as well as under the title VIOLEZ LES OTAGES! - and I know that cuz I've been ripped off, I bought both...

Wow! What a great movie! Why has nobody heard of this one? It was released as a double bill tape with SWEET SUGAR, but the tape doesn't contain any credits for the film besides the title. It does seem to be an Italian release, but I'm not sure whether it was made in 1974, though: there's a reference in the film to one of the characters being in prison since 1975. Maybe it was dubbed into English after 1975. Who knows?

This is one taut, zippy (70 minutes) and surprisingly political thriller, with enough sex, nudity, lesbianism, rape, violence and murder to please any exploitation fan. The movie begins with a gang of sex starved Communist revolutionaries on the run from a prison break. They hijack a bus load of nubile tennis players and hold them hostage at a mansion owned by the bourgeois capitalist judge who put the girls away in the first place. Amazing stuff. Rent it now!

This is one grubby little flick with four girl prison escapees hijacking a coach load of female tennis players. Lilli Carati (The Alcove and To Be Twenty) stars and is lovely throughout whilst seemingly everyone in the film, takes their clothes off at some point, even the judge who rapes the star! Lots of running about and fighting plus the aforementioned undressing to keep the interest but whilst the pseudo intellectual political chat may have seemed 'right on' in 1978 it is a real embarrassment now. We get the odd twist and turn but really it is all rather predictable and it only just manages to keep going.

With the undertitle "a story of sex and violence", this Last House on the Left-type exploitationer doesn't excuse itself. A very cheap production with unknown actors (lots of women in hotpants and disco dues and men with greasy moustaches and tight blue jeans... Zora Zerova was the only actor I recognized) and dull photography in brown, grey and orange color schemes. The story is about a couple of female convicts, a leftwing political terrorist and her jaded band of robbers, whores and dykes, who've escape from prison and hide out at a luxurious mansion where they hold a judge and a female basketball team hostage. The schtick being, of course, that its the females that bring the terror and havoc this time around! Highlights include female-on-female rape, the gals forcing the judge to pee his pants, forced dogfood-eating and of course lots of nasty, hateful dialogue! Not the strongest or best in its genre, but I liked it, these nasty Italian disco era exploitation flicks are always enjoyable at worst (and from all the wrong reasons).