Savage Island

If you are into women-in-prison films, "Escape from Hell" in any good copy near the 89 minute Italian/Spanish original, would entitle you to watch the most erotic, and violent, nude lesbian fight - for possession of the third girl in a cell, between black Ajita Wilson and queen-bee Cintia Lodetti; and a gun duel between the same black fugitive and a Nazi female warden (Christina Lay?) to a mutual gory death. Both fights are at close quarters, and filmed in crude detail, which explains so many "director's cuts" of this film, for different markets.

Rightfully atrocious. "Orinoco-Prison Of Sex" (a.k.a. "Escape From Hell") was an Italian-Spanish women-as-slaves-on-a-South-American-island-who-revolt thing, brought stateside in 1985, christened with a new title and spiced with fresh footage of Linda Blair as a vengeful "ex-employee." Those looking for some hot nude scenes and/or violent confrontations between sexy women in loincloths are bound to be disappointed (the Italian footage is dark, muddy, and un-erotic--not to mention coy, it cuts away at the best parts). As for Blair, she's amusing wrapped in cheap fur, packing heat and ordering her former captor around with a snarl. But, alas, Linda is once again stuck in a turkey. NO STARS from ****

Gun-toting babe Daly (Linda Blair) seeks revenge for the pain and suffering endured in a prison camp on a tropical island, where the prisoners are forced to dig for emeralds.

Linda Blair gets top billing and is front and centre on the poster for Savage Island, but the actress only appears in the bookend scenes, and provides an occasional voiceover to try and bring some kind of cohesion to the film's sloppy, central women-in-prison narrative, which has been clumsily edited together from footage from two older films - Escape from Hell and Hotel Paradise (both 1980). Penn Jillette, of Penn and teller fame, also appears in the opening scene, but don't expect him to bring any kind of magic to proceedings: he is shot in the head by Blair within the first minute or so.

Daly explains that, while the women of the island dug for precious gems, a gang of rebels planned to free the prisoners, but this plot-line is difficult to keep track of thanks to cruddy editing, diabolical dubbing, night scenes that are virtually pitch black, and because it is impossible to work out who are the good guys and who are the baddies (with at least one guy - the Tom Savini clone - apparently fighting for both sides). The bulk of the film consists of standard women-in-prison nonsense - communal showers, catfights, sadistic guards etc. - but even with frequent nudity from lots of young women (and transexual actress Ajita Wilson), and the occasional spot of violence, the film is still an unbearable dud.

The jungle bound action ends with the women and the rebels making a bid for freedom, pursued by the prison guards, which leads to some bloody bullet hits, and my favourite scene of the whole sorry mess: a girl falls into some water and emerges covered in leeches, so another of the women grabs a shotgun and blasts leech girl in the stomach, apparently to save her from an even worse death. I didn't even know that leeches were fatal.

The film concludes with Linda shooting the owner of the island with a machine gun and taking his fortune in jewels. How she smuggled an automatic firearm past the man's bodyguard is never explained (the idiot pays for his incompetence with his life - serves him right).

2/10. One of the worst WIP films I have seen.

There's no getting around it: this one is trash of the most wretched, yet irresistible, variety. It takes two existing movies - "Orinoco: Prigioniere del Sesso" and "Femmine Infernali" (both 1980) - and tries to combine them into one "story". This story deals with scantily clad female prisoners in South America who are forced into being slave labour, and searching for emeralds. Some mercenaries come to their aid.

About 10 minutes of new framing material was shot featuring Linda Blair, who didn't want to deceive people into thinking she was the star, despite being prominently featured in the promotional materials. Linda plays Daly, out to seek revenge on dastardly businessman Luker (Leon Askin).

As you might imagine, this gets pretty incoherent, and after a while some viewers may just give up trying to make any sense of things and just go with the flow. The archive footage is plenty sleazy, and will very much satisfy the exploitation loving crowd. There is a lot of full frontal female nudity, and a fair bit of violence. Not only do people get shot, but they fall victim to snakes and leeches as well. The poor quality of the picture is certainly appropriate for this kind of material.

Linda and Leon are fun, as are a number of the foreign performers in the original movies. Among those you may recognize are Anthony Steffen, Ajita Wilson, and Luciano Pigozzi. Hell, there's even a cameo role for none other than Penn Jillette, as a not very competent security guard.

The violence, nudity, and frequent action scenes help to ensure that, while this may be dumb, it isn't boring.

Five out of 10.

Women who have been captured and sold as slave labor to a South American emerald mine hatch a plan for revolution and revenge.

What this film consists of is footage from "Escape from Hell" (1980) and "Hotel Paradise" (also 1980) spliced together with a new wraparound featuring Linda Blair. The new wraparound is directed by Nicholas Beardsley... but who is Nicholas Beardsley?

Of course, the new version makes no sense because the characters do not match up. The fact it is even comprehensible at all is something of a miracle. (Apparently Charles Band had a hand in creating this, but I am not sure the details on that.)

The two films this came from were both directed by Edoardo Mulargia ("Don't Wait, Django... Shoot!") and written by Sergio Chiusi ("SS Experiment Love Camp"), so if any credit is deserved, it should go to them. But why not just watch their real films?

Sadly, the quality is terrible (even on the Shout Factory release) and I suspect there is not much that can be done about that because the footage clearly did not come from original negatives.