Well, here we go again. This is another in Jess Franco's endless selection of exploitation movies. In this case Jess has turned his hand to the women in prison genre. It's certainly an area that is well suited to Mr Franco's sensibilities seeing as these are types of movies that demand sleaze by the bucket full. Women Behind Bars is no different seeing as it has loads of full frontal nudity and a couple of torture scenes. The story, such that it is begins when some diamonds are stolen from a Chinese junk. The only surviving thief is shot by his wife and she hides the jewels. She is then sent to a tough women's prison where abuse is the order of the day. Meanwhile, several characters try to free her so that she can reveal the location of the diamonds.
This production was another product of the infamous cheap-jack French exploitation film producers Eurociné. Its main claim to fame is easily its inclusion on the notorious Video Nasty list, which was a group of films released on home video that were regarded as obscene by the British establishment back in the early 80's. It seems pretty obvious that this one fell afoul of the censors on the basis of its two torture scenes. In them, one naked woman is viciously whipped and then another has electrodes attached to her vagina. That sort of stuff pretty much guaranteed Video Nasty status, irrespective of how unconvincing it was. Other than this there is a lesbian sex coupling and many shots where the camera zooms into female crotches. All of the depravity is overseen by a sleazy and sadistic warden who expects sexual favours from the inmates.
Franco muse Lina Romay stars in the lead role and she looks quite nice. But like any film from this director, acting performances are merely an after-thought. The film-making is very cheap and amateurish throughout. Like many Franco films it feels like it must have been shot in a couple of days. He adopts the approach of merely pointing the camera at the action and shooting (and then zooming in). The camera-work is shaky and there is little in the way of editing. But despite the Z-Grade nature of Women Behind Bars it was entertaining enough. The short running time was certainly a bonus admittedly. Franco's sledgehammer approach does have a grimy charm though and this one far from his worst.
