"I'm not a part of this performance. I represent the captive audience. And what I want to know is: how can you suffer it? It makes me wanna throw up!"
Bruno Mattei was an international man of mystery. Many of his films will end up here eventually: SS Girls, Hell of the Living Dead, Rats: Night of Terror, and Zombi 3 have entered the ranks of some of my favorite movies of all time. As associate of Lucio Fulci, and a partner of the infamous Claudio Fragasso, Mattei explored genuine and heartfelt low-tier art in the context of extreme bottom-budget trash filmmaking. His movies aren't emotionally riveting, but they often tend to be comedic boons to all who watch, carrying sincere aesthetic interest. Of course, he made plenty of shit, just as his fellow cinematic superstar Jess Franco did in addition to his own great films.
By being a Bruno Mattei movie, Women's Prison Massacre is already at risk, and is, in fact, doubly screwed: yep, it's part of the Black Emanuelle series starring Laura Gemser. I have only seen one Gemser Emanuelle film, and that was Joe D'Amato's Emanuelle in America. That movie had a scene where someone masturbated a horse. Scrubbed my computer after that one. You can expect that I had some degree of apprehension when wading into one of Mattei's cracks at the series, which, by the way, is a series much in the same way that all of the various in-name sequels to Fulci's Zombi (like Mattei's Zombi 3) are a series. However, I learned quickly that I would not be led astray, for lo and behold, this movie opens with a woman giving a monologue about how she calls herself "The Mantis." THE MANTIS. The Mark of Mattei is upon us. Joy to the world!
The usual Bruno stuff is here. There's at least one person with crazy eyes. People are simultaneously offended and excited by sex, of which there is a lot. The editing and effects make most of the violence cartoonish. And, naturally, everyone speaks with the ludicrous intensity of a Grant Morrison comic. "I hope...you can prove that claim!!" the warden mugs, after her guards torture some lesbians. "Can you not...prove the contrary?!?" Emanuelle snaps back.
Speaking of Emanuelle, Mattei's protagonists (or "protagonists") are always awesome--the post-apocalyptic hippie bikers from Rats, Zantoro from Hell of the Living Dead, and especially Hans Schellenberg from SS Girls are all impressive slabs of perplexing OTT ham whose dub actors should be given monuments. Emanuelle, of course, is not a Mattei original, but she keeps a badass stony face and makes us feel bad for her when she gets tortured. In this one, she's a reporter who was supposed to investigate the titular prison, but, of course, ends up becoming a prisoner in it, which one must admit is rather the twist, assuming this is the only movie involving a prison that one has ever watched. There are weird cutaways from the prison scenes to who I think is either the owner of the prisoner or Emanuelle's boss, who is shady and very pro-death penalty. Then, there are some male prisoners who end up in the women's prison, who give us zingers like this:
Prisoner 1: "If I didn't have these cuffs on me, I'd stick that gun up your ass!"
Prisoner 2: "No, that's too easy--and he might enjoy it! That'd be a real shame, huh?"
Unfortunately, I can't properly convey how the delivery is both inappropriately casual and unnecessarily dramatic. Like I said--monuments, please.
Actually, the male prisoner subplot leads into this movie's very important message: don't use a vehicle transporting prisoners to lead a raid on a terrorist organization. It's okay, though, because surprisingly the prisoners do not escape, and as far as I know the terrorists do not return to the movie. The convicts are instead placed in the women's prison, despite the fact that all of them are rapists. In addition, despite this fact, they are portrayed as jolly, goofy comedians, at least until they very easily kill a guard and seize control of the prison. However, with a few gruesome exceptions, there is naught but more cartoonishness ahead. The disturbing stuff (which should be obvious enough) is scored with proto-techno/post-disco beebops, and intercut with scenes of a Nazi forcing a woman to dance with a blow-up doll. It can be a really upsetting movie--I'll be the first to admit that I'm triggered by depictions of rape, and so I did have to fast forward quite a bit in that second half. And, trust me, lots of particular words with certain histories to 'em are thrown against the ladies, because it's a Women in Prison movie. That's something you just gotta blink over, I'm afraid. Ultimately, if you feel prepared or are content skipping around, the surrounding scenes are sweet 'n' surreal.
I have to admit, I'd rather watch SS Girls or Hell of the Living Dead than this, which is also how I feel about Rats: Night of Terror. But this is still definitely a favorite. And hey, it really is two movies in one: after all, it ends with a sped-up recap of all of the ostensibly important events.
So yes, there was some suffering. But for things like that, I didn't throw up.
P.S. Claudio Fragasso was 2nd unit director on this. I'm guessing he worked with Laura Gemser before, but I like to think that this was the movie where Fragasso just said, "Someday I'll make a movie about vegetarian goblins. And I want you to make the costumes for these goblins." Then she winked at him: "I have some potato sacks which'll do the job just fine."
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