A film I was really looking forward to seeing, because it was the first film directed by Jonathan Demme and was supposed to be one of the best women in prison films. I enjoyed it and its certainly well directed, but to be honest found it a bit boring at times. Erica Gavin (from Vixen) is the newcomer to the gaol (arrested after a very exciting sequence which gets the film off to a terrific start), who finds a bit of brutality, mostly from fat male guards, a sleazy pipe smoking male doctor, and the wheelchair bound sexually repressed warden (Barbara Steele).Demme seems to struggle at times to combine the requisite exploitation elements with a desire to make a really good film – things like the warden don’t quite mesh with the more naturalistic other aspects. There is still a lot of nudity and the requisite fight scenes, although in Demme’s film the women have a lot more solidarity with one another – for instance, Gavin escapes with a Queen B who was her former enemy, and Roberta Collins and a black prisoner have a very supporting friendship. Structurally wise, the film is hurt when Demme’s script splits off into two separate stories: Collins in the prison as a drug guinea pig, and Gavin on the lam. (Although it does reunite the stories again for an exciting escape sequence). Roberta Collins, a fixture of women in prison films, displays a nice flair for comedy. The film is actually set in America as opposed to the Philippines. I will give this another look later on because of Demme – I stress it is very well directed, edited, shot, etc – it’s just less fun than The Big Doll House.
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