Girls in Prison

Sweet young songtress Aggie (Missy Crider) gets sent to a harsh women's prison after being found guilty of a murder she didn't commit……

Most of the laughs in the film are unintentional rather than written. Parts of this movie (especially the truly unbelievable climax) defy belief.

Some parts simply make no sense at all. It looks like this movie had no script, the actresses were told just to use whatever dialog they could think of.

The only scenes with quality in dialog, comes from Anne Heche. It looks like they were more her idea rather than scripted or directed. Heche is great as the bad girl and is the only one, who knows what she's doing. The lack of acting from the rest of the cast are sometimes good for a big laugh.

The movie has two graphic shower scenes. Although poorly filmed, the girls are nice to look at (Heche bares her gorgeous breasts).

Outside Heche the movie is really bad... and not to recommend....

There are two shower scenes where we are treated to incredible views of my favorite psychologist (Anne Heche from Prozac Nation) and the lovely Ione Skye. This was definitely not a CBS Schoolbreak Special with Missy Crider and TV regular Bahni Turpin.

Outside of these shower scenes was the cheesiest dialog that I have ever heard. I cannot believe this movie even had a script. I am sure the actresses were told just told use whatever cheesy prison dialog you can think of. It was painful to listen to. They threw in dialog about the Korean War and McCathyism to set the times, but it was just terrible.

It would have been a much better production if they had 80 minutes of shower scenes and 3 minutes of dialog, instead of the other way around.

This should be a campy, cheesy riot, an homage to exploitation films. Instead, it just is one. It seems they didn't feel like trying hard enough to make good schlock, and counted on the camp element to excuse the lack of quality on the serious level.

I thought that this would be like 'Mars Attacks' with shower scenes. There were two of those, and I have to say I enjoyed them. But as Joe Bob Briggs says, the plot gets in the way of the story.

Framed for the murder of a record company president in 1952 Hollywood, young, aspiring singer Aggie O'Hanlon (Missy Crider) is sentenced to life in prison and tries to adjust to her life behind bars in a hellish women's prison where she is befriended by other "lifer" inmates who help her out when Aggie finds herself marked for murder by an unknown source who thinks she knows more about the murder than she does.

From director John McNaughton, best known for "Henry Portrait of Serial Killer" and "Wild Things", and with one of his regular actors, Tom Towles. This seems far beneath McNaughton, but then, the series seemed far beneath everyone who was involved (Joe Dante, John Milius, Robert Rodriguez).

This was part of the "Rebel Highway" series that was supposed to be edgy updates of 1950s B-films. Most ended up being cheesy and campy rather than edgy, and this is no exception. Of course, much of this is the low budget (not much over one million) and McNaughton was lucky he happened to convince Sam Fuller to write the script -- Fuller was a genre writer whose work dated back to the 1930s. And there is a brief shower scene that would not have slid in the 50s... but the language is surprisingly clean for a prison.

Ione Skye has a decent sized part, and Anne Heche has a small but important role. For those looking for some star power, their interaction might be the highlight of the film. (Oddly, despite her impressive list of credits, Missy Crider does not seem to be considered a star.)

This one is worth watching just to see Anne Heche in the shower scene.