Movies - Women in prison films

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	Movies - Women in prison films

Women in prison films are a subgenre of exploitation film.

Their stories feature imprisoned women who are subjected to sexual and physical abuse, typically by sadistic female prison wardens.

Perhaps the best explanation for women in prison films notoriety is that it is a cinematized version of the "men's adventure" subgenre of pulp fiction. Nazis tormenting damsels in distress were perennial favourite subjects for the lurid, sub-pornographic covers of sensationalistic "true adventure" magazines such as Argosy in the 1950s and 1960s; the film seeks to be a more explicit version of the same sort of catfight sexual fantasy.

Hollywood made movies set in women's prisons as early as the 1930's such as Jean Harlow's Hold Your Man but generally only a small part of the action took place inside the prison. It was not until the 1950's with the 1950 release Caged starring Eleanor Parker and Agnes Moorehead and 1955's Women's Prison with Ida Lupino and Cleo Moore that the whole storyline of the film was set in correctional facilities.

The most well-known examples of the women in prison film are perhaps Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS
and Jonathan Demme's Caged Heat
. Actress Pam Grier starred in a number of films in the genre, such as Roger Corman's The Big Doll House, The Big Bird Cage, and Women in Cages.

European cinema too had its share of the genre with titles like the 1975 Frauengefängnis by Jess Franco.

A number of these films remain banned by the BBFC in the United Kingdom. Among them are Love Camp 7
(rejected in 2002) and Women in Cellblock 9
(rejected in 2004), on the grounds that they contain substantial scenes of sexual violence.

History

Women in prison films developed in the 1930s as melodramas. Young heroines were shown the way to a righteous life by way of the prison. Under the influence of pulp magazines and paperbacks, they became popular B-movies in the 1950s. Since the 1970s they are a specialty product of pornography. Women in prison films have more to do with male heterosexual fantasies than real prison life. The lesbian theme in these films also influenced mainstream cinema in films as Chicago (2002).

Resources

Clowers, Marsha: Dykes, Gangs, and Danger. Debunking Popular Myths about Maximum-Security Life.
Mayne, Judith: "Caged and framed. The women-in-prison film", Framed: lesbians, feminists, and media culture, ed. by Judith Mayne. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. (Main Stack PN1995.9.W6.M359 2000)
Morey, Anne. "'The Judge Called Me an Accessory': Women's Prison Films, 1950-1962", Journal of Popular Film & Television. 23(2):80-87. 1995 Summer.
Rapaport, Lynn: "Holocaust Pornography. Profaning the Sacred in Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS", Shofar. An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, Vol. 22, No. 1, Fall 2003, pp. 53-79.
Waller, Gregory A.: "Auto-Erotica. Some Notes on Comic Softcore Films for the Drive-in Circuit", Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 17, Issue 2, p. 135, Fall 1983
Walters, Suzanna Danuta: "Caged heat. The (R)evolution of women-in-prison films", Real knockouts. Violent women in the movies, edited by Martha McCaughey and Neal King. 1st Ed. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001. (Main Stack PN1995.9.W6.R454 2001)
Williams, Melanie. "Women in Prison and Women in Dressing Gowns: Rediscovering the 1950s Films of J. Lee Thompson", Journal of Gender Studies, 11(1):5-15, 2002 Mar

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