Le corps et le fouet

Yes it is trashy...but the women in this movie are delightful. They pulled alot out of a z movie budget. Great colors, back drops and the framing was good. I would take this type of movie over any modern block borester movie any day. I mean a nude woman pushing a wheel barrow full of rocks....that action!

Caged Women (1980)

*** (out of 4)

A group of women are having fun and working at their local whorehouse when the police storm the building and arrest them all. They are sent to a prison located on an island cut off from the rest of the world and it doesn't take long for them to fall victim to the evil warden (Karine Gambier) and her rapist guards.

Also known under its original title, GEFANGENE FRAUEN and ISLAND WOMEN, this film came pretty late in the whole WIP (women-in-prison) movement. I've often said that if you've seen on WIP movie then you've seen them all. The only difference in them is the level of cruelty that they will go for. To me Jess Franco's BARBED WIRE DOLLS is the best of the lot but CAGED WOMEN deserves a lot of credit as well.

The film was written and directed by Erwin C. Dietrich, the long time producer for several Franco classics including BARBED WIRE DOLLS. He certainly knew what he wanted to deliver and this here is pretty much a remake of that film. With that being said, this movie is without question one of the most gratuitous movies in the genre. I say that because the sleaze factor is pretty much off the charts and especially when it comes to the sexuality and nudity.

The opening twelve-minutes or so is pretty much just a showcase for the various women. We see all of the ladies strip down, masturbate and do various other sexual things that certainly cross the line of what you'd see on Cinemax. It's like the director is teasing us with all of the beautiful women he has lined up and it just grows even sleazier once we hit the prison. I also give the director credit because there's not a single ugly woman to be found here as they're all extremely attractive and constantly naked.

Gambier, another Franco vet, is good in her role as the warden and you've also got Eric Falk playing a sadistic guard. The always stunning Brigitte Lahaie plays one of the prisoners and as I said there are countless other beautiful women in the cast. Storywise there's nothing original here and there's certainly no great direction or anything else but the film was meant to be pure trash and exploitation and on that level it works really well.

Though Gefangene Frauen masquerades as a Women In Prison movie, it's more like the collected footage of some people on a nudist vacation, shot between meals and sight-seeing, sort of like a nude Sports Illustrated Prison Swimsuit video. The plot is slapped together in normal euro-trash fashion, and takes up very little of this flick, which is a shame, since it's really pretty comical. At one point there's three consecutive coup d'états in the span of ten minutes. The dialog is scant but always poignant:

Warden: "You cannot and will not leave this island. As a reminder you will no longer wear your clothes. Everyone undress!"

.. which is thought-provoking, since everyone (including the warden and the guards) was already undressed almost the whole time. But now it's for real.

Directed and written by Edwin Dietrich, euro-smut-peddler extraordinaire, Gefangene Frauen takes place mostly outdoors in what seems like a Mediterranean island. The light is crisp and the color is subtly beautiful, which is rare for a flick of this caliber. It helps that the cast is completely nude throughout almost the entire duration of the movie, be they in their cells, or performing manual labor (ie. throwing small rocks around) in the countryside.

Gefangene Frauen dispenses with the sadistic aspects of the genre, and focuses mostly on nudity and getting the scenes shot before dinner time. It's a good movie to play in the background while doing something else, though it's a must to pay attention any time there's dialog.

I've come to realise through watching this sort of film that I don't like them very much. Caged Women is yet another 'women in prison' film, and like the most of the rest of the genre; the plot is completely forsaken in favour of simply showing nude women. Now don't get me wrong; I love nude women, but I also like there to be some sort of plot thread to go with the nudity, and since this film has only the basic 'women are in prison' theme running through it (aswell as the essential escape, of course), I got a bit bored before the end. The film is good because there's barely a moment in it where the women are wearing clothes, but that's about the only positive element. Director (and writer, ha ha) Erwin C. Dietrich delights in showing close-ups of the naked female body, but it's never very erotic. The director was the producer on a number of trash flicks, including some directed by Jess Franco. In my opinion, he should stick to producing as his writing talents are non-existent, and he doesn't seem to know how to film a sex scene. This sort of material is rather dry a lot of the time, but I reckon Franco could have made more out of it. Overall, this might suffice for people that are really into this sort of stuff; but I can't say I enjoyed it.

Much like Tinto Brass ("Caligula"), the people who made this movie can't tell the difference between explicitness and eroticism. No build-up at all, just throw naked women on the screen; no, it doesn't work that way. If close-ups of female genitalia aren't your thing, prepare to be looking away from the screen at many points (I often did). The "all women are whores at heart" mentality of the movie is offensive, and the "story" is by turns absurd and boring (the escape is the most boring part!). But halfway through there is a random scene that pops out of nowhere and involves one of the (female) prisoners and one of the (male) guards in a nude wrestling match, which she wins with a couple of judo moves. Although the choreography of the fight is bad, the whole scene is undeniably memorable. In fact, that scene and the nice cinematography are the only two reasons I give this film * out of 4, instead of 0.