Jonathan Demme’s women-in-prison cult classic brings the naked flesh, the sadistic officials, the bursts of violence, and the exact same story as every other vintage film in the genre, but it stands out for its sense of humor and its warmth toward its characters. In a genre that lives for raw S&M sleaze, Demme goes for laughs via oddball background details and scenes that sometimes play out as old-fashioned off-color comedy sketches. And the jokes are never at the expense of the locked-up women. Demme genuinely likes his women. His targets are the prison system and hateful authority figures. The women in Demme’s prison form a kind of support group for each other. They help, defend, and comfort one another, often at great risk. The savage ones are the guards, the creepily prim-and-proper female warden (a great Barbara Steele), and the shock treatment-loving prison doctor.
It all adds up to a witty exploitation film from a writer/director who’d rather not exploit anybody. Demme fills the flesh quota and keeps things fast-paced and entertaining, like the skilled hand that he already was early in his career when he worked for Roger Corman, but he also subverts some of the genre’s more seedy elements whenever he can. For example, in the torture scene—all women-in-prison movies have a kinky torture scene—Demme not only keeps the actresses in their clothes, but he covers them in heavy blankets so that there’s nothing sexy about it. Then, in the rape scene—because all of these movies have a rape scene—he throws cold water on anyone’s potential titillation by making the woman barely conscious on knockout drugs and by making the man a nebbish who’s unable to finish the act without CRYING.