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Review
by
Brian Lindsey
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4
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5 |
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10
= Highest
Rating
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An
Italian-Brazilian co-production, Women
in Fury is a sleazy WIP ("Women In Prison")
exploitationer rife with dumb, badly dubbed dialog, ridiculous
action scenes and a high quotient of naked female flesh. What
more do you expect from a foreign-made WIP flick? Certainly
not quality of any kind. That's not what this type
of film is all about. At its sleaziest depths the WIP genre
represents the very essence of the Exploitation Film —
at its most basic, button-pushing level. Women
In Fury contains all the elements common to the genre,
trotted out in customary style, though with a few exceptions...
There's no shower scene (the water hose torture bit doesn't
count) and way too much time is wasted on the boring activities
of a crusading doctor trying to free the film's heroine. Rest
assured, though, that the other clichés —
the lesbian prison matron, the evil commandant, cat fights,
sadomasochistic sex, a jailbreak —
are all present and accounted for.
Suzane Carvalho (Massacre
in Dinosaur Valley) stars as Angela Duvall, a beautiful
high society debutante who's convicted of killing a known
drug dealer, the man supplying her brother with smack. It
was really her brother who pulled the trigger but Angela (stupidly)
takes the fall believing that as a young woman she'll get
a shorter jail stretch. Sentenced to 18 years, she's sent
to a real hellhole of a prison —
Angela's cellmates are all vicious bitches who physically
intimidate her and flaunt their lesbianism. (At one point
she's forcibly stripped naked and flogged mercilessly with
water-soaked towels before being sexually molested.) The Chief
Matron of the cellblock is an icy dyke who dispenses favors
and protection for sex. Summoned to her quarters, Angela rejects
the matron's advances only to get bitch-slapped; she then
gives in and, in a steamy sex scene, seems to enjoy swinging
the other way. Only two people show Angela any real kindness.
Denise, a half-crazy inmate, is a 350-pound black woman who
doesn't take any crap from anybody. Asking only friendship
in return, she protects Angela as best she can from the other
prisoners. (The gargantuan actress' dubbed voice is sweet
and lilting, which can be pretty funny.) Dr. Cuña (Henri
Pagnoncelli), the prison's medical officer, comes to believe
Angela is innocent and campaigns to get her released. He thus
runs afoul of the evil, corrupt warden, Captain Bonifacio
(Leonardo Jose), who's made it a personal mission to see Angela
dead. Bonifacio knows that Angela saw a third person the night
of the dope pusher's murder, a high-level gangster who was
trying to recruit her brother as a dealer among the high society
crowd. If Angela is released she can finger the Mob's man
and possibly bring down the drug racket.
An attempt to hang Angela in her cell is
thwarted when the doctor reaches her just in time. He suspects
Bonifacio's involvement but the warden threatens him and has
him fired. On the inside, only Denise is left to protect Angela
now. On the outside, Cuña works frantically to get
Angela out, contacting her sniveling, wimpy brother to get
the whole truth. A confession brings in the police and a court
order for Angela's release is secured. (The movie really bogs
during these scenes... Nobody actually watching this
kind of flick gives a damn about the plot, anyway.) But before
the order can be presented a bloody riot breaks out in the
prison when Denise decapitates another inmate trying to assassinate
Angela on orders from the warden. Amid the chaos Angela and
most of her cellmates escape over the wall into the jungle.
While Bonifacio and his platoon of totally incompetent soldiers
pursues them over land the Doc frantically searches for Angela
in a helicopter. The Law hard on their heels, the scantily-clad
fugitives try desperately to survive both the dangers of the
jungle and the fury of each other in their run for the Venezuelan
border. And even if she lives through the ordeal... can poor
innocent Angela ever be the same?
If the idea of sweaty, catfighting lesbians
in a South American prison sounds like an appealing cup of
sleaze, Women in Fury should
prove agreeable enough. Suzane Carvalho, a dusky Latin beauty
with a very nice (silicone-free) body, can't act a lick —
but that hardly matters now, does it?
There's plenty of nudity. The location
used as the prison really resembles what you might imagine
some South American hellhole to look like. Some of the dialog
is unintentionally funny ("Is there no limit to your
perfidy?"); ditto the ineptly staged action sequences.
(The warden's troops couldn't fight their way out of a wet
paper bag.) The Denise character simply has to be seen to
believed. Sounds like a fairly delectable cheese feast, right?
Unfortunately too much of
the film's 90-minute running time is taken up with the doctor's
efforts to win Angela's release and the jungle trek of the
fugitives. I would've preferred it focused more on that whole
'naked women in cages' thing.
But that's just
me.
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My
first look at a Shriek Show release, Women
in Fury is certainly packaged attractively enough. (The
keepcase cover features some wonderfully lurid comic book-style
art.) The contents are rather a mixed bag, however.
The film itself is presented
fullframe. Picture quality is fine for such a low budget, foreign
made flick. Audio is more than adequate except for a weird anomaly
that occurs for a brief period during Chapter 8, when the gals
have been captured by some horny prospectors. For about a minute
I could hear audio from Chapter 1 bleeding through — one can clearly
hear police sirens wailing in the jungle! This oddity occurred
during playback on both a Sony DVP-S530P home theater component
and an Ovation PC DVD-ROM drive. Go figure!
As
for extras, trailers for three other Shriek Show releases are
provided: Demonia, an Italian gorefest
from director Lucio Fulci; the succinctly titled Hong Kong WIP
film Women in Prison; and Prisoner
Maria: The Movie, a Japanese knockoff of La
Femme Nikita. (Alas, no trailer for Women
in Fury.) 2/16/02
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