Violence in a Women’s Prison (1982) Motion Picture Marketing/Action-Thriller RT: 98 minutes Rated R (strong sexual content, full frontal nudity, strong violence including rape and torture, bloody images, language) Director: Bruno Mattei Screenplay: Palmanbrogio and Oliver Lefait Music: Luigi Ceccarelli Cinematography: Luigi Ceccarelli Release date: April 1984 (US) Cast: Laura Gemser, Gabriele Tinti, Maria Romano, Ursula Flores, Antonella Giacomini, Franco Caracciolo, Francoise Perrot, Lorraine De Selle, Jacques Stany, Leila Durante (as “Leila Ducci”), Franca Stoppi, Raul Cabrera. Box Office: N/A
Rating: ***
In my review of Women’s Prison Massacre, I said I wanted to check out other Black Emanuelle titles. That was in 2016. It’s now 2025 and I finally got around to seeing another one. Yes, I am a champion procrastinator.
Violence in a Women’s Prison, a French-Italian production directed by Bruno Mattei (Hell of the Living Dead), was released in the US under the title Caged Women in April 1984. It made it to Philadelphia in May. I couldn’t get anybody to drive me to see it that weekend so I missed it during its one-week run. It took me more than 40 years to track down a copy. I finally got to see it this past weekend and what can I say? It is what it is, a sleazy and violent WIP (Women in Prison) film starring the sexy Laura Gemser as intrepid journalist Emanuelle (NOT the Sylvia Kristel one!). She alone makes this movie worth watching at least once.
Violence in a Women’s Prison came before Women’s Prison Massacre. The two movies were actually filmed back to back with Bruno using most of the same cast, crew and sets. Here’s a guy who knows how to save a few dollars when making low-budget films. I don’t have an exact figure, but it couldn’t have cost more than $100K (if that) to make this WIP magnum opus. Bruno doesn’t hold back either. He gives us everything we’ve come to expect from the genre- i.e. brutal violence, catfights, girl-on-girl action, sadistic guards and plenty of gratuitous nudity. We also get a three-way fight between our heroine and two guards in a puddle of poop. That’s a new one on me.
Bruno doesn’t reveal it until later, but it’s obvious something is up with Gemser’s character. She’s not the usual type that ends up in a hellhole like the one depicted here. She’s a freelance journalist working for Amnesty International. They want a report on violence in women’s penitentiaries. The one Emanuelle is in is especially bad. She manages to gain entry by posing as a new inmate named “Laura Kendall” who’s been sent there for the crimes of prostitution, drug dealing and manslaughter. The head warden (De Selle, Cannibal Ferox) and head guard (Stoppi, The Other Hell) immediately have it out for her. They make her stay in their correctional facility a living hell.
The only ones who treat Laura/Emanuelle with a shed of decency are her cellmate Pilar (Durante), an old woman with a pet cockroach she keeps in a little wooden cage, and prison physician Dr. Moran (series regular Tinti), an inmate at the neighboring men’s penitentiary. He got locked up for the mercy killing of his terminally ill wife. He becomes quite fond of the new inmate which isn’t a hard sell seeing that Tinti and Gemser were married in real life until his death in ’91.
Laura/Emanuelle is subject to all manner of torture and degradation even before her true identity is uncovered. As if rolling around in feces isn’t bad enough, she’s thrown into solitary confinement where she’s chewed on by a pack of black rats with glowing red eyes. They leave her a bloody mess. Later, she’s stripped and tortured by being placed inside a thick metal bell-like contraption that the guards bang on until she can’t take it anymore. She’s not the only one who gets brutalized. A conspicuously gay inmate in the men’s facility, a Snagglepuss-sounding fellow named Leander (Caracciolo, The Killer Nun), is regularly raped by the other prisoners. He meets a painful end when he’s gang-sodomized to death (off camera) after a female inmate gets the straight guys all hyped up by flashing her breasts from her cell window.
There’s no shortage of sex in Violence in a Women’s Prison. The stand-out scene has to be when the head guard forces two inmates, queen bee Hertha (Perrot, The Seven Magnificent Gladiators) and naïve Malone (Giacomini, The Seven Magnificent Gladiators), to have at it while she watches and pleasures herself. She isn’t the only one bearing witness. The warden, looking hot and sexy in lingerie, looks on from another room. It gets her hot and aroused. It’s just what she needs to make her turn around and screw her horny boss (Stany, Four Flies on Grey Velvet).
The other sex scene that stands out is the one between Emanuelle and the good doctor. He helps her escape during a riot in another part of the prison. They decide to pause their flight from captivity long enough for a roll in the hay (yes, they’re in a barn). I kept waiting for Short Round to show up and say, “No time for love, Dr. Moran!”
Prison fashions have never been as unsexy as they are in Violence in a Women’s Prison. The girls wear gray dresses that look like flower sacks. They’re complimented by black thigh-high stockings. It seems like an odd fashion choice until you consider that the movie was funded by a French undergarments company. It’s a product plug!
Gemser is FREAKING HOT! She’s super-nice to look at. Her abundance of beauty makes it easy to overlook her lackluster acting skills. She has good chemistry with Tinti, but we already covered that. Stoppi camps it up to the heavens as a sadistic lesbian who gets off on beating inmates with her fake rubber baton. Pay close attention to the scene in the warden’s office. You can see it bend when she uses it to nudge Laura/Emanuelle in the side. Perrot comes in second to Stoppi with her portrayal of a queen bee who acts in the best interest of the corrupt warden. Obviously, NONE of the acting in Violence in a Women’s Prison is Oscar worthy, but who cares? It has all the other stuff that makes for a complete WIP movie.
Here’s another funny thing to look out for. Inmates who misbehave are sent to break rocks in the prison quarry. One girl tries to make a run for it. She’s stopped by guard dogs who bark at each other instead of the escaping prisoner. Any inmate with a desire to flee could easily ensure her getaway by throwing a ball for the playful pooches.
This is one of those rare instances where a movie lives up to its title. There is a lot of violence in Violence in a Women’s Prison. It’s graphic, brutal and unsettling. The prison is a dank, dingy and ugly place with pink and white walls and a cement floor. It has to be the most depressing place on earth. It looks almost as bad as the Kensington section of Philadelphia; all that’s missing are the toothless crack heads looking for a fix. While not a pleasant film by any stretch of the imagination, it’s entertaining if you like WIP movies. Had I seen it at the cinema like I wanted to, I suspect I’d have been the only one not wearing a raincoat. Yes, it’s that kind of movie.
