Emmanuelle - A Detenta

This film has been identified in some secondary sources as an alternate title for the one released in US as CAGED WOMEN but they are in fact different, though not *too* different. For the greater part, WIP fans do prefer "the mixture, as before," without innovations, though it helps if there is a plot more coherent than the average Jess Franco production.

In this outing, Laura Gemser is not Emanuelle, doing undercover journalism at a prison, but rather a hard con doing time. Lorraine de Selle is still on staff and still has that hooker underwear she modeled in CAGED WOMEN, and best of all, the haystack hair blonde and skinny teenish brunette are both doing 20-life here too. The blonde looks as if she's eaten a little lasagna since the previous picture. Her opening scene finds her wearing nothing but *tight* kini panties, over which her tummy roll hangs enticingly. Wow! (scene is 'way too short.)

Here, dangerous male cons are temporarily housed in the women's lockup, but they get loose and a riot ensues -- at least when they're not having sex with horny femme cons who haven't seen a man since the Aldo Moro administration. No shower scene in my video copy, which is always a drawback, though it does feature a weird theatrical presentation by the inmates, for the inmates. (And you thought WEEDS was an original idea!) OK of its type.

"Emanuelle" (Laura Gemser) is a journalist who has been setup and sent to prison by "District Attorney Robinson" (Jacques Stany) because she was getting too close to exposing his corruption. Yet even in prison he considers her to be too dangerous and so he conspires with the prison warden named "Colleen" (Lorraine De Selle) to have her killed before she can be released. To do that Colleen turns to the most vicious prisoner there by the name of "Albina" (Ursula Flores). However, as luck would have it 4 extremely violent men are sent to that same prison awaiting execution and they manage to take over the prison. When they do all hell breaks loose and nobody is safe from them. Now rather than reveal any more of the story and risk ruining it for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this movie seemed to have potential but the low budget and over-acting really stood out and greatly weakened the overall effect. Likewise, although it contained quite a bit of nudity there wasn't much passion or eroticism to really make much of an impression either. That said other than the performance of Laura Gemser I didn't see anything that remarkable about this film and I rate it as below average.

"Emanuelle in Prison" is rather a variation than a sequel to „Violenza in un carcere femminile": even though Laura Gemser plays the same part as Emanuelle, Gabriele Tinti plays the leader of the criminals now, without any connection to „Violenza..." where he played the doctor. Anyhow, Emanuelle performs a theater play at prison in such a boring manner that inmates throw rotten tomatoes at her. Nevertheless, she still seems somewhat too popular to the guards. They are trying to humiliate Emanuelle, but their efforts fail, she's got nerves of steel and experience from the previous flick. The situation at the prison changes radically when armed male prisoners attack the guards and take control. The prison is besieged, and it's time to kill... Nothing special for the genre, in fact a bit lackluster, but the haunting soundtrack by Luigi Ceccarelli deserves mentioning; it reminded me stylistically (not quality-wise) a bit of Keith Emerson's compositions for Argento's „Inferno".

This is in fact part of the "Black Emanuelle" series. Not that the series had any continuity from one film to the next anyway. In this, the last of the series, Emanuelle (Gemser) is wrongfully imprisoned because she was on the brink of exposing criminal activity in the local police department. There is a flashback sequence which explains this. How anyone could watch this film and NOT notice this, saying it is NOT an Emanuelle movie is beyond me. In the opening scene the prison holds a stage play of monologues where each girl tells her name and story. Gemser's character clearly states "My name is Emanuelle, and I am a woman." I sincerely hope that the people who are leaving comments about films on the database have at least SEEN the films they are talking about. Unless of course they're just seeing some edited US video release.

Every once in a while there are films that come along and enlighten us. For some it was ET for others it was Gone With the Wind and for me it was Women's Prison Massacre! I Felt moved just by picking up the box at the video store. This movie has everything sleaze, torture, sex, rape, throat ripping, violence, forced suicide, more sleaze, more sex, more torture, and more bullet hits then Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs put together. When the credits rolled tears fell from my eyes. Bravo! Bravo! I love this movie!!