Correccional de mujeres

Emilio Vieyra is somewhat famous for being Argentina's only real horror director with a reputation based on a series of four or five goofy horror-sex movies that he churned out in the late 60's like "The Curious Dr. Humpp" (aka "La Venganza de Sexo"), all of which have been to some degree retitled or re-edited in their English language versions. Well, it turns out he also seems to have directed the only Argentinean "Women in Prison" movie (or WIP), although it was never really released outside of Argentina and is currently available only in Spanish and on videotape.

As WIP films go, this is much less graphic than the practically hardcore Brazilian and Italian-Brazilian co-productions they were making to the north, nor is it nearly as sick as the Jess Franco films like "Greta, the Wicked Warden", which were supposedly set in Latin America, but were filmed in Europe. It's kind of like a Corman-Filipino WIP film, but without a lot of political content (having been made not long after the fall of the military dictatorship). The characters introduced at the beginning include a "drugstore cowgirl", a stripper, a pick-pocket, and the main character, a gangster moll whose boyfriend was assassinated while they were in bed together. None of the girls is especially attractive in the face, but they all have nice, voluptuous bodies.

The movie kind of rushes through the "inspection" scene and the shower scene, skips over the usual "new fish" initiation scenes, and only has some perfunctory inmate-on-inmate violent scenes before they get to the violent bust-out barely a half hour into it. There really isn't anything new here for WIP fans except you get Argentinean women (one of whom, of course, is black) of the Isabel Sarli mode rather than Pam Grier, Margaret Markov, etc. It's not nearly as good as Vierya's lovable 60's horror movies, but WIP completists won't want to miss it (and you even get a chance to practice your Spanish).