Warden Karine Gambier keeps a close eye on her prisoners— especially when they’re having sex—in GEFANGENE FRAUEN (CAGED WOMEN).
electric fence and revolution is in the air.
Dietrich was angered by the rundown, overgrown fortress Franco used for the prison exte- riors in BARBED WIRE DOLLS but that film’s success evidently convinced him that verisimilitude was no requisite for this genre. The “institution” here consists of a tiny blockhouse and an equally small bullfighting arena, which hosts a silly “contest” in which one of the girls makes mince- meat out of a burly guard (played by the ubiquitous Eric Falk). Equally amusing is the security system: a sole guard yelling “Alarm!” at the top of his lungs! Lacking the personality and eccen- tricity of the Franco pictures and light on story and incident even as adult films go, Gefangene frauen moves slowly and fails to make interesting use of the req- uisite stereotypes (like the quack doctor, who has a collection of headless pin-up pictures but does virtually nothing else). How- ever, Peter Baumgartner’s cinema- tography makes the proceedings look surprisingly picturesque and
the women are attractive (particu- larly the spectacularly sculpted Lahaie) and almost always na- ked, making this worthy fare for Eurotrash completists. Less dedicated parties are advised to seek out a more lively and out- rageous entry, like Franco’s ILSA, THE WICKED WARDEN (1977; reviewed VW 65:49). The first class presentation of this Swiss import disc certainly enhances the film’s watchability. The anamorphic 1.85:1 DVD (which would run 92m 9s at 24 frames-per-second) has been given an attentive digital trans- fer from the original negative and looks very sharp, vibrantly col- orful, and 99.9% spotless. Ger- man and English tracks are included and both sound fine. Unfortunately, as with Erwin Dietrich’s VIP line of Jess Franco pictures, there are no subtitle options. The film was released on video stateside in 1985 by Private Screenings as ISLAND WOMEN, with a substantially re- duced running time of 83m 47s. While the movie does not really qualify as hardcore, that version
(which has no credits aside from the new, video generated title) dropped the more graphic mo- ments, as well as a rape during the bordello raid, a gynecologi- cal examination by the prison doctor (which includes the film’s only instance of penetration), and a not-very-formidable whipping scene. The pre-credit sequence at the “Miss Beautiful Breast” competition was also not in- cluded and is presented here in German on both tracks, suggest- ing that it was dropped before the English dub took place. Oddly, while the credits are in German, the various intertitles that pop up during the picture are in English. The only extras are trail- ers (in German with French and Italian subtitles) for Franco’s BLUE RITA and Die teuflischen schwestern (SEXY SISTERS), and Dietrich’s Die nichten der Frau Oberst (COME PLAY WITH ME 2) and Eine armee gretchen (FRAULEINS IN UNIFORM). The packaging is almost entirely in German but does include the English title, and the chapter guide insert is bilingual.
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