Scrubbers

I saw this expecting the typical WIP exploitation. Unfortunately it is a story told with a bleak reality and stark setting. I also hate to say this, but the girl whose child is in a convent , is so obnoxious that all we wish for is to have ill fall upon her. Yes she is also included in the worst slow motion sequence ever filmed. It looks like the girls were moving slow while filming at normal speed to get the action right then it was going to be sped up to look a vicious beating in real time. Someone forgot yo speed up the sequence and it looks like my kids playing super heroes in the back yard moving in super slo-mo. Actually my kids have better " mad skills". Yet I digress, on with the positive... This is a pretty good movie with solid performances with a few interesting story lines. The most exploitive part is that all the girls are attractive and obviously haggled up for their roles. I gave this a 7 because it was earnest and interesting...it is not " Prison a go go, or reform school girls, but if you want to watch women's OZ, then this is your flick.

Caught this years ago at a Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. They showed it along with "Scum" which dealt with the horrors of teenage male prisoners in England. This deals with women in prison.

The film focuses on two women who escape--one (Annetta) wants to visit her baby daughter who is being raised in a convent. The other (Carol) wants to be recaptured and sent to a prison where her girlfriend is. They're both recaptured but Annetta wrongly assumes that Carol ratted on her. Then they're both sent to the same prison and Annetta seeks revenge. It all leads to a depressing ending.

Grim and brutal. There's no humor and no letup in the tension. All the actresses are (pretty obviously) too old to be playing 20 year olds but their acting is so good I was able to ignore it. Worth catching. Trying seeing it with "Scum" which is even more disturbing.

Outstanding English-language effort by the great Swedish actor/director Mai Zetterling (anyone who have seen her brilliant Night Games will agree she kicks Bergman's sorry ass!).

Although the video box art tried to sell it off as a cheap Women-In-Prison-exploitation flick, it is really serious stuff. As other commentators have pointed out the film share a lot of similarity with Alan Clarke's grim masterpiece Scum, even sharing the same screenwriter. The main difference is that Scrubbers takes place in an all-women juvenile prison, making it both a great complement to Clarke's film and an interesting study of the differences of the sexes in the patriarchal society. Didn't sound that interesting, did it? Well, it really is when you think about it! For instance, how do the girls behavior to one another differ from the boys? How do girls backgrounds, views of themselves and reason for inprisonment differ? What issues do the girls from Scrubbers lack, that the boys from Scum has to deal with, and vice versa. It's really interesting.

The film is well-acted, well-scripted, thought-provoking and unpleasant. A must-see if you like your movies hard and unembellished. 8/10

NOTE FOR NON-ENGLISH VIEWERS: I saw a non-subtitled copy Scrubbers, and although this usually is no problem for me, in this case I had some trouble understanding parts of the dialouge. My American-born girlfriend had the same problem. Unless you've majored in ugly working-class English, local swearwords or prison-jive I would advise to see a subtitled version.

I saw this film on cable recently and remembered how bad it was the first time I saw it.

The story is about female delinquents locked up in an English borstal in the early eighties.

This film blatantly 'borrows' from the film Scum with Ray Winstone and I mean blatant - there's the cut-wrist suicide from one of the more unstable inmates, the hard-nut - Eddie (who replaces Scum's Ray Winstone), and the scene where an attack is made in a deserted part of the compound with a steel bar - Scrubbers version features a slow-motion sequence which is obviously faked!

The only reasons for watching this garbage is to see early roles from Kathy 'I'm smoking a fag!' Burke from the 'Harry Enfield Show', Robbie Coltrane and 'Pat' from 'Eastenders'. As well as many a naked pair of breasts - which make the movie watchable - just.

Verdict - One for the lads.

Oi Oi savaloy!

Just reminds me a bit of bad girls but squashed into a film so it doesn't really make sense.

Passed about of time so I can't complain as I've saw worse and am subjected to worse on a nightly basis with soaps.

Probably wouldn't watch it again.