[In honor of our Mr. Skin Presents: Chained Heat screening this Friday night at 9:30 pm at Chicago's Music Box Theatre, we're looking back at our Mr. Skin Presents: Women in Prison Triple Pack DVD featuring Chained Heat (1983), Red Heat (1985), and Jungle Warriors (1984), released last summer by Synapse Films. -SC]
With this nude DVD release, WIP fans can enjoy all the incarcerated T&A in much better quality, as the video transfer on all three films is noticeably improved from previous releases. Just compare these two stills from Chained Heat:
Fans will also be glad to know that Chained Heat is presented in its entirety for the first time since its theatrical run- a scene where Linda Blair has a run in with the evil John Vernon (aka Dean Wormer from Animal House) is restored for the first time on VHS or DVD. The Women in Prison Triple Feature also comes loaded with trailers, interviews with stars Stella Stevens and Sybil Danning, and video introductions by our own Mr. Skin, who rubs down the key SKINgredients to each film.
Chained Heat is given top billing on the Women in Prison Triple Feature DVD, and for good reason- it's the wildest and most entertaining of the three films, with drag queens, prison prostitution, meathook executions, a warden with a hot tub in his office, and poor, poor Linda Blair, a girl convicted to 18 months for vehicular manslaughter. Fresh meat like Linda is very attractive to the depraved denizens of this corrupt women's prison, and soon Linda gets caught up in the conflict between queen bitch Erika (Sybil Danning) and blaxploitation babe Tamara Dobson, who brings loads of superfly sass to her role as the Duchess, queen of the black inmates.
Skin legend Stella Stevens and Dean Wormer- er, John Vernon- go way, way over the top as the villainous Captain Taylor and Warden Bachman, who when they’re busy not abusing the inmates are scheming against each other. Just about everyone brings an over-the-top(less) sense of fun to their perv-formances, with the exception of Linda, whose Razzie award-winning performance is positively sedate at times...but whatever, she makes her nude debut in Chained Heat, and her massive melons are outta sight! Sybil's braless and busting out of her low-cut gowns and tank tops, Monique Gabrielle and Sharon Hughes turn in outstanding nude performances, and the shower scene 30 minutes in, a lesbionic buffet of retro furburger, is worth the price of admission all by itself. Chained Heat is super-sleazy, with a nude scene at least every 10 minutes, several prison murders, and every depraved plot point you can think of. It also moves along at a brisk, entertaining pace and is really fun to watch. Highly recommended for exploitation fans!
Red Heat is in some ways a Cold War relic, playing on Cold War ideas about Communist dick-tatorships-
combined with a healthy dose of naked female flesh, of course. But once we get out of East Germany and into the cellblock, the prison scenes are timeless. Once again poor Linda Blair is an innocent in chains- this time she's thrown in prison for espionage when she's found walking the streets alone after dark. Once in prison, Linda quickly manages to get on the wrong side of queen bee Sylvia Kristel, whose tough, butchy character Sofia is a marked departure from her Emmanuelle persona. The plot is fairly standard WIP fare- Linda takes heaps of abuse from Sylvia and her tattooed goons until she (and her boyfriend, who is working on the outside to get her free) can't take it anymore and rise up in revolution. Red Heat is slower and not as outrageous as Chained Heat, but it's still a good time.
Jungle Warriors is quite different from the other two movies. You could argue that it's not really a WIP movie at all, since our heroines spend most of the movie outside of the dungeon they eventually find themselves trapped in. But its sleazy spirit fits perfectly with Chained Heat and Red Heat, and besides, it also stars John Vernon and Sybil Danning. In the film, a group of seven American fashion models get their helicopter shot down after a photo session in the jungles of South America. These victimized vixens fall into the clutches of drug lord Paul L. Smith and his cruel half-sister, known as "the dragon”: you guessed it, Sybil Danning. Sybil steals every scene she’s in with her cold-hearted villany- you won't be cold, but you will be hard when she bares her buns getting a massage 1 hour in. Like Red Heat, Jungle Warriors is a bit slow and is definitely of its time, most obviously in the cheesy fashion shoot scenes. But when the shackled sisters rise up and start blowing up helicopters with submachine guns, it's pretty much skinpossible not to be entertained. Speaking of rising up, the highlight is 46 minutes in, when things get really wild as our heroines are skinspected by Sapphic sadist Sybil. Jungle Warriors is an entertaining mashup of drive-in genres that won't disappoint fans of retro sleaze.
For all the breast scenes from these Women in Prison classics, check out Chained Heat, Red Heat, and Jungle Warriors NOW on MrSkin.com!
