Chain Gang Women

"Georgia" looked a lot like the semi-arid landscape of So California, the accents were bad and the title is extremely misleading. But as a Roger Corman fan, and the kind of person who would buy a movie called "Chain Gang Women", I pretty much got what I expected. It'll kill an hour and a half and you won't feel bad about yourself. Goes well with bourbon and a cigar.

Neither woman is on a chain gang, and neither one appears until half-way into the film. Our two "heroes" are (English teachers: here's a way to teach the difference between protagonist and hero) on the chain gang until they escape and find two women. I am a fan of sexploitation, but there just wasn't enough in this. The film is worth watching for the charming quad-split-screen effect maximized so beautifully in "Time Code." Lower all expectations--as if merely agreeing to see a movie entitled "Chain Gang Women" weren't enough--and enjoy.

This is pure advertising 101 right here. You have a movie about a boring prison and two unappealing convicts that escape when the lone lardass sheriff is attacked on said chain gang. If the story was good and the action well paced then you would bill this as "Chain Gang Convicts" or "Escape from Prison Hell". Or you can look at your finished product, lament over what you created, and bill it as something it is not. Voila! You now have Chain Gang Women. I truly pity the poor dupe that paid for a ticket expecting titillation via semi-nude forlorn beauties in prison only to watch this crap. The first half-hour of this tripe is spent inside of a Georgian prison that looks eerily like southern California where we meet Harris who has six months to go until he is a free man. Harris has been sent to this labor camp to finish the rest of his prison term. While there he is chained/partnered with the brutish murderer Weed who is eager to escape. I thought of escaping too by the time they get around to fleeing the prison. On the lam we finally get to see one of the two, count em' two women in this movie as the convicts hide in Harris' wife's house where she is promptly raped by Weed. Charming. After securing a change of clothes the trio attempts to go north to Atlanta in hopes of evading the dragnet. When that fails they resort to strong-arming the inhabitants of a farmhouse and wait the rest of the night out. Here we meet the second and by far the most bizarre of our women as the very young beauty is apparently married to Colonel Sanders. This poor girl not only has to kiss this decrepit old man but also gets to become Weed's second rape victim in two days. Had enough "chain gang women"? Good, because there is no more much like the plot of this movie that ends with a bang. Offscreen of course. How this movie was named Chain Gang Women in the first place is beyond me but the fact that it was retitled Women in Chains in England is even more mind boggling! A better title would have been Coma Induced Audience.

Theoretically speaking, nothing should be simpler and more straightforward than (s)exploitation movies from the 1970s! The title should pretty much summarize the entire plot and furthermore there should only be a lot of sleaze, violence, naked women and filthy male pigs. Show the movie poster of "Chain Gang Women" to 100 neutral persons, and at least 99 of them will estimate that it's a by-the-numbers "Women in Prison" (WIP) grindhouse/exploitation effort. But this is where Lee Frost and Wes Bishop fooled us all! "Chain Gang Woman" is NOT a 'women in prison' flick. Heck, it's not even a regular prison thriller but a sort of dreadfully boring prison musical! The seemingly never-ending first half of the film exists of nothing but footage of male prisoners working in the middle of Georgia nowhere to the sound of dire country music songs. Eventually there's an outbreak, but don't start hoping for any action or rancid sleaze just yet. There are only 2 (TWO!) women in this dumb movie and sadly they confirm all the ghastly rape fantasy cliches. None of the male protagonists has any macho charisma, neither of the females has any sex-appeal and the entire film is boring, boring, boring... There are literally hundreds of worthwhile 70s exploitation classics out there, and numerous of them actually feature the stuff that you expected to see in "Chain Gang Women", so please don't waste your precious time on this dreck.

This is a classic example of the worst sort of stuff used to hook in the grind-house crowd back in the 70's. Its title, poster and trailer would have been used to sell it but of course the movie itself bears no relevance to what could reasonably be expected from a film entitled Chain Gang Women. It's an escape convict movie with two women in minor roles in the latter half of the film. And not a very interesting escape convict movie at that. The acting is of course awful and the sexploitation element negligible. There are a couple of rape scenes where the women seem virtually disinterested in being sexually assaulted; which makes it less grimy but overall pretty ridiculous. The film totters on from scene to scene with very little dynamism until it ends with an ending that is, to say the least, underwhelming. So there's not a lot to recommend here to be perfectly honest. The most interesting element of the film is the quad-screen segments, and the soundtrack was pretty appropriate I guess. Other than that, it's strictly limited thrills and spills in this one I'm afraid.