Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Women In Heat Behind Bars

Collapse
X
Collapse
  •  
    Ian Jane
    Administrator

  • Women In Heat Behind Bars



    Released by: Impulse Pictures
    Released on: April 10th, 2018.
    Director: Junichi Suzuki
    Cast: Shinobu Wakana, Reina Hatta, Tomomi Segawa, Susumu Morioka, Shirí´ Shimomoto
    Year: 1987
    Purchase From Amazon

    The Movie:

    Junichi Suzuki's 1987 trash/sleaze mini-opus Women In Heat Behind Bars opens with a hyper-sexualized scene of a whole lot of prison sex before introducing us to the film's central character, a lovely young woman named Shinobu Himeno (Shinobu Wakana). She's been sent to the Asahi Women's Prison, a hellish industrial looking building populated with the worst of Japan's female criminal population - and some staff who are just as diabolical and twisted.

    Like most women in movies like this and prisons like this, Shinobu - who on the outside worked as a flower girl - was sent here for reasons that are a little bit… complicated. See, she was involved with a nogoodnik named Sakae (Susumu Morioka) who she, after a long courtship, eventually offered herself to for the first time. Now that the flower girl has been deflowered, she's eventually framed for a robbery unsuccessfully pulled off by Sakae and his goofy buddies - which, understandably, lands her in the slammer where she has to contend with aggressive lesbians and horny guards with odd fetishes. When the administration brings in the sadistic Syí´ichi Kiya (Shirí´ Shimomoto) to better control the inmate population. After Kiya takes Shinobu out of the general population to teach her a lesson himself, an already horrible situation gets even worse, causing Shinobu and a few of her fellow prisoners to eventually stand up for themselves and fight back.

    Short at just under seventy-minutes (as these Nikkatsu Roman Porno pictures tend to be), Women In Heat Behind Bars makes up for what it lacks in serious character development with some appreciably depraved set pieces and quirky supporting players. We get flashbacks not just to fill us in on Shinobu's story but also some of the other inmates too - but these stories aren't particularly deep or original. Still, the movie gives us enough to go on to hold our attention from one sex and/or violence set piece to the next. The movie hits pretty much all of the expected 'women in prison' genre notes - lesbian inmates, sadistic wardens, horrible living conditions and general degradation - and it does so at a quick pace and with a genuinely grim tone.

    The movie is well shot, making good use of some truly dire looking locations to create a pretty effective atmosphere of dread and of gloom. The cinematography is careful not to expose any of the 'hair down there' lest Japanese censors disqualify the film for release, and as such we get some interesting framing and amusing objects put into the foreground to hide the bits that Japan has decided should be hidden. The performances are also decent enough to notice. Shinobu Wakana, who is quite the looker, does a nice job of transforming her character from one who is initially meek and mild into a tougher, more assertive woman as the story progresses. Shirí´ Shimomoto also does a great job as the man brought in to tighten things up in the prison, chewing just the right amount of scenery to make the role memorable.

    Video/Audio/Extras:

    Women In Heat Behind Bars Straddle looks good in this 1.85.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. Colors are handled well and look quite natural - though the color scheme itself as a seriously bleak one - as do skin tones. Black levels aren't quite inky deep but they're strong and detail is pretty good across the board. There are no issues with print damage to complain about and overall this is a clean, sharp, good looking picture free of any obvious digital manipulation of serious compression artifacts.

    The Japanese language Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono track is crisp and clean though occasionally just a tiny bit shrill. The levels are well balanced and there are no issues with hiss or distortion. The optional English subtitles that are provided are free of any typos and easy to read. This won't floor you but it sounds fine, there are no problems.

    Extras on the disc are limited to a menu, chapter selection and a wonderfully trash trailer for the feature.

    The Final Word:

    Women In Heat Behind Bars doesn't really reinvent the WIP genre or do much that we haven't seen done before, but it does deliver pretty much everything you'd expect an entry in the genre to deliver and maybe a little bit more. The movie is well made and features some decent performances to compliment the seediness of it all, and if the DVD release from Impulse Pictures is light on extras, at least it looks and sounds quite good.





























      Posting comments is disabled.

    Latest Articles

    Collapse

    • Hot Spur (Severin Films) Blu-ray Review
      Ian Jane
      Administrator
      by Ian Jane


      Released by: Severin Films
      Released on: April 30th, 2024.
      Director: Lee Frost
      Cast: Joseph Mascolo, Virginia Goodman, John Alderman
      Year: 1969
      Purchase From Amazon

      Hot Spur – Movie Review:

      Director Lee Frost and Producer Bob Cresse's film, Hot Spur, opens in Texas in 1869 with a scene where a pair of cowboys wanders into a bar where they call over a pretty Mexican waitress and coerce her into dancing for them. She obliges, but
      ...
      03-22-2024, 11:53 AM
    • Death Squad (Mondo Macabro) Blu-ray Review
      Ian Jane
      Administrator
      by Ian Jane


      Released by: Mondo Macabro
      Released on: April 9th, 2024.
      Director: Max Pecas
      Cast: Thierry de Carbonnières, Jean-Marc Maurel, Denis Karvil, Lillemour Jonsson
      Year: 1985
      Purchase From Amazon

      Death Squad – Movie Review:

      Also known as Brigade Of Death, French sleaze auteur Max Pecas’ 1985 film, Death Squad, opens with a night time scene outside of Paris in the Bois de Boulogne Forest where cars pass by a small gang of transsexual
      ...
      03-22-2024, 11:46 AM
    • Roommates (Quality X) Blu-ray Review
      Ian Jane
      Administrator
      by Ian Jane


      Released by: Quality X
      Released on: February 28th, 2024.
      Director: Chuck Vincent
      Cast: Samantha Fox, Vernoica Hart, Kelly Nichols, Jerry Butler, Jamie Gillis
      Year: 1982
      Purchase From Amazon

      Roommates – Movie Review:

      Directed by Chuck Vincent and released in 1982, Roommates opens with a scene where a young woman named Joan Harmon (Veronica Hart) gets a hotel room with an older man named Ken (Don Peterson, credited as Phil Smith),
      ...
      03-15-2024, 01:10 PM
    • Night Of The Blood Monster (Blue Underground) UHD/Blu-ray Review
      Ian Jane
      Administrator
      by Ian Jane


      Released by: Blue Underground
      Released on: March 26th, 2024.
      Director: Jess Franco
      Cast: Christopher Lee, Maria Rohm, Dennis Price
      Year: 1970
      Purchase From Amazon

      Night Of The Blood Monster – Movie Review:

      Directed by Jess Franco, The Bloody Judge (or, Night Of The Blood Monster, as it is going by on this new release from Blue Underground) isn't quite the salacious exercise in Eurotrash you might expect it to be, and while it
      ...
      03-15-2024, 01:07 PM
    • Phase IV (Vinegar Syndrome) UHD/Blu-ray Review
      Ian Jane
      Administrator
      by Ian Jane


      Released by: Vinegar Syndrome
      Released on: March 26th, 2024.
      Director: Saul Bass
      Cast: Nigel Davenport, Michael Murphy, Lynne Frederick, Alan Gifford, Robert Henderson, Helen Horton
      Year: 1974
      Purchase From Amazon

      Phase IV – Movie Review:

      Saul Bass’ 1974 sci-fi/thriller Phase IV is an interesting blend of nature run amuck stereotypes and Natural Geographic style nature footage mixed into one delicious cocktail of suspense and
      ...
      03-15-2024, 01:02 PM
    • The Bounty Hunter Trilogy (Radiance Films) Blu-ray Review
      Ian Jane
      Administrator
      by Ian Jane


      Released by: Radiance Films
      Released on: March 26th, 2024.
      Director: Shigehiro Ozawa, Eiichi Kudo
      Cast: Tomisaburo Wakayama, Minoru Ôki, Arashi Kanjuro, Bin Amatsu, Chiezo Kataoka
      Year: 1969-1972
      Purchase From Amazon

      The Bounty Hunter Trilogy – Movie Review:

      Radiance Films gathers together the three films in Toie Studios’ Bounty Hunter Trilogy, starring the inimitable Tomisaburo Wakayama. Here’s how the three movies in this
      ...
      03-13-2024, 11:30 AM
    Working...
    X