Chained Heat (1983) Jensen Farley/Action RT: 88 minutes Rated R (language, violence, rape, full frontal nudity, sex, drug use, racial comments) Director: Paul Nicolas Screenplay: Aaron Butler (Vincent Mongol) and Paul Nicolas Music: Joseph Conlan Cinematography: Mac Ahlberg Release date: May 27, 1983 (US) Cast: Linda Blair, John Vernon, Sybil Danning, Tamara Dobson, Stella Stevens, Henry Silva, Sharon Hughes, Susan Mechner, Greta Blackburn, Robert Miano, Edy Williams, Jennifer Ashley, Kendal Kaldwell, Dee Biederbeck, Leila Chrystie, Jody Medford, Louisa Moritz, Nita Talbot, Michael Callan, Mae Campbell, Monique Gabrielle, Carol White, Irwin Keyes. Box Office: $6.1M (US)
Rating: *** ½
Yes, I freely admit it. I like WIP (Women in Prison) movies. They’re an integral part of exploitation cinema. Titles like The Big Doll House (and the sequel The Big Bird Cage), Black Mama, White Mama and Caged Heat are classics of the subgenre. Chained Heat is the mother of all women’s prison movies! Check out the awesome cast- Linda Blair (Savage Streets), John Vernon (Animal House), Sybil Danning (Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf), Tamara Dobson (Cleopatra Jones), Stella Stevens (The Poseidon Adventure), Henry Silva (Sharky’s Machine), Louisa Moritz (Death Race 2000), Nita Talbot (Frightmare), Monique Gabrielle (Deathstalker II), Carol Ita White (The Concrete Jungle) and Irwin Keyes (The Exterminator). Chained Heat also includes all the usual elements of the subgenre- fights, lesbianism, nudity, a hot shower scene, corrupt guards, perverted warden, drugs, prostitution, rape, racial tensions and a riot. It’s a lot of fun provided you like this kind of movie.
Carol Henderson (Blair), sentenced to 18 months for a fatal car accident, is new to the penal system. I’m guessing she’s never seen any of the above mentioned movies either as she’s constantly surprised by the sleazy goings-on in her new digs. Just moments after being processed, she witnesses a racially motivated attack and gets accosted by queen bee prisoner Ericka (Danning). The warden (Vernon) has a hot tub in his office and gets off on taping his sexual encounters with inmates. The warden’s assistant Captain Taylor (Stevens) and her slimy accomplice Lester (Silva) smuggle drugs in and inmates out for purposes of prostitution.
Racial tensions get worse after the attack on the black inmate while she’s being transferred to an all-white cell block. Queen bee Duchess (Dobson) demands to know who did it. Taylor wants the warden’s job and will do anything to achieve this goal. This, of course, includes murder. As is prone to happen in situations like this, things go too far. The inmates put their differences aside and band together to bring down the corrupt administration. This entails getting an incriminating videotape in the hands of the people investigating the facility.
I was lucky enough to recently come across an uncut copy of Chained Heat. For years, the only version available on DVD was an 88-minute cut with all the good stuff (i.e. all the nudity and girl-on-girl action, the hook murder scene) cut out. Where’s the fun in that? It’s a WIP movie! Those are essential elements. The two rape scenes (including the one involving Blair and Vernon) are also fully restored. This is the version I remember watching on VHS in November 1985 (around the same time I saw The Concrete Jungle). I wanted to see it at the movies, but it was a parental OMDB (Over My Dead Body) title so I had to content myself with seeing Flashdance with my dad that day instead.
Chained Heat is epic! The cast is a virtual who’s who of B-movies. Blair is awesome as the naïve young prisoner who discovers her inner bad ass. Vernon, with whom Linda would reunite in 1984’s Savage Streets, makes a great sleazy villain. The statuesque Danning is smoking HOT! Dobson (in her final theatrical feature) is totally bad ass. She gets off one of the film’s best lines when she calls Danning a “chalk-faced whore”. Stevens camps it up to the skies as the antagonistic Taylor. It’s always a pleasure seeing Silva play a villain. Monique Gabrielle does what she does best, gets naked. One of my favorite character actresses, Carole Ita White (listed in the credits as Carol White), plays Spider, a lesbian inmate with a violent streak. Although her part is small, she definitely stands out. I love seeing her in exploitation flicks. The late Irwin Keyes shows up briefly as Lester’s driver. I could go on and on about the cast of Chained Heat. It’s pure coolness.
The storyline isn’t all that different from other WIP movies. The situations and character types are pretty much the same. Director Paul Nicholas (The Naked Cage) adds neat little touches like the punk rock girl dancing like nobody’s watching in the waiting cage. Chained Heat is well made and a lot of campy fun. I think it’s great! Great in terms of trash cinema, that is. It’s most definitely trashy. It’s also sleazy, violent and perverted. That’s what I love about it. It doesn’t even try and pretend it’s anything else. Realism definitely doesn’t factor into the equation. If it did, I’d be asking if prison inmates in the 80s had access to mousse and hair stylists. Nicolas understands what fans of the subgenre expect and gives it to them. It isn’t art in the traditional sense of the word; it’s its own kind of art. You can’t fault an artist for staying true to form and genre.