Bad Girls Dormitory (1986)

To me, this movie is perfection.

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

This opens with a trio of set-up-but-innocent girls getting arrested and shipped off to the titular facility. The place is run by Miss Madison, who wants to do some experimental reconditioning techniques on her charges and social worker Don Beach (Rick Gianasi) is concerned. Lori (Carey Zuris) emerges as our leading character and, naturally, there are tough chick adversaries in the form of Lisa (Jennifer Delora) and her sidekick Rebel (Donna Eskra). And, even more naturally, Lori and Don hook up. If you want some 80s NYC sleaze, you can't go wrong with this. Sporting a lo-fi BASKET CASE aesthetic, BAD GIRL'S DORMITORY is rife with dirty NYC alleys, grimy apartment buildings, and basements with peeling paint. I love it. The acting is universally bad but lead Zuris, who looks a bit like Marilyn Chambers, is actually decent. She didn't do anything else. I'd also give Delora points for her tough chick portrayal (she is interviewed on the Media Blasters DVD). Special mention should be made for the obviously pseudonym donning Marita as the warden Miss Madison. Looking like a porn variation of Bridgette Nielsen in ROCKY IV, she is hilariously bad and her bizarre accent makes me suspect she may be Angelika Jager (another pseudonym?) from Kincaid's ROBOT HOLOCAUST (1986). Given how awful Jager was and the proximity of the two productions, they must be the same lady.

Heck, I'm giving it a 10 cuz I star in it as Lisa and because I can. It's really exactly as reviewed. But a romp nonetheless.Only wanted to add that if you checked the IMDb & other sites you'd see that I've been extremely busy starring in films after that and then for ABC, CBS, TV and so forth. SO I didn't stop at the low budget genre that they were. Yes those fights were pitiful mostly because the other woman did not follow the choreography: i ended up so bruised and battered: her kicks to my stomach were real, and so forth. Every choreographed move that was a hit became a kick and the kicks became hits so she beat the crap out of me!! Lots of stories about it but hell, the movie gave me a career. If it wasn't for 7 seconds in the shower topless I wouldn't have been de-crowned from Miss Ulster County for Miss NY Miss America and gotten the calls for all the work I've done. So the publicity didn't hurt! Just had to watch it for a thing I'm doing at my old high school where they've studied horror films and the like for their film history classes and they studied mine (poor them) and I'm going there for a "Inside the ACtors Studio" type thing for the school and have to show scenes and talk about all those films including this one that not at the time, but later made me a name and I STILL all these years later have fans of all those films so they are bad to the bone, but at least in a humorous, Saturday night nothing better to do way.ENJOY Jennifer Delora

First of all, I have no idea why this film came on the same video as Scum back in the 90s, you couldn't get two more different films together if you tried.Bad Girls' Dormitory is just so weird, I mean it's good but what is it all about? It's doesn't even look like it's in a prison, it's so obviously just filmed in a workplace or something! And what kind of prison can visitors just wander in and out of all the time and not even get searched for guns?Not only that, but being in that prison looks like the most fun thing ever, just hanging out getting stoned and having a dance, plus your boyfriend gets to visit, why do they bother escaping at the end?

Various young women find themselves at an NYC juvenile facility which proves that teen WIP don't have to take a backseat to their adult compatriots. Various cliques vie for superiority, the warden has an odd Eurotrash accent, and inmate Jennifer Delora conducts regular private catfights with one of the guards. Other inmates sex it up with male guards, but the only lesbian content is by implication (and what about those fights, Jen?)Film has a large cast, which seemingly includes every NY actress of its day with teenish looks and willingness to strip for the camera. Tech credits are crude and the film looks lowbudget. What saves it for me is an early sequence where the prison's brand new doctor, a drug addict with the demeanor of a male porn actor, happens upon the side door to the shower room. Naturally, a gang bath is taking place at the time. We study the soapy inmates from his P.O.V. for what seems like about 5 minutes, until finally the camera settles on sad-faced Carey Zuris, who stares at the lens and asks, "Seen enough?"Plotwise, of course, she's talking to the doctor guy, but she might as well be speaking to the voyeur audience itself. To a more sensitive crowd than that which relishes WIP films, this moment might even be somewhat of an epiphany, but I suspect the automatic response from genre fans was, "No, baby, why don't you turn around now so we can check out the other side?" (Okay, that's what *I* said, watching this film on tape in my living room. But I'll bet $2 I'm not the only one who did.)Cast was and remains virtually unknown. Frances Rains, Jennifer Delora, and Natalie O'Connell had other mid-80s credits in NY-produced exploiter films. The only other place I've seen Zuris was as a nude extra in Chuck Vincent's NEW YORK'S FINEST. All the girls look fairly natural as JDs and most give fairly convincing performances, with Zuris perhaps the standout (she does suffer a lioness' share of the indignities usually visited upon actresses in a production such as this but retains considerable poise throughout and probably deserved bigger roles and better breaks than she ever got during her acting career). Delora is given an homage to the *other* scene you remember from WHITE HEAT. It doesn't really work. One redhead prisoner looks genuinely underage, though she's probably just an underdeveloped 20 yr old with no makeup; her molestation by a slimy guard who catches her smoking a J in the basement mostly consists of removing her shirt at command and displaying the AAAs. The actress playing the warden gives a somewhat eccentric performance but does not sound as if English is her native language, which might explain it. Admirers of big hooters will definitely admire redheaded Natalie O'Connell (most of the other cast members are A-cuppers, but what's wrong with that, I'd like to know? they're all real).Picture is determinedly sleazy, but strictly on the basis of the "Seen enough?" exchange I'll give it a 4. If the very thought of women behind bars, unable to control their passionate impulses, forced to pay their debt to society, but what about their obligations to themselves? barbed wire could not hold them back, savage dogs could not control them, if you only see one picture this year, you MUST see ... does not set your blood racing, rent THE MATRIX or NOTTING HILL or something. This one is for WIP fans only.