Womens Prison Massacre (1983)

Womens Prison Massacre (1983) - Emanuelle fuga dall' inferno is the original Italian title. The film starts with a play performed in the women's prison, a personal piece of depth and a deep understanding of the human condition. Okay maybe not but it is an attempt. It is intended to show Emanuelle as a strong influential writer and to establish that the prison is not going to tolerate her style of entertainment. It effectively brings the character of Emanualle to the forefront as well as her tomato throwing rival Albina. Then the establishment as a non tolerant group of controllers. Emmanuelle (the lovely Laura Gemser) is a reporter framed for smuggling drugs even as she closes in on the government official involved. She is now in a women prison where she is not the most liked prisoner. The official District attorney Vincent Robinson (Jacques Stany) wants to make sure she never gets her story out. He enlists the aide of the Warden (Lorraine De Selle) who in turn tries to have tough prisoner Albina (Ursula Flores) do her dirty work. Emanuelle and her friends Laura (Maria Romano) and Irene (Antonella Giacomini) are out numbered in the prison so although they are tough the guards still manage to give them significant problems. Albina does not fair well against the smart and strong Emanuelle and even after being armed with a knife only manages to have the knife stabbed into her own leg. This is what you think the film is going to be about. Emanuelle fighting against the odds to beat out the prison establishment and then to publish her story and expose the crooked district attorney. No though that is not it at all!
  Early on is a sub plot about four convicted murders, men who must be temporarily housed at the women's prison. Brett O'Hara (Robert Mura), Victor "Geronimo" Brain (Raul Cabrera), Helmut "Blade" von Bauer (Pierangelo Pozzato), and mastermind Crazy Boy Henderson (Gabriele Tinti) are on their way and the results will be explosive. They have something to do with the smuggling ring Emanuelle was investigating but that is nothing. During transport some fake cops try to spring them and would have succeeded if not for Lawman Harrison (Carlo De Mejo) who manages to fight off the attempt and deliver the prisoners. It seems it was just a reason to have a car chase really.
  In the prison they manage to overpower the guards, the lawman and the warden and take the whole prison hostage. Of course they want a car to the airport, a plane at the airport and 5 million dollars. Strange enough the negotiator they are dealing with is none other than District Attorney Robinson. Leaving the wounded lawman with Emanuelle the convicts threaten the lives of everyone in the prison if they do not get what they want. The 3 hour time limit seems serious.

  Brett gets a chance to be alone with the warden. He makes her strip off her clothes with a little violent persuasion. Blade and Geronimo  head down to the women's ward where the women will love a man. The Warden strips but this film is a bit tame as far as skin, some boobs and a garter belt. Brett seems more into humiliate her than to rape her. Geronimo gets it on with Albina in the medical ward and she is equally into it. There is some simulated sex in that scene. Blade seems happy to stand at the bars of the women cage and be felt up. In all the sexy 70's music you hear in porn is playing and the film cuts between the different locations. After finishing in Albina she gets a surprise when he chloroforms her before heading back out to meet the others. There is implied rape of the warden but nothing on the screen. This is an exploitation film but like I said it is more about making you believe what happened as opposed to seeing such horrors. This at least until Crazy Boy gets mad at Emanuelle for pleading for the cops life. To show her he slaps her around and then rapes her, she is clear this is not her wish.

 Blade in with Laura and Irene seems like a crazy fuck himself. He makes them dance with the blow up doll but seems to get as much pleasure pulling their hair and scaring them with his crazy eyes as he does in deflating it. At least while this is going on Blade loses his razor blade and Laura end up with it.
While this silliness is going on outside Robinson is setting up to send in commandos. Inside the convicts want to know what is going on. The Commando unfortunately come in the window just as Albina wakes and she goes straight to Crazy Boy to talk deal for her info. So when the commandos make their move it is a fair gun battle. They fail even though Brett is killed in the process. Crazy boy does a payoff to Albina by killing Irene for her. Then he makes Emanuelle and Albina play Russain Roulette. Laura was hiding when Irene was killed and she gets a strange idea harkening back to the play she performed in the beginning of the movie. The mantis hides the razor blade in her vagina and lays nude waiting for Blade to take her. She recites her silly lines and he goes for he beautiful body only to get the suprise of his life. he chokes her out as he takes her the blade slicing into his member as she dies. He struggles out of the cell looking for help from the women in the cages but all they do is attack him when he gets close. Now a man without a penis he is no longer desirable.  These scenes are cut with the game of Roulette that ends with a gory outcome splashed across Crazy Boy's face.

  Down to Crazy and Geronimo they take the Warden, the injured Lawman and Emanuelle as hostages when their demand have been mad. The fast paced organ music pumps with a background drumbeat as Robinson sees Emanuelle alive again. He wants the cops to shoot them all and takes the first shot at her, missing but hitting Geronimo and the Warden. Crazy Boy shoots him in the chest giving Emanuelle her revenge.
Off they go in the car apparently in days before there were LoJack and helicopters. When the car stalls Crazy Boy gets pissed at the double cross and is wounded by the cop driver as he kills him. Off he runs with wounded officer Lawman in pursuit to take him out. The film ends with Emanuelle returning to her prison cell to serve out her undeserved term but with the knowledge that the corrupt Robinson got his.
Overall the film executes the goods of a exploitation film. It wanders in unexpected places but overall closes out all the threads that were started. It is always good when the exploiters get theirs in the end. Because the depth of the characters as so flat with only Gemser getting any depth at all, this film can't be good. It is exactly what it was intended to be and does not get my recommendation. Now if you like exploitation it is just mildly boring with no big surprises or skin so you will probably be disappointed.
Rating (4.5) 5.0 and up are recommended, some just more or less than others.

Cannibal Ferox (1981) - Horror Cannibals

Cannibal Ferox (1981) - The year after Cannibal Holocaust and his own initial entry Eaten Alive! (1980), Umberto Lenzi throws his hat back into the cannibal movie ring with this mildly offensive entry. This film starts with a warning about the violent content and warns those who do not want to see sadistic torture to stop watching. Since Frankenstein first did this sort of "warning", it has never deterred anyone, so of course I continued to watch. It opens in NYC and we follow a guy walking around town as the credits play. As we learn later this guy is looking for Mike Logan (Giovanni Lombardo Radice), his dealer and eventually walks all the way to his apartment only to be accosted and then killed by two mob guys who are also looking for Mike. You see Mike took $100,000 from the mob and they are determined to get the cash back. The poor junkie, his only role is to get this piece of information out and bring our police characters into the picture. Its funny that the mob guy puts a silencer on his pistol only to have the sound effect be normal volume, they really thought that piece of dubbing out.

When the police come to the murder scene we learn of the owner of the apartment Mary Stanton (Fiamma Maglione) who plays a small role in the film helping to tie thins in the Amazon jungle to the NYC scenes. She ends up being Mike's girlfriend and is the one who heads down to find the guy in Columbia.

Now we are introduced to our group in Columbia, brother and sister Rudy Davis (Danilo Mattei) and Gloria Davis (Lorraine De Selle)are down working on Gloria's thesis. She is here to prove that cannibalism does not really exist and her brother is taking the photos. Gloria's friend Pat Johnson (Zora Kerova) is along looking for adventure. As they try to find a village where cannibalism reportedly happen we get to see Pat's character. Looking for a shower Pat is very willing to go home and sleep with a local cop to get one. Later she is referred to as a whore and really has no problem with that. There is some music that reminds me of Demons or House by the Cemetary one of those Italian horror classics. The three head off in the jungle, their jeep getting unmovable, stuck in the mud when they are well out of the range help. They have to decide whether to cut across this unfamiliar jungle to the river and hopefully catch on with a boat or walk the 3 days along the trail they just covered. From years of leading hiking trips I could tell you what you should do, but our folks do the opposite and head off into the jungle. When they come across a native sitting in the jungle eating giant grubs they are disgusted. Little do they know of all the rest of the native watching them. after a night of camping in the jungle a scene that is really unnecessary other than to have Pat tie this little pet animal up for the night, we get to see a python eat her put in graphic detail. If you are keeping score, 1 grub eating native and 1 small animal eaten by snake is the extent of the gruesome scenes.

Scene three is they come across the bodies of a couple natives dead from a jungle booby trap. Not really that bad but the sight of death creates a bunch of tension for them. When Mike and Joe ( Walter Lucchini) stumble out of the foliage we get a story. Oh and yes this is Mike Logan from NYC that the cops and Mary Stanton are looking for. They see that Joe is really injured and help the pair. Mike a coke-head who says they came down for cocaine, but met a guy who was searching for emeralds so they joined him. About a month into their prospecting he says they were attacked by cannibal natives and Joe and Mike were lucky to escape. The guy they went in with was not so lucky.

Pat takes a liking to Mike and they have a good time. In the morning Gloria is missing so the other four go looking for her. Rudy and Joe stumble across the village that is supposedly 10 miles away according to Mike's story. When they investigate they see dead bodies, but the native seem harmless. More and more of Mike's story seems questionable. They find Gloria and save her from a hunting pit and the pig stuck in it with her. Now all together again at the village Joe is not doing so well. The injuries he has are infected and he needs to rest. This is when we really get to see what a slime-bag Mike is. He wants to leave Joe and get the fuck out of dodge before the young warriors of the village come back from hunting. Arguing with Gloria about it he repeatedly calls her twat in the least appealing way (as if there was an appealing way.) Then things really go south with him. Hanging out with Pat doing coke they bully a couple of younger natives and Mike ends up killing one of them. Asswipe Mike he will be known as from here on.

Joe then relays the real story of the village and why all the old timers there seem afraid of the whites. See the guy Asswipe Mike followed out here was one of the Indios. He had a few emeralds and Asswipe Mike thought it was going to be an easy score to find a stash somewhere out here at the village. He decides enough waiting and tortures the guy trying to get him to give up a location for more emeralds. He castrates the poor dude and leaves him hanging on a post to die. While Joe is sharing this yearn with Gloria and Rudy Asswipe Mike and Pat are leaving them behind knowing that when the main force of Indios return to the village there is going to be shit to pay.

Back in NYC Mary and the police have a talk and she learns about Asswipe Mikes money theft and that the police are also looking for him. She knows he is in Columbia and heads down herself to look for him. This is important because you think she will be the survivors ride out of the jungle. This isn't true though and the entire storyline is wasted when she never finds any of them. So why continue to go back to this?

The jungle group are all eventually all captured by the natives and now Asswipe Mike is going to be made to pay for what he did. They string him up and quickly cut his dick off and eat it raw in front of him. This is really a gross scene but it is done slight of hand and is quick. They take the time to cauterize the wound so now Asswipe Dickless Mike can live to be tortured some more. Gloria sees the cannibalism though. To draw the story out longer the group is moved from one village to another. This gives Rudy a chance to run for it but unfortunately for him after falling and cutting his leg he falls in a pool of Piranha and is shot with a poison dart never to be seen again. Trapped at the new village Gloria gets the climatic realization about cannibalism. "What a God damn fool I was thinking I had to leave New York to find the reason behind cannibalism. Do you realize its us, the so called civilized people who are responsible for their cruelty. Us and our superior society, violence breeds violence." She was there to disprove cannibalism but then sees it as a reaction to the brutality of Asswipe Dickless Mike.

The final escape comes when a native feeling bad for the two women Pat and Gloria attempts to free them lowing a rope into the hovel they are kept in. Problem is at the same time Asswipe Dickless Mike is escaping and chases him off. While trying to escape he has one of his hands cut off when the villages capture him, this last chance moves us to the final shocking torture scene. These are indeed gruesome scenes that we were warned about. Pat is brought out and large hooks are stabbed up through her breasts and she is left hanging to bleed out and die. Poor Gloria has to watch. At this same time the plane with a government agent and Mary Stanton is circling the area looking for the village. Asswipe Dickless One Handed Mike is put in a head grip and macheted exposing is coke addled brain for feasting upon. So much for that coked out loser.

The nice villager helps Gloria to escape and she is found by a couple crocodile poachers and makes it back to NYC. The final scene we see her receiving her PhD after completing the thesis. Does she tell of the cannibalism or not? The film has some things going for it, it to an extent has things from early in the movie connect to things later on. The message that the cannibalism is a response to exposure to those from the "civilized" world is decent and presented reasonably well. Still there was a bunch of animal planet footage thrown in to extend the movie. The gross out scenes were few and far between and compared to what can be seen in modern film making are pretty tame. Then there is the fact that most of the characters are just not very likable. Even our final girl is not very nice although she is no where close the the horror of Asswipe Dickless One Handed Mike.

Rating (4.6) 5.0 and up are recommended, In the Zombiegrrlz system Skip It!