Leave it to chronically shameless Italian exploitation movie sludgemeister supreme Bruno Mattei to make one of the most delectably revolting and depressing 80's chicks-in-chains features, a gloriously ghastly el schlocko marvel that gleefully caters to the lowest possible denominator in the sleaziest manner imaginable. The always sexy and smoldering Laura Gemser stars as feisty investigative reporter Emanuelle (of course), who while serving hard time in the grimy joint runs afoul of the sadistic warden, the equally brutish guards, and pallid, pasty-faced big nasty bleach blonde top con Albina. Four ferocious deathrow-bound male convicts led by the cheerfully vicious and maniacal cop killer psycho "Crazy Boy" Henderson (a first-rate cackling dirtbag performance by Gemser's real-life husband Gabriele Tinti) are shipped to the hoosegow for temporary detainment en route to a one-way trip to the electric chair. The dangerous quartet take over the prison and proceed to get it on with the man-hungry, sex-starved female inmates! The leave-no-skanky-cliché-unaccounted-for pandering script delivers a ripely overabundant catalog of marvelously explicit and excessive gutter-crawling depravity: cat fights, shower scenes, lesbianism, savage stick beatings, grisly throat slicing, bloody shoot-outs, rape, strangulation, an especially wince-inducing castration (ouch!), even a "Deer Hunter"-derived Russian roulette sequence! The deathlessly lousy and, naturally, atrociously dubbed dialogue boasts such gut-busting tin-eared gems as "Filthy slut Irene; I'm open to anyone's offers" and the truly immortal taunt "I'll bite your nipples off!" Obviously shot on a paltry five'n'ten cent budget, with shoddy, muddy cinematography, spare, almost barren sets (the prison looks like an old abandoned warehouse -- and probably was exactly that), and an annoyingly monotonous sub-Goblin synthesizer score, this thoroughly foul and fetid festering scuzzpit of a flick's pervasive cheapness and seediness actually enhances instead of detracts from the relentlessly sordid and gloomy tone. A splendidly squalid slimebucket treat.
Review of Women's Prison Massacre
