Prison of Hell: K3

To date, this is the only the second film I have seen by German director Andreas Bethmann, but that is enough to tell me that the guy has a major fixation on the trashy cinema of Jess Franco: K3 Prison of Hell is highly reminiscent of the prolific Spaniard's women-in-prison movies (Women in Cellblock 9, Ilsa, the Wicked Warden, Barbed Wire Dolls, to mention just a few) being not only similar in content, but also in style ie., sleazy, violent, and extremely dull to watch. In fact, it's quite possible that, despite being more explicit, K3 is even less entertaining than the bulk of Franco's filth.

This is due to the fact that there is virtually no plot to speak of, and the action is extremely repetitive, with the majority of screen time devoted to close up crotch shots, and incredibly tedious and un-erotic sex scenes between a motley selection of German skanks and ugly men (prior to watching, I was unaware of the high adult content, although I soon guessed when I saw the names of some of the performers in the opening credits: Suzi-Anne, Candy-Sue, Dirk and Arnie).

Whilst the endless beaver shots might prove to be of some value to amateur gynaecologists, explicit German smut really isn't my thing; I stayed the distance thanks to the involvement of Olaf Ittenbach, Germany's finest purveyor of quality splatter, whose name guaranteed that, somewhere in this endless mess of nudity and rough sex, there was going to be some outstanding gore. Sure enough, only minutes from the end, the film finally delivers what I had been waiting for: bones are smashed, intestines are munched, and the blood flows in rivers in an outrageously violent scene involving an unlucky lass and a drooling, bald psycho named Pete-Scissor-Hands. Unfortunately, it's a real chore to get to the good stuff, and it doesn't last for long.

Ittenbach's realistic and disturbing contribution to K3 deserves a rating of 8/10, but Bethmann's lifeless hardcore and dreadful direction means that the film as a whole really doesn't deserve any more than a 3.

Andreas Bethmann is the man behind the X Rated Kult label and is the man who now and then brings out a movie containing gore done by Olaf Ittenbach and hard core sex. This is also one of them. The movie is available in different versions. The German Kino version and the version delivered outside Germany. Both clocks in at 116 minutes and not the 106 stated here by IMDb. The movie for me was the same as his other flick Angel Of Death. Girls being prisoned in their nudity, wardens torturing them by blow jobs, some kind of escape and then the gore comes in by torturing one of the girls. Literally the same, just some other girls. The acting is below zero but the girls have other things to shown. It's pussy from shot one until the end credits. Now and then you will have some blowing and some lesbian licking. The difference between the available versions is just that the hard core version uses dildo's and other stuff. The girls themselves aren't that ugly as in some other low budgets but the weirdest part is that the sound is in German but added afterwards while editing. Sometimes you see someone shutting his mouth but you here him talking, strange because they have added English subs on it. It's a bit of an ode to the prison flicks of Jess Franco and of course to the Ilsa flicks. It takes a while of cum and blow before the gore comes in but when it comes in the red stuff flows in excess. Once the girls are trying to escape heads will be shot, knife goes in the flesh, nipples are ripped of, surely not for the squeamish. You see the tortured girl peeing, zoomed in on her vagina, before all that once the lesbian warden goes berserk she put all of her fingers into a girls vagina and moves her fingers until it bleeds, all in camera. So it's a bit for everybody, if you are into hard core.