Gefangene Frauen (3½ Stars)

I never know how to rate films like this. It's full of beautiful women, which is always a plus, but it's trashy, and the plot is stretched so thinly between the nude scenes. It's not a good film, but it would be unfair to call it average. The rating 3½ Stars is a fair compromise.

This is a Swiss film made in 1980 by Erwin C. Dietrich. It was released in English as "Caged Women", which is a fair translation. As anyone familiar with the genre must know, what we can expect from a film about women in prison is nudity, torture and lesbian sex. Erwin C. Dietrich doesn't deviate from this, so if you're a fan of the genre you won't be disappointed.

The film takes place in an unnamed South American country. A United Nations inspection team is expected soon, so the President wants to clean up the country. There are European women working in the capital's brothels, and he thinks there might be suspicions that they've been kidnapped, so he needs to hide them. He has them arrested and sent to the island prison of Tarumago. There are 17 women, all young and beautiful. The film concentrates on three of them who share a cell.

Nadine Pascal as Rosi

France Romay as Lisa

Brigitte Lahaie as Rita

If you think they look familiar, it's because they're three of the six Swedish girls from "Six Swedish Girls in a Boarding School". Erwin C. Dietrich had a small pool of actors that he used repeatedly in his films.

After arriving in the prison the girls are hosed down with cold water. This scene lasts longer than necessary. We see six of the seventeen girls being hosed down in turn. I was worried we'd see all of them. Enough is enough.

At first the girls are given dull prison uniforms, but after an escape attempt the girls are punished by having their clothes taken away. That means there's total nudity for the rest of the film. I'm not complaining. The film's nudity is its greatest asset.

Rita, Rosi and Lisa in their cell. This is a definite improvement over those awful uniforms.

The girls even have to remain naked while they're breaking rocks. But tell me... do they really break rocks in prisons? What's the point in it?

The exercise yard is in an arena. Curiouser and curiouser.

A soldier escorts the girls back to their cell. It's a tough job, but someone has to do it.

This is the prison warden, Karine Gambier as Carla. She's sadistic and implacable. The prison's weak spot is its guards, who are all male. The girls have no problem in seducing them to turn them against the warden.

As I said above, this isn't a good film, but many of my readers might like it. The German Blu-ray contains dubbed English dialogue that only starts after the credits. That means that you have to sit through four minutes of German dialogue while the credits run, but don't worry. It's trivial banter that's irrelevant to the film's story.