Bare Behind Bars

This has been called the "Mother of all WIP" flicks. In a sense I can see why. It has all the essential ingredients of the genre- in abundance if not excess.

Wall to wall nudity (indeed being nude is the default dress code), shower scenes, some (tame) torture, lesbianism (indeed no men really), and a so-called moral ending.

Trouble is that it is so atrociously compiled by De Oliveira, the director, that all sense of the erotic is lost. Jess Franco so much does it better. The scenes flit from one to the next with little or no continuity of plot, sexual encounters are chucked in for no good reason, plot lines start and then run into the sand.....Well- whatever.. And the women are not that cute either.

So sadly this flick flatters to deceive. You will probably watch it given its reputation- and emerge mildly disappointed like the rest of us. Brazil creates better football than WIP thrills..

In a Brazilian prison for women, where the inmates are subjected to physical and sexual abuse on a daily basis, four girls make a bid for freedom. Aided by the prison's ether-sniffing nurse, the group successfully escape and go on a killing spree.

From the word go, Oswaldo de Oliveira's sleazy WIP movie delivers wall-to-wall scenes of nudity and lesbianism: nearly every female in his film's joint-including the guards, prisoners and even the sexy warden, are lesbians. The ones that aren't are bisexual! This means that viewers can expect a whole shedload of nekkid babes in ill-fitting outfits indulging in all sorts of sexy shenanigans, including oral-sex, mutual masturbation, and strap-on action.

What starts off as a softcore film with simulated sex gradually becomes stronger and stronger in content, until the director gives up all pretences and goes the whole hog, with a couple of (rather crap) hardcore couplings. As well as upping the strength of the sex, de Oliveira also makes the film a whole lot more violent and sleazy in the final half an hour, with the escaped prisoners indulging in a little killing before going their separate ways. In one scene, an entire family is savagely attacked by the girls; the mother and father are shot, the father has his severed penis fed to a barking dog, and then the wanton women proceed to 'rape' the under-aged son!

Now I realise that this sounds like the mother of all exploitation films and an unmissable treat for those who dig more 'unusual' cinematic fare, but, to be honest, it's all rather boring. After a couple of lesbian scenes, the film becomes a blur of boobs, bums and beaver and one soon longs for something remotely resembling a decent plot.

The occasional prison torture scene and a second brutal emasculation help to break up the tedium of endless frottage, but are not enough to make me recommend this ultimately disappointing film.

If you are a fan of endless lesbian orgies this film may be exactly the right stuff for you: see naked chicks having sex in their prison cells, under the shower, with the female attendants... here and there even some short hardcore sequences are brought on. There are some quite tame torture scenes and a subplot about the trade with female slaves, which is not further developed..!

"Bare behind bars" is probably the best WIP (stands for "Women-In-Prison")-flick ever made, because it doesn´t take itself too serious and it´s often full of unconscious humor! The best scenes has this weird Marilyn Monroe-like nurse, who uses an ananas as her dildo and exploits the female prisoners as their sex-bunnies.

If you want to know why this film is banned in countries like the U.K. or Germany check out the last third, which is the grossest part of this movie! Three outlaws are able to escape and on their run they murder a family, just for drinks and food. The climax of this crime is when one of the girls castrates the dead husband and feeds the cut off dick to his pesky barking dog..! Another castration-scene is featured some minutes later... However, there´s no happy ending for the girls: two of them return to prison, the third one becomes a prostitute and gets shot by her pimp..!

"Bare behind bars" belongs to those movies you may need a shower after watching it. Nevertheless it can be pretty entertaining if you have a sense for such films. If you like WIP-flicks try to find Jess Franco´s "Sadomania", too!!

This a Brazilian WIP film which means several things. First off, it's going to be more graphic than usual (actually crossing into hardcore in several places) if perhaps not quite as sick as some of the 1970's Jess Franco WIP films that were nominally set in South America. Second, while it does contain some reasonably attractive actresses, a lot of the others could be considered female "rough trade" (including a few that looked like they could been REAL prisoners). Third, it was obviously filmed in an actual Brazilian prison and, after the breakout, in actual Brazilian ghettos which gives it a squalid and depressing air (a ridiculous scene where all the prisoner take a VERY exuberant shower is actually kind of understandable--given the squalid conditions of the "set" the actresses probably really were that excited to get into a shower).

The main point of this movie is SEX--sex and more sex. Sex between the inmates, between the inmates and the warden or the prison nurse, solo sex scenes with the prisoners who are thrown into solitary confinement (buck naked, of course)--it's all here, one scene after another. And if you get tired of lesbian sex, after the traditional bust-out there's even more straight sex (you would think these woman would want to take a break from having sex, but no) with the kind of guys that make Ron Jeremy look trim and hairless. There's also a little unpleasantness like with one inmate in solitary who has befriended a dead rat (she doesn't have sex with at least), and another woman who suddenly makes like Lorena Bobbit after performing graphic oral sex on a very ugly guy.

What this movie really DOESN'T have though is a plot. Or real characters--I couldn't figure out WHO the protagonists are supposed to be. Like a hardcore porn film it is just a series of sex scenes thrown together with little or no connective tissue, and (speaking of tissue) while some of the women are attractive enough that I could certainly see some male viewers at home being motivated to "fire one off", I don't why even they would want to watch the rest of the movie. You really CAN have too much of a good thing sometimes, and this is a good example.

Bare is one of those definitive 80's Brazillian prison movies that really makes you squirm to watch it. The movie revolves around a crooked prison run b y the equally crooked Sylvia,and her straight counterpart,Sandra,who works to put an end to the trachery. An incompetent and sex-crazed nurse stirs the plot,what littl there is of it. Overall,the movie is just sex all around and eventually leads to a great breakout into the streets of Brazil,where the refugee women continue their lives of violence by raping a young boy,killing his parents,and committing numerous sexual murders throughout the city. A young woman who is beat with a whip by Sylvia(Towanda Neal)adds to the dark and twisted plot.Generally,this film was hard to watch and is full to the brim with graphic nudity and sex. All hardcore sex film fans will love this one! Happy viewing!