Girls in Prison

A drama with a touch of crime thriller and satire. Several girls end up in prison for various reasons. Among them is a young singer who is drawn into a complicated story where a confluence of random circumstances leads to a severe sentence. The harsh internal life of the prison with its peculiar rules quickly sets accents and suggests the idea - you need to escape, which the main character, along with a couple of partners who turn up, will mainly do throughout the not very long running time.

The prison style is taken from the 1950s, and the manner of presentation from the 1990s. The characters, as in a number of other works included in the almanac "Rebel Highway", are exaggerated, and the surroundings are more like a theatrical scenery. In the background, characteristic details of the past flicker, referring to once pressing political views, smoldering conflicts and street movements - hence a peculiar parallel suggests itself, that everyone fights for his / her dignity or goals and values, what he / she considers to be truly true, as best he / she can.

Obviously, you shouldn't expect something on the level of "The Shawshank Redemption" (1994). It's a typical genre B-movie with no hint of depth, but within its niche it looks quite solid.

The original film was shot in 1956, "Girls in Prison", the story revolved around the property of a bank.

An odd film. It can't decide whether it wants to be a tribute to 50s/60s "girls behind bars" exploitation pictures, a pseudo-political satire, or a crime drama. In better hands, it might have straddled those genres effectively, but as it is, it's more than a little scattershot.

In some sense, the film only seems to be sure of itself when it lapses into "lipstick lesbians in jail" exploitation. Personally, I could have done with more of that material, but then I watched the emasculated basic cable version on Lifetime. In retrospect, I'd recommend renting the video so you don't have to miss out on any of the "sexuality/nudity", and so you won't have to put up with the lame-o profanity overdubs. One particularly egregious dialogue change (judging from context and lip-reading) was "I shot his balls off" to "I blew his brains out", which renders the followup line "there was nothing to sew back on" utterly nonsensical.

Most of the laughs in the film are unintentional rather than written. The lack of acting from the character who stabs herself got a big laugh from me. The only *good* acting in the film to speak of comes from Anne Heche, who puts more work into her role than you'd expect. Lots of nice bits of business that I can tell were her idea rather than scripted or directed, since her scenes are the only ones with that kind of quality. Oh, I guess Miguel Sandoval (the "digger" in Jurassic Park) has a couple of nice moments as well.

All in all, about what you would expect from legendary (to MST3K fans, at least) schlock producer Samuel Z. Arkoff, who also directed the unrelated 1956 film with the same title. Worth viewing if you're an Anne Heche fan or have nothing better to do, but don't go out of your way.

Framed for the murder of a record company president in 1952 Hollywood, young, aspiring singer Aggie O'Hanlon (Missy Crider) is sentenced to life in prison and tries to adjust to her life behind bars in a hellish women's prison where she is befriended by other "lifer" inmates who help her out when Aggie finds herself marked for murder by an unknown source who thinks she knows more about the murder than she does.

From director John McNaughton, best known for "Henry Portrait of Serial Killer" and "Wild Things", and with one of his regular actors, Tom Towles. This seems far beneath McNaughton, but then, the series seemed far beneath everyone who was involved (Joe Dante, John Milius, Robert Rodriguez).

This was part of the "Rebel Highway" series that was supposed to be edgy updates of 1950s B-films. Most ended up being cheesy and campy rather than edgy, and this is no exception. Of course, much of this is the low budget (not much over one million) and McNaughton was lucky he happened to convince Sam Fuller to write the script -- Fuller was a genre writer whose work dated back to the 1930s. And there is a brief shower scene that would not have slid in the 50s... but the language is surprisingly clean for a prison.

Ione Skye has a decent sized part, and Anne Heche has a small but important role. For those looking for some star power, their interaction might be the highlight of the film. (Oddly, despite her impressive list of credits, Missy Crider does not seem to be considered a star.)

This should be a campy, cheesy riot, an homage to exploitation films. Instead, it just is one. It seems they didn't feel like trying hard enough to make good schlock, and counted on the camp element to excuse the lack of quality on the serious level.

I thought that this would be like 'Mars Attacks' with shower scenes. There were two of those, and I have to say I enjoyed them. But as Joe Bob Briggs says, the plot gets in the way of the story.

There are two shower scenes where we are treated to incredible views of my favorite psychologist (Anne Heche from Prozac Nation) and the lovely Ione Skye. This was definitely not a CBS Schoolbreak Special with Missy Crider and TV regular Bahni Turpin.

Outside of these shower scenes was the cheesiest dialog that I have ever heard. I cannot believe this movie even had a script. I am sure the actresses were told just told use whatever cheesy prison dialog you can think of. It was painful to listen to. They threw in dialog about the Korean War and McCathyism to set the times, but it was just terrible.

It would have been a much better production if they had 80 minutes of shower scenes and 3 minutes of dialog, instead of the other way around.