Purgatory

"Carly Arnold" (Tanya Roberts) and her good friend "Melanie" (Julie Pop) are serving in the Peace Corp somewhere in Africa. As they are heading to the airport en route to the United States they happen to pick up a hitchhiker who says he is also headed in that direction. Unfortunately, they encounter a roadblock and during an inspection of their baggage a bag of heroin is found in the hitchhiker's belongings. When the hitchhiker tries to run, he is shot and killed leaving the two young ladies without the main person who might vouch for their innocence. After a quick trial with a preordained guilty verdict, they are both sentenced to 11 years in a prison known as "Purgatory". While there they are raped and abused with neither of them having much chance of acquittal or escape. Anyway, for a women-in-prison movie, this particular film requires viewers to use their imagination a bit as there aren't too many scenes which capture the anguish or violence normally seen in movies of this type. Along with that, except for Tanya Roberts, the rest of the cast suffers badly from a lack of character development. Additionally, while Tanya Roberts certainly performed well enough, she simply wasn't able to carry the movie all by herself. Slightly below average.

Tanya Roberts tries to break free from her typecast image that stemmed from her infamous one-season stint on the highly successful "CHARLIE'S ANGELS" series and her turn as the title role in the atrociously awful camp classic, "SHEENA, QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE".

In "PURGATORY", Tanya Roberts is Carly. She and her best friend Melanie are vacationing in South Africa and make the fatal mistake of picking up a 'hunky' hitch-hiker in their jeep who turns out to be nothing more than a filthy drug runner. When their jeep is stopped at a military checkpoint run by an outfit of South African army officers, the hitch-hiker tries to make a run for it but is gunned down in a Sunflower field. As a result, his bag is searched by the officers who discover a reasonable amount of drugs and naturally, Carly and Melanie are arrested despite their pleas that they had nothing to do with this.

So into the filthy slammer Carly and Melanie go. As two naive westerners, their case is fed to the dogs and they are sentenced to a life sentence inside a female prison where they are sexually molested by prison guards and treated as outcasts by the 'local' prison inmates. Naturally, Tanya Roberts uses her 'sexuality' to try to get them out of this intense and hopeless situation as she makes moves to seduce the Warden of the female prison in order to buy a ticket out for their freedom.

"PURGATORY" comes off more as a sleazy exploitation flick rather than something dramatically serious that you could actually believe might have happened in real life. From the 'hosing down' sessions within the prison walls to the countless sex scenes we get to witness shared between Tanya Roberts and the Warden, this film finds its place among other cinematic gems such as "THE CONCRETE JUNGLE" and "THE BIG DOLL HOUSE".

While no one can really take this movie seriously, most men will find the eye candy gratuitously supplied by Tanya Roberts enough to suffice their appetites. Women should look elsewhere.

"PURGATORY" is a relatively hard movie to catch sight of these days - but if you do happen to see this on your TV Guide or find a dusty copy on video at your local store, give it a gander... it's actually pretty funny.

My Rating - 6 out of 10

Pick almost any "Women In Prison" movie where some young lovelies are unjustly thrown behind bars and then abused by the warden, the guards, the other prisoners....That's this movie. Still, it has a young, lovely and long-legged Tanya Roberts as one of the hapless prisoners. There's a little bit of nudity here and there, and a lot of explosions at the end. You've seen it before.

Starting off this *is* the writing of an oft-favoured 1980's B-grade fan, so I am in no way writing this to compete with previous reviewers or take some imagined review 'injustice' into my own hands.

I appreciate the plot line as a particularly classic one and with its means to expand on whatever drama or storyline unfolds the end result is what you get. Its the whole 'put in an overseas jail' thing. Yes, 'purgatory'. So my comments are really relative to people who like me who enjoy a little cheesiness. No you wouldn't see Meryl Streep in a movie like this one and thats what gives its character.

Take bits and pieces from the movie. For me they are dazzling scenes occurring by the minute. No matter what they say it all seems to wind up funny to me. No matter what the musical soundtrack is, it always manages to impress vintage cheese upon me. I am about to write up some quotes so check them out. Thy might give you an idea of what you're in for.

Yes. The 80's were this bad. Awesome

This truly crappy women-in-prison flick looks like a leftover from the 1970s. Like so many of that genre, it was shot in the Philippines. One difference; instead of a totally no-name cast, it has Tanya Roberts, the erstwhile Charlie's Angel. Hold your Oscar nominations, please.

Though none exists, this movie could easily be subtitled, "Carly and Melanie Go to Africa and Get Gang Raped." That's pretty much the size of it. Sadly, poor Melanie drops out in the first twenty minutes, so that leaves Carly ( Roberts ) to fend for herself against a bunch of really yucky people. They're yucky, she's plucky. The outcome is predictable.

Lots of people get killed along the way, not that anyone really cares. The biggest question remains: What is John Newland doing in this dreck? Yes, that's right; the same John Newland who hosted the Sci-Fi TV classic from the 1950s, "One Step Beyond". He's dead now, so it's impossible to ask him. One can only imagine that his last wish was to have his name deleted from the credits. That appears to have been granted.