Amazon Hot Box

From the same director of Dear God No! And Frankenstein Created Bikers, this film has a similar feel yet feels a little lesser and more rushed than FCB.

The story starts off relatively simple yet things seem to happen and move quite quickly. With a much shorter runtime than Bikers, Amazon Hot Box doesn't provide much of anything special.

Ellie Church gets top billing as she was the highlight. Tristan Risk plays the lead prisoner women and does a solid job. Jett Bryant is essentially the same character as he was previously with no depth given.

Nothing memorable about this film, save for a lengthy women's prison fight. Everything is quite toned down in comparison to James Bickert's previous films, the violence and gore, the nudity and the overall craziness. The ending was also very bizarre and ending the way it did with no real explanation.

We have a word here in Sweden that describes this movie perfectly.

The word i'm thinking of is "Dynga".

If you don't know what that word means - just simply avoid this movie and watch something good instead.

Why they want to make this film. They have no point for this and they are blind i believe.

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.

So here's the thing. 'Amazon hot box' is an homage to, parody of, and successor to exploitation flicks of decades past, primarily of the "women in prison" variety. In that aim, it is both as over the top as it possibly can be, and as inauthentic as it possibly can be. This goes for dialogue, fight scenes, special effects, acting, hair, makeup, set design, filming locations ("South American prison? That looks like a US state park... Oh. No, it's actually a US national park."), scene writing, character writing, humor, costume design, music, editing, sequencing, pacing, internal continuity, plot reveals, overall narrative, and more. Every aspect of this movie is excruciating - not exciting, not funny, not stimulating, not genuine, not meaningful, not impactful, not satisfying. In the rare, fleeting instance that a good idea is briefly latched onto, that idea is taken a step too far and rendered inert. In the rare, fleeting instance that a modicum of value is discovered, it is not allowed to linger, neither in the film nor in our imaginations.

And yet every passing moment of this picture - however exaggerated, lackluster, seedy, or otherwise dubious - is 100% deliberate. The truly absolute tedium that 'Amazon hot box' represents is realized only with the greatest of effort - cast and crew alike obviously wanted to make this exactly the way it is. A job well done, I suppose; that goal was undeniably accomplished. But why? To what actual end? Does that foulest of cinematic intent mean that 'Amazon hot box' is actually perfect? That's a question of semantics, I suppose. But perfection means nothing if it fails to elicit anything that could be interpreted as a favorable response from a viewer.

Incredibly, this isn't the worst movie I've ever watched. Backwards as it may be, the passionate labor put into producing this passionless pablum shines through. That includes, for a prime example, performances that are astoundingly inelegant in their superficial overtness or deficiency. It takes a lot of work to ham it up this much, and though directed to a wholly unconventional end, I think the cast demonstrate their skill in the most perplexing way. And so it is for all other elements of 'Amazon hot box' - bizarrely capable as it bears fruit harvested only to rot. But that still doesn't make it any fun. That still doesn't make it worth watching. The purpose is clear; I just don't understand it. I suppose if one is an especial fan of someone in the cast, or direly curious, then there is an actual reason to watch this. For anyone else at all - most assuredly not.