Desperate Women (1985) User Reviews

Ambitious, sleaze-filled X-rater that suffers from decelerating aesthetic deficit syndrome

[fertilecelluloid · 5/10 · 23 December 2005]

Ned Morehead and his crew of cinematic miscreants made an effort with this sleaze-filled women-in-prison X-rater. It's not a classic or anything, but it's several notches along the belt from the usual tiresome fair. Although "Jailhouse Girls" did the erotics with more feeling, this gets the nasty aspects working like a treat. The score, by Rusty Chops (!?), is really catchy and grim, and the contrasty cinematography by BJ France gives the film a surplus of punk attitude. The film has structure, real characters, and the usual WIP (Women in Prison) attributes, and its adult nature renders the misogyny more potent and injects the atmosphere with greater unease. Morehead demonstrates some directorial skill and aesthetic sense in the film's first twenty minutes where a murder takes place and our heroine is framed. Unfortunately, once the obligatory sex scenes begin their inevitable parade across the screen, the style goes quickly down the toilet. Taija Rae, who had a short career in skinficks, is a bland lead, and proved why she was headed for obscurity. Sharon Mitchell, on the other hand, turns in an energetic turn as a tough but reasonable prison inmate. Worth catching for its ambitious veneer.