Jailhouse Wardress (1981) User Reviews

Ever wondered how bad the WIP/Nazisploition genres can get? Here's the answer

[BA_Harrison · 2/10 · 31 October 2013]

You'll be really scraping the barrel of the Euro-Nazisploitation/Women-In-Prison genres with this film: it's a shoddily edited, and woefully dubbed mess cobbled together from bits of three other movies that are pretty awful in themselves—Jess Franco's Caged Women (1976), Hitler's Last Train (1977) and Captive Women 4 (1977)—and random footage probably salvaged from a Eurocine waste bin.

Unsurprisingly, the script (if, indeed, there was one) makes little-to-no sense but does provide the viewer with some stupefyingly dumb moments that prove marginally entertaining on the 'it's so bad it's funny' level. That really bad 'slow-motion' flashback from Caged Women has to be the weirdest moment, the effect achieved by the actors moving slowly rather than a change in speed of filming, but there are plenty of other 'WTF?' moments, with the following being worthy of a special mention:

1) The governor (Roger Darton) forcing pretty inmate Lola (Nadine Pascal) to write a letter with three different colour pens (how inhumane!). 2) Guard Nestor (Eric Falk) having an inmate repeatedly make her bed (the monster!). 3) The governor's Minnie Mouse teapot. 4) The totally inappropriate music that accompanies the sleaze. 5) The topless guards. 6) The mad woman saying 'I'll just squat' before laying down. 7) The worst 'crosshair' shot in movie history. 8) The repetitive bird whistle. 9) 'Yes, no, yes'. 10) The fight in the sand-pit (they must have had sand in nasty places for days after that).

I rate Jailhouse Wardress a generous 2/10 for the nudity and unintentional laughs.

Copy/Paste ... Delete!

[Coventry · 2/10 · 31 January 2011]

"Women in Prison" and "Nazi-Exploitation" are, hands down, the two absolute most worthless sub genres in horror/cult cinema. I should know because I've seen way too many of them. Apart from a few notable worthwhile classics, like "Chained Heat" and "Ilsa – She Wolf of the SS", all these movies are dull and overly provocative rehashes with the exact same derivative themes and taboos over and over again. Moreover, a lot of these films even shameless copy entire sequences of other films and blatantly paste without even bothering about the fact actors and filming locations look entirely different. That's just downright lame and insulting to your audience. "Jailhouse Wardress" is yet another 100% insignificant and worthless piece of exploitation garbage that plagiarizes no less than three (equally insignificant and worthless) pieces of exploitation garbage. A former Nazi big shot manages to escape to South America near the end of WWII, but he isn't exactly looking to keep a low profile. On a tropical island he becomes the managing director of a women penitentiary where, of course, the inmates are exhibitionist lesbians and the wardens are sadist perverts. There are a handful of potentially interesting story lines, like a plot to assassinate the Nazi and a pretty blonde inmate on a quest for vengeance, but they all lead absolutely nowhere and instead the cameras are more interested in the hideous and overly hairy naked body of a couple of elderly lesbians. The sex sequences are boring beyond words and the efforts to make the villains look purely evil are truly hilarious! A monocle?!? Please! Someone has seen one too many James Bond movies! One to avoid at all costs, but I assume that won't be much of a problem.

The usual WIP crap

[The_Void · 3/10 · 17 October 2007]

I bought this film thinking it was the 1975 Jess Franco video nasty/women in prison flick 'Women Behind Bars', so I was quite disappointed when I found it wasn't (especially considering that, if it was, I'd now only be left with 'I Miss You, Hugs and Kisses' to see before I've seen everything on the DPP list). Anyway, given my experience of Women in Prison films, I would guess that this film and Franco's Nasty are probably about on par in terms of quality. This one seems to have a bit more of a Nazi theme going on, though as you would probably expect; association with one of the worst genres ever seen in cinema doesn't do this film any favours! The plot is just your usual mix of sadism and torture, this time coupled with an escape plan. It's not intelligent stuff, and it's also rather boring, especially for someone like me who has seen far too many of these films. The film drones on for about eighty five minutes and the ending really isn't worth waiting for. While 'Women Behind Bars' probably isn't any better than this film, I do wish I'd seen that one instead as at least there would have been a point to me watching. There's no point at all in seeing this film so I don't recommend it!

A Complete Mess from Eurocine

[Michael_Elliott · 14 April 2010]

Jailhouse Wardress (1979)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

A real mess of a WIP picture from Eurocine actually has about 2% new footage and the rest is taken from other movies including HITLER'S LAST TRAIN, ELSA FRAULEIN SS and Jess Franco's BARBED WIRE DOLLS. The new "plot" has a SS officer and his girlfriend traveling to South America after the end of WW2. A special agents goes after them. That "new" plot only lasts for a couple minutes so that pretty much tells you all you need to know. I'm going to guess that this new footage was meant to be an entire film but the studio ran out of money, shut down the production and then just edited it in with other footage to create this mess. Fans of naziploitation really don't have too many reasons to check this out as the three other movies are all available uncut so you might as well watch all of them instead of this edited down mess. Fans of Jess Franco are the main ones who will want to check this out for a couple reasons. The biggest is that the majority of the film is footage from BARBED WIRE DOLLS, the ultimate WIP film, and the dubbing here is of course different and this is why you will want to check it out. If you're familiar with the original film then it's rather funny seeing how they've changed the dialogue and in some cases made it even funnier. Remember the scene in BARBED WIRE DOLLS where Lina Romay kills her father (played by Franco) after he comes onto her sexually? Well, that scene is here with the alternate dialogue and it will having laughing out loud. Outside of that entertainment, this film is a pretty big zero as it doesn't make a bit of sense and the only real reason to watch is trying to figure out which scenes belong to which movie.

A redubbed, patchwork muddle with a cast of thousands.

[parry_na · 5/10 · 7 June 2019]

I always try and view a film unspoiled by reviews or opinions. It doesn't take long in this instance to feel the cold shadow of familiarity, and this only grows stronger as the 75 minutes roll along. There's a reason for this - Director Alain Deruelle, for reasons probably linked to finance (or lack of it), has cobbled together an original opening scene and followed it with many scenes used in other such exploitation films (Hitler's Last Train, Captive Women 4 and especially memorable swathes from Jess Franco's Barbed Wire Dolls) to create a truly incomprehensible parade of incarceration, rape (often accompanied by a jaunty jazzy score), lesbianism and squalid surroundings. These scenes have been redubbed in order to create some semblance of linear story, but the result doesn't make a lot of sense.

The opening scene, involving Nazi machinations, makes way for individual stories featuring familiar faces including delightful and talented actresses Lina Romay, Pamela Stanford, Martine Stedil and Monica Swinn(e); the latter plays a savage prison warden wearing a monocle but, alas, no trousers. Close-ups of Monica slick-back-haired, scowling bear a slight resemblance to a latter-day Joan Ferguson from Prisoner Cell Block H.

The idea is to tell of each woman's backstory to explain why they have been incarcerated, but as some of them never actually meet, any sense of cohesion is lost. Who are all these people? If this is your first encounter with this film, or any of the others that make up the majority of the footage, you may think it has a cast of thousands. Which in a sense it has.

I cannot review this without mentioning the slow motion Franco footage featuring Jess and Lina; the scene is notorious with Franco and exploitation enthusiasts for its hilarity, and the fact that it is being re-used here is a massive (and welcome) middle-finger to those who have derided it!

Of the performers, Stanford's sense of fun shines through the dubbing, Swinn is delightfully eccentric and Romay and Stedil are barely featured. Fun though this is, they all deserve better.

It would take a sharper brain than mine to identify which scenes are from which film, and an even sharper one to make sense of it all. Perhaps best to view it as a typically tasteless 'best-of' collection, reminiscent of those 1970s 'Top of the Pops' albums featuring sub-standard versions of popular songs sung by session performers.

Depending on your point of view, 'Jailhouse Wardress' is either a confusing mess, or one of the most magnificent examples of its type.

"What are we going to do now?" "Let's get undressed."

Basically a remix of Barbed Wire Dolls!

[TodaysHaul317 · 3/10 · 11 February 2024]

Jailhouse Wardress (aKa Les gardiennes du pénitencier) is 1981 nazisploitation film directed by Jesus Franco (Night of the Eagles, Slave of Crime, Mansion of the Living Dead, Barbed Wire Dolls, The Sadist of Notre Dame, Angel of Death, Diamonds of Kilimandjaro, Sinfonía Erótica. Bloody Moon, Voodoo Passion, and Blue Rita) and Alain Deruelle (Cannibal Terror).

Maria da Guerra (played by: Lina Romay from Female Vampire, Barbed Wire Dolls, Snakewoman, Blind Target, Faceless, Angel of Death, Revenge in the House of the Usher, and Lorna the Exorcist), who's sentenced to life after killing her uncle (played by: director Jesus Franco from Two Undercover Angels, Oasis of the Zombies, Night of Open Sex, Night Has A Thousand Desires, Golden Temple Amazons, and Cries of Pleasure), who had attempted to assault her. While behind bars, Maria encounters a sadistic female warden (played by: Monica Swinn from Wicked Women, Love Camp, Golden Jail, Hitler's Last Train, Shining Sex, and Barbed Wire Dolls) and hatches an escape plan involving the seduction of a male nurse. After the fall of the Third Reich, all Nazi SS officers escaped to Latin American countries. They started creating special laboratories to create a variety of beautiful women for satisfaction of their sexual desires!!!!

First off, I want to thank MVD Classics for releasing this rarity on blu ray and upgrading it to HD. I would have never expected this one to get this type of release on home video. Every Jesus Franco completest needs this one in their collection. I will say that this is a very bizarre women in prison feature. It's basically a re-edit of Barbed Wire Dolls. They shot brand new footage with director Alain Deruelle. Plus Eurocine mixed scenes from the movies Hitler's Last Train and Captive Women 4 with exclusive dubbing to make it all fit as one complete film. Ironically, the dubbing completely changed Franco's character went from being the dad into now being the uncle in this plot. So this makes it a very random experience with slightly different quality throughout the clips inserted into Barbed Wire Dolls. Jailhouse Wardress is batshit crazy with everything thrown together. Let's be real, you are better off watching all three films that were used here separately rather than Jailhouse Wardress when it comes to best possible outcome. Don't get me wrong, this wild mess is worth checking out, it has a little bit of everything in it when it comes to exploitation.

Dreary Trash

[richardchatten · 1/10 · 2 March 2021]

The title tempted me to give this a whirl, but the date should have warned me. In common with most exploitation films this sounds fun but is just dull. Very very dull.

Supposedly set just after the fall of the Third Reich but obviously made much later and full of ugly seventies clothes and hairstyles, the title wardress carries a riding crop and wears a monocle but appears to forgotten to have put on her trousers when she got dressed that morning. The constant zooms and pans suggest that the camera operator was either drunk or stoned, and it has that other sine qua non of all lousy movies: a Hammond organ score.

Avoid.

Stupid, dreadful piece of confusion and (I can't say it enough) STUPID

[catbus420 · 1/10 · 5 July 2020]

For some reason, a friend of mine always picks this movie to watch when he comes over to my place. Even though he readily admits how terrible it is once he thinks about it. It doesn't make much sense at all and even looks awful. I have the X-Rated Kult DVD version, which is fullscreen and comes in a fancy hard clamshell-like case that makes it look like it would be cool, but the case is worth more than the movie. It is called "Women Behind Bars (Frauengefängnis 2)" which is confusing because the artwork is basically the same as the artwork for "Frauengefängnis 3," which might not be a masterpiece, but infinitely more bearable than this movie. There is a DVD from the Netherlands which is actually 1.66:1 (16:9) and may look better because of it, but I doubt looking better helps anyone that has to sit through it. I'm pretty sure that the films put together to make this weren't even the same aspect ratio, so God only knows how the geniuses that put this together intended for it to look or sound.

The movie is actually bits and pieces of a few Women-In-Prison movies glued together to make a new movie. Somebody working for Eurocine thought that it was a good idea for some reason. Cobbling together little pieces of different WIP movies does not make a new "movie." It makes a mess. Kind of like if somebody decided to put little snippets from "Halloween," "Friday the 13th" and "Sleepaway Camp" together to make a new "work of art." Those are all slasher movies (like this is made from women-in-prison movies) but bits and pieces of those movies getting edited together wouldn't make sense. That's exactly how this hodgepodge or horror turned out - like you put a few trashy movies into a blender to see what would happen.

A total mess

[BandSAboutMovies · 2/10 · 9 February 2022]

So this is kind of cheating, because this is less a Jess Franco movie and more a Eurocine mix tape that has been edited from Franco's Barbed Wire Dolls, Alain Peyat's Hitler's Last Train and Patrice Rhomm's Captive Women 4 with some new footage directed by Alain Deruelle in which numerous SS officers run away to Latin American where they've created special laboratories to breed beautiful women that will satisfy their darkest desires. How this helps them get revenge for the fall of the Third Reich is way beyond me.

Seriously, all of those movies, all mixed up, all with new dialogue dubbed over the top of them.

Jailhouse Wardress is literally only for Franco completists. And by that, I mean me. But seriously, if you've never watched one of his movies, this would not be the one to start with. Or really ever have to see.

Jailhouse Jess.

[morrison-dylan-fan · 2/10 · 9 June 2022]

Mentioning to my dad a few times about how much I've enjoyed Stephen Thrower's extraordinary two books on Jess Franco, I was surprised to get for my birthday from my dad, an Uncle Jess movie I've not heard of before! Leading to me entering the jailhouse.

View on the film:

Wanting to use every bit of material they had from Barbed Wire Dolls (1976), studio Eurocine picked up the leftover bits from Uncle Jess's movie, and gave them a slap & tickle with 2% of new footage from Alain Deruelle being splashed carelessly over it.

Attempting to change the context of the original footage with new voice-overs, the only thing Eurocine archive, is making it clear they are trying to force Franco's distinctive style into a new shape, via auteur Uncle Jess's Jazz playing of the zoom-in like a trombone, and jagged hand-held close-ups on welcomed sleazy WIP sequences,being bluntly stopped, by the forced inserts of Deruelle's (this being the last movie he'd make) footage into the jailhouse.

There's only one reason to watch this...

[Stevieboy666 · 3/10 · 6 April 2024]

"What do we do now?" "Let's get undressed" Jailhouse Wardress is a bit of a mess in terms of story, at the end of World War 2 a high ranking Nazi SS officer flees to South Africa and becomes the cruel governor of a bizarre women's jail, an assassination plot is made to kill him. The bulk of the film looks 1970's/early 80's but our villain hasn't aged a day since 1945, either he has some miracle anti-ageing potion or the makers didn't give a hoot about making the time setting look convincing. There are two directors credited, Alain Deruelle, who specialised in pornography, and Spanish legend Jess Franco, known for his many horror films though he too dabbled in adult movies. I am a fan of Jess, even his bad movies and this falls into that category. He gives his usual cameo appearance , his real life lover Lina Romay is one of the stars in this flick. The prison is an old coastal castle, the location is quite nice but there are only a handful of inmates and the governor's office looks like it was filmed in somebody's lounge! The editing is bad, the dubbing is terrible and it is obvious that the film was put together using footage from other movies, the picture quality varying quite a lot. Yes, it is very flawed but let's be honest there is only one reason to watch this women in prison/Nazisploitation thriller and that is for the sex and nudity, of which there is a great deal. Full frontal female nudity throughout, some of the men get in on the action too but as was so typical back then - with one exception - the guys get to keep their clothes on! Also back then the "natural look" was in which makes the nudity look dated. The Euro musical score is easy on the ears and I did like seeing the exotic plants outside of the prison but the sex novelty soon wore off and gave up with the "plot".