Barbed Wire Dolls

Now some people are complaining about the lack of plot, however there is a plot; a weak one, but yes it is there. Most characters are pulled from Ilsa - The Wicked Warden (another Franco movie) and yet all I wanted was for Dyanne Thorne to play a cameo. As a fan of exploitation movies such as Ilsa, I was hoping this was going to be something familiar. And by 'something familiar' I don't mean the same characters and same set. I'm looking for new torture, new sleaze and the like. Other then super fake electrical shocks there is none of that. Just badly dubbed naked girls who pretend to masturbate. If that's what I was looking for then I suppose I would have to have rated this movie more then a 4/10 but it was a little to soft-core for me. And for that I apologize.

Lurid does not begin to describe this Jesús Franco women-in-prison film. Lina Romay is sent to prison for murdering her father. The prison is run by a jackboot-wearing female warden and a serial killer prison doctor who killed the real prison doctor and is now posting as said doctor. There was a whole cycle of women in prison films in the 70s and 80s, and this one probably had more nudity and torture than any I've seen before, though I have to admit I have not yet seen SS HELL CAMP, which is supported to be the most extreme of this cycle. I watched a beautifully restored Blu-ray of this film from Full Moon Features, but this film is utter crap. However, it is definitely a film that's so bad it's good, the most hilarious moment being a flashback to when Romay kills her father. To save money, instead of shooting the scene in slow motion, director Franco has the actors fighting with one another as if they were moving in slow motion. The scene is so badly done I could not believe what I was seeing! Making matters even more bizarre, Franco was dating Romay at the time and played the abusive father. It's a scene that has to be seen to be believed. There are so many other bizarre scenes, such as one of the prisoners masturbating while holding a lit cigarette, with ashes falling on her genitalia or the reoccurring electric shock treatment scenes. There's really just no describing this film, but I feel like I should give this terrible movie an extra half a star for the entertainment value I got out of the terrible bit of filmmaking.

Well, you can't openly declare that you like (or even enjoy) watching this type of movies because then – let's face it – you automatically get a stamp on your head that says 'potential threat to society'. Barbed Wire Dolls is a non-stop series of sex and violence that explicitly focuses on female nudity and sexual torture. The more reasonable reason to be interested in this film is the man who made it. Jesus Franco, the undeniable Godfather of sleaze takes on the ultra-controversial subject of 'Babes behind Bars' here. Franco is a remarkable director to say the least, with over 180 films on his repertoire as a director. Although this 'Barbed Wire Dolls' doesn't come close to his best achievements, it sure is memorable. But not exactly for the right reasons… The plot is thin to non-existent, it lacks range and feeling and there's no tension to detect. Even the typical exploitation-music (a must for films like this) is absent. Compared to what you might think, it isn't even THAT gross or nauseating. The film doesn't feature sequences of extreme bloodshed or severe mutilation. Instead, Barbed Wire Dolls only serves a lot of naked female beauty and absurd characters. We have the lesbian guard with obvious Nazi-tics, insane prisoners and fraudulent authority-figures. Oh, and let's not forget the falsely accused heroine and the remorseful male guard. Actually, Barbed Wire Dolls looked ideal to supply with a neutral rating. Like 4 or 5 out of 10…but then it got entirely spoiled by the abrupt and idiotic ending. Really, it looks like Franco all of a sudden got tired of it and just said: 'That's a wrap'. Maybe he had to hurry to another set…your agenda is pretty much filled with 180 movies to direct.

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There's a scene in Barbed Wire Dolls that is so perfectly horrible it should be cinematic legend. It's a young girl's flashback of her father (played by Franco himself) attempting to rape her. The entire scene is shot with Franco's patented wandering zoom, a lens slathered with vaseline and a slow motion effect you have to see to believe.

Doing double-duty as "Cinematographer," Franco apparently didn't realize you could change the frame rate on the camera and decided slow motion is best acquired through slow motion acting. Yup, actors pretending to go through the motions in real time slow motion. Hilarious.

For someone who hates his own movies and wishes he'd directed Citizen Kane, Franco's taste is not nearly as bad as the choices he consistently makes behind the camera. Within the realm of bad movies, if Ed Wood Jr. is Orson Welles, then Jess Franco is quite possibly John Ford. High praise, indeed. Barbed Wire Dolls is a B- movie with so many juicy tidbits of ineptness, tasteless raunch, camp and cliché you can't help but love this senseless mess. See the slow motion genius for yourself:

A sick mind, or a million dollars . . . Which is better? Currently I only have the sick mind: and this movie feeds that fairly well! The version I saw was 81 minutes instead of the 90 minute full length film: but still, I would have to inform you to NOT use the comment from, Quebec, Canada. Because, the lack of 9 minutes probably would not have deleted scenes of any loot from a robbery, or some insurance whatever, or information about a woman in prison for killing her lover: none of those statements was correct from what I saw. There was a prisoner who killed her father, and one who killed her brother. But . . . You'll have to watch to find out what really took place about one of those killings. And let me tell you about the female warden, Monica Swinn; she may not have been as sexy as Brigitte Nielsen's portrayal of a warden, but Monica still had appeal, and did very well with being a mean bitch. The eyepiece she wears is a good touch, too, along with the Nazi book she reads. And though her voice was dubbed, that voice was well chosen. The warden loves seeing nude prisoners get mistreated; and when you see the nudity, you're seeing a film much better then your average soft-core movie. You will also see a great looking old prison; or it's a castle by the sea? And finally, you'll see the jungle area between the prison and the sea where an escape takes place. But . . . the ending is not your typical Hollywood bullsh*t.