Les gardiennes du pénitencier

"What do we do now?" "Let's get undressed" Jailhouse Wardress is a bit of a mess in terms of story, at the end of World War 2 a high ranking Nazi SS officer flees to South Africa and becomes the cruel governor of a bizarre women's jail, an assassination plot is made to kill him. The bulk of the film looks 1970's/early 80's but our villain hasn't aged a day since 1945, either he has some miracle anti-ageing potion or the makers didn't give a hoot about making the time setting look convincing. There are two directors credited, Alain Deruelle, who specialised in pornography, and Spanish legend Jess Franco, known for his many horror films though he too dabbled in adult movies. I am a fan of Jess, even his bad movies and this falls into that category. He gives his usual cameo appearance , his real life lover Lina Romay is one of the stars in this flick. The prison is an old coastal castle, the location is quite nice but there are only a handful of inmates and the governor's office looks like it was filmed in somebody's lounge! The editing is bad, the dubbing is terrible and it is obvious that the film was put together using footage from other movies, the picture quality varying quite a lot. Yes, it is very flawed but let's be honest there is only one reason to watch this women in prison/Nazisploitation thriller and that is for the sex and nudity, of which there is a great deal. Full frontal female nudity throughout, some of the men get in on the action too but as was so typical back then - with one exception - the guys get to keep their clothes on! Also back then the "natural look" was in which makes the nudity look dated. The Euro musical score is easy on the ears and I did like seeing the exotic plants outside of the prison but the sex novelty soon wore off and gave up with the "plot".

Naziploitation/WIP flic that's almost entirely made up of footage from three other movies; Hitler's Last Train, Captive Women 4 (AKA Elsa: Fraulein SS) and Jess Franco's Caged Women (AKA Barbed Wire Dolls). The 'plot' involves a former SS officer who escapes to 'somewhere in Latin America' where he becomes the manager of a women's prison. Whilst we get a little more of that in the middle, and some at the end, the rest of the movie is spent on how the women are abused by the guards, relationships between the inmates, and their backstories. All these are actually from different movies; some characters' 'flashbacks' don't even feature the same actresses! The titular wardress spends the whole film strutting about wearing a monocle, khaki shirt, and the shortest shorts imaginable, whilst the escaped Nazi spends a lot of time doting on his model soldier collection; not the first bad guy to be shown doing that - except that these are very obviously those all-green molded plastic kids toys that usually come in bags of about 30.

The music in just about every scene is ludicrously inappropriate (funky jazz score during rape, rolling classical piano during a fight between two inmates). And there's a scene that has to be seen to be believed - actually lifted straight from the Franco film; during one flashback we see an inmate fighting-off her uncle (played by Franco himself) who is attempting to rape her. Eventually she pushes him, he strikes his head, and falls to the floor. The whole thing is in slowmotion, EXCEPT... for some unfathomable reason, instead of filming in slowmotion they actually had the actors PERFORM in slowmotion! This 'impactful' scene is literally laughable - especially when the two players start moving at different speeds! Whilst Franco is still slowmo-ing down to the floor (hamming it up for all he's worth) she's running off at normal speed - in the same shot!

As far as genre expectations go there's a lot of full nudity/sex, and a middling amount of violence.

An awful film - but the laughs made it worthwhile. 5/10.

Jailhouse Wardress (1979)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

A real mess of a WIP picture from Eurocine actually has about 2% new footage and the rest is taken from other movies including HITLER'S LAST TRAIN, ELSA FRAULEIN SS and Jess Franco's BARBED WIRE DOLLS. The new "plot" has a SS officer and his girlfriend traveling to South America after the end of WW2. A special agents goes after them. That "new" plot only lasts for a couple minutes so that pretty much tells you all you need to know. I'm going to guess that this new footage was meant to be an entire film but the studio ran out of money, shut down the production and then just edited it in with other footage to create this mess. Fans of naziploitation really don't have too many reasons to check this out as the three other movies are all available uncut so you might as well watch all of them instead of this edited down mess. Fans of Jess Franco are the main ones who will want to check this out for a couple reasons. The biggest is that the majority of the film is footage from BARBED WIRE DOLLS, the ultimate WIP film, and the dubbing here is of course different and this is why you will want to check it out. If you're familiar with the original film then it's rather funny seeing how they've changed the dialogue and in some cases made it even funnier. Remember the scene in BARBED WIRE DOLLS where Lina Romay kills her father (played by Franco) after he comes onto her sexually? Well, that scene is here with the alternate dialogue and it will having laughing out loud. Outside of that entertainment, this film is a pretty big zero as it doesn't make a bit of sense and the only real reason to watch is trying to figure out which scenes belong to which movie.

I bought this film thinking it was the 1975 Jess Franco video nasty/women in prison flick 'Women Behind Bars', so I was quite disappointed when I found it wasn't (especially considering that, if it was, I'd now only be left with 'I Miss You, Hugs and Kisses' to see before I've seen everything on the DPP list). Anyway, given my experience of Women in Prison films, I would guess that this film and Franco's Nasty are probably about on par in terms of quality. This one seems to have a bit more of a Nazi theme going on, though as you would probably expect; association with one of the worst genres ever seen in cinema doesn't do this film any favours! The plot is just your usual mix of sadism and torture, this time coupled with an escape plan. It's not intelligent stuff, and it's also rather boring, especially for someone like me who has seen far too many of these films. The film drones on for about eighty five minutes and the ending really isn't worth waiting for. While 'Women Behind Bars' probably isn't any better than this film, I do wish I'd seen that one instead as at least there would have been a point to me watching. There's no point at all in seeing this film so I don't recommend it!

"Women in Prison" and "Nazi-Exploitation" are, hands down, the two absolute most worthless sub genres in horror/cult cinema. I should know because I've seen way too many of them. Apart from a few notable worthwhile classics, like "Chained Heat" and "Ilsa – She Wolf of the SS", all these movies are dull and overly provocative rehashes with the exact same derivative themes and taboos over and over again. Moreover, a lot of these films even shameless copy entire sequences of other films and blatantly paste without even bothering about the fact actors and filming locations look entirely different. That's just downright lame and insulting to your audience. "Jailhouse Wardress" is yet another 100% insignificant and worthless piece of exploitation garbage that plagiarizes no less than three (equally insignificant and worthless) pieces of exploitation garbage. A former Nazi big shot manages to escape to South America near the end of WWII, but he isn't exactly looking to keep a low profile. On a tropical island he becomes the managing director of a women penitentiary where, of course, the inmates are exhibitionist lesbians and the wardens are sadist perverts. There are a handful of potentially interesting story lines, like a plot to assassinate the Nazi and a pretty blonde inmate on a quest for vengeance, but they all lead absolutely nowhere and instead the cameras are more interested in the hideous and overly hairy naked body of a couple of elderly lesbians. The sex sequences are boring beyond words and the efforts to make the villains look purely evil are truly hilarious! A monocle?!? Please! Someone has seen one too many James Bond movies! One to avoid at all costs, but I assume that won't be much of a problem.