Two of my favourite movie sub-genres—'werewolves' and 'women-in-prison'—are rolled into one in this low budget and deliberately trashy effort that aims to answer the question 'What would happen if a lycanthrope was incarcerated in an all-female correctional facility?'.
Victoria De Mare plays Sarah Ragdale, a young woman whose romantic camping holiday with her boyfriend turns into a nightmare when a werewolf rudely interrupts their fun. Narrowly surviving a savage attack, Sarah awakens to find herself an inmate in a filthy prison run by a corrupt warden and his masochistic assistant, having been wrongly convicted of killing her lover (whose body was found torn to pieces).
Obviously one of the few people who hasn't seen 'An American Werewolf in London', Sarah is shocked when her dead boyfriend pays her a visit to explain that, since she is the survivor of a werewolf bite, the next full moon will see her transforming into a 7 foot tall, slavering beast with a hunger for flesh—succulent, female prisoner flesh!!
Packed with wall-to-wall nudity and a whole heap of shoddy but gruesome effects, Werewolf in a Women's Prison is camp schlock horror that is knowingly awful—and for most of its running time, it proves to be pretty good fun: the women are all good looking and more than willing to strip off for the camera and indulge in a spot of soft-core lesbianism; the wolf itself is hilariously bad (the monster comes complete with glowing red light-bulb eyes); and the bloodletting is gloriously OTT (if not too convincing)—heads are torn off, limbs are ripped out, and one victim is even bisected when pulled through her cell bars by the beast.
Sometimes the humour is a little laboured, the cribs from 'An American Werewolf in London' are a little too blatant, and, towards the end, the novelty of the film's intentional cheesiness does begin to wear a bit thin, but if you're in the mood for a mindless slice of sexy and gory silliness, you could do worse. A lot worse. Trust me, I know!
6.5 out of 10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.
