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Untamed
and unashamed, wallowing unrepentantly in raw depictions of
sexual sadism, degradation, and violence, the WIP (Women in
Prison) genre appeals to the basest instincts of humankind,
finding titillation in the torture of women stripped of both
clothes and pride. Peons to perversion, these descents into
depravity ask for no friends and take no prisoners. Raw and
brutal in their depictions of both sexual fetish and violence,
this sleazy genre proudly investigates the hatred, power-lust,
and cruelty of the human animal with an unblinking eye. A visual
marriage of viciousness and viscera, skin and sin, moral values
are as empty as inmates' hopes to escape from hardcore rape
and objectification. In short, the WIP film looks for no saving
grace and finds no faith in humanity. The body is meat, the
cruelest of these films shout, proceeding to show us all the
lurid, lovely ways that this 'meat' may be used, abused, beaten
and brutalized!
Director Oswaldo De Oliveira crafts in Bare
Behind Bars a minor masterwork of lurid surface action
and surprisingly serious narrative tension, underscoring satisfyingly
exploitative appearances with an undeniable emotional assault.
A rude, rowdy, and rambunctious entry into the sex-and-slaughter
sweepstakes, this is perhaps the prototype
or at least the sleazy pinnacle
of the WIP fiasco. Yep, everything you've heard about this sick
puppy is true... and then some! You wont know whether you need
a psychologist or a hooker after watching this; in either case,
you'll need a bath. Peeling back the expected limits of cinematic
storytelling to show us how very far onscreen carnage may be
taken, Bare Behind Bars is rightly
considered by self-appointed guardians of good taste a horrible
affront to decency. "Give me an amen!"
In
fact, the movie never pretends to be anything other than a boiled
scab across the filthy, sweaty skin of our species, welcoming
in its raw, primitive approach to exploitation not only our
condemnation, outrage, and, horror, but also if we are honest
our animalistic enjoyment of other people's pain, terror,
and sexual debasement. Particularly so if they are attractive
women. De Oliveira forces us to acknowledge the instinctive
voyeuristic tendencies and animals baseness that makes many
of us want to wallow in these attacks against decency.
The action and implications
of this grimly executed if ludicrously acted story make you
feel scummy for watching (and, yes, enjoying) the degradation
of women who are subjected to cruelties that might make De Sade
blush. Oliveira delivers in a love letter to lewdness that is
as emotionally draining as it is filthily seductive. In a minimalist
plot that worships sadism and graphic violence, this first of
Blue Underground's Oliveira offerings is the cinematic equivalent
of a chainsaw enema. One of the most outrageous, blatantly offensive
entries in the WIP sub-genre, this meaty montage of filth and
fury features innocent young women each enticingly raw in
their sexuality brutalized and tortured behind the gloomily
captured walls of a believable Brazilian prison. Kidnapped and
falsely incarcerated, the girls struggle to survive the hungers
of their captors while learning to deal with their own unchained
desires (and each other). The warden, a close cousin to the
Ilsa type of femme fatale we love to hate, is an emotionally
unstable sadomasochist delighting in the powers of derision
and sexual dominance she wields. Likewise, the prison nurse,
an unsuitable nympho who prefers women, uses the inmates for
sexual pleasure when they're not being farmed out to the white
slave trade. And, of course, there's always the torture chamber...
Maddened with regret, fury, and the will to survive, these savage
sisters escape their pubic prison and engage in a rampage that
calls into question their own internal characteristics. Maddened
by their incarceration and molestation, these women are depicted
by Oliveira as savages themselves, made so by a failed, abusive
system. This is an admirable decision, questioning the very
system of law and punishment that, in effect, makes more dangerous
the souls it confines.
A freak show of flesh,
fear, and fetish, Oliveira's putrid peepshows obliterate the
false covering of responsibility which oh-so-respectable society
wears to disguise its ugliness, exposing humanity as the confused
mιnage of graveyard and whorehouse which it becomes when people
are encouraged by unchecked power to fulfill their basest animal
drives. This bastion of bad taste is a catalogue of carnality,
indulging in excess with an enthusiasm that celebrates the destruction
of human dignity. As generous in tasteless surface imagery as
it is cruel in theme, this solidly directed, mean-spirited glimpse
of Hell is nothing less than inspired in its embrace of rough
sex, rape, and the cruel ambiguity of a universe that allows
such atrocities to occur.
While undeniably an
exercise in excess and brutality, and more than a little racist
in its depiction of 'black folk,' this best-of compilation of
rough sex, forced oral shenanigans, humiliation, death, and
the lyrical poetry of violence is a devastating drama cast amidst
an exotic, grimy backdrop whose atmosphere oozes from the screen
as deliciously as sweat on battered skin. In Oliveira's hands,
these women are ground chuck! Presented in all its dick-whacking,
pineapple-shoving, gory glory, Bare Behind
Bars is both a celebration and re-imagining of one of
the few aesthetic forms which dare ask in unconscious subtext
why we enjoy experiencing vicariously impulses that we likewise
fear and distrust, challenging us beyond the nipple-tearing,
back-whipping, shower wriggling action to reflect on our own
inhumanity. Oliveira's carnival of cruelty asks the question
but is careful not to condemn. There is no moral posturing here,
only a grimy bombardment as painful and horrid as it undeniably
erotic in its primal simplicity. Lust, power, and instinct are
the focuses here, not examinations of character. So caught up
in the midst of his excess that he barely pauses to supply transitions
for his bare narrative, the director gives exactly what he promised
rough, violent, shocking smut. Oliveira's love for his subject
is both admirable and disturbing, while the parade of perverted
scenes that he subjects us too are disorientating in only the
way that truly subversive motifs can be.
An orgy of extremely
graphic sex, violence, and the consciously harsh debasement
of women, this is unapologetic exploitation at its feistiest!
Expect no rationales or apologies, for Oliveira offers none,
nor should he have to. A much better service to viewers than
the hypocritically sanitized features that are cranked out by
corporations more concerned with popcorn sales than authentic
emotional experience, Bare Behind Bars
follows in the best exploitative and pornographic tradition,
digging down to the roots of our animalistic natures and focusing
on the basest of instincts, unafraid to vivisect both the physical
and emotional politics of the corrupt human soul. Whereas a
standard Hollywood offering is content to package violence as
either patriotism or cartoonish, depicting its motivations and
results in unbelievable, untraumatic fashion, such troublemaking
bastard children of cinema as this go too far too deep into
the wellsprings of our species and depict violence and sex as
the very raw, primal, and dangerous phenomena that they can
indeed be. Which, then, is more honest? Those critics who cry
loudest about the potentially (unproved) adverse effects such
films may have on the average mind may be protesting their very
own confusion, instigated by the reluctant admittance that they
are perversely drawn to such crude material.
Oliveira manages to
inject a small amount of social commentary beneath surface scenes
of debauchery and violence, although the raw beauty and admittedly
crass effects of his powerhouse imagery tends to dwarf if not
eclipse any socially redeemable context. Thankfully a storyteller
has no obligation to preach. Stories, be they literature or
film, have no obligation to anyone or anything but the art form
itself. While social significance and psychological maturity
lend greater importance and artistry to a story, it is by no
means a requirement (despite the ineffective, morally debatable,
self-deluding insistence of politically-minded critics). As
a result of this fundamental truth, known as fully by primal
man as by today's fictioneers and because such directors as
Oliveira never claimed to be anything other than entertainers
this film (and exploitation as a whole) concentrates on sheer
sensationalism. This movie is not captivating drama or an introspective
character study. Here you will find no odes to inner peace,
no intimate themes of self-searching. No, these peons to perversity
are brutal and honestly crude. Pornography of the action world,
Oliveira's territory is the warped pleasures of savagery and
pain, rough sex and rougher vengeance.
A showman of the old
school, Oliveira gives audiences the sex and violence that they
want and then some. Just as much parody as porn, Bare
Behind Bars is a cinematic kick in the teeth capable
of raising your pulse and penis! While I firmly believe that
such films harbor deeper meanings in their subtext, including
scrutiny of the abuse of power, political corruption, and animal
instincts impulses which no amount of technology or religious
fervor can surmount, there is little need to explore these themes
in depth. Suffice it to say that this movie may just as easily
be considered art as more respectable, safer films. It mirrors
an aspect of our condition that we would usually rather deny.
If it does too well, with no effort at taste, than that too
is something we may learn from, and like it or not, something
that many of us enjoy even if you might not want your mother
to know.
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