Chained Heat (1983)

People are voting emotionally.

A Masterpiece!

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

(Credit, IMDb) Linda Blair plays Carol, a young woman who must serve 18 months in prison after killing a man (by accident). The prison turns out to be brimming with decadence, corruption and sleaze, where the other female inmates are sadistic crack-selling lesbian rapists and the guards and warden are no better. Racial tensions are high as the inmates is divided into two factions, blacks and whites, who must either join together against the management or kill each other trying.I love exploitation movies, as long as they are entertaining. This one could cure someone's insomnia with how boring it is. Not only is it extremely sleazy, but so boring, it's hard to pay attention at times. There is rape, prison corruption, laughable dialog, stereotyping, racism, plenty of cursing, among other things. But they forget to add entertainment, excitement, suspense, etc. Linda Blair looks like she doesn't wanna be there. According to IMDb trivia, the script changed on her, so I can't blame her. John Vernon hams it up like no tomorrow. Overall, avoid it. Even the biggest exploitation fans may have trouble getting into this one1/10

The plot is simple enough: nice, ordinary girl experiences the thrill of her life in some dingy prison. The crazy/hot chicks are at one another's throats every two minutes. The prison warden is a horny junkie with a jacuzzi right in the middle of his office. His right hand is a feminist sadist prison guard who betrays him with another equally sleazy man. There is nudity, gore, drugs and absurdity at every plot twist. Almost all characters exhibit zero acting ability with a few exceptions and poor Linda Blair wonders what she's doing in the middle of this camp festival. By far one of the worst movies I had the pleasure to see and for that reason it's a classic case of "it's so bad/laughable that it's good." There is one big-breasted prison guard who doesn't appear topless in any scene. Other than that I have no complaints.

In spite of the undeservedly and even ridiculously low rating of 3.7 out of 10 here on this website, at least most of the reviewers seem to agree with me that this is simply one of the greatest (undoubtedly even THE greatest) so-called "Women in Prison" exploitation classic ever made. Seriously, this sick puppy has literally everything you could possibly be looking for in a sleazy & shoddy exploitation flick: raw action, extreme violence, suspense, wondrously stereotypical characters, gratuitous nudity, steaming hot sex footage, campy music, suitably filthy set pieces and gloriously over-the-top performances from a dreamy all-star B-movie cast. Unlucky cherubic beauty Carol Henderson must serve 18 months in prison following a deadly car accident she caused, but she never could have dreamed she would end up in the most derailed and improperly run women's prison facility in the world! All sorts of putrid and impure business take place in this institution and, even worse, everyone gets away with everything! The head warden Bacman (John Vernon in an awesomely sneering role) built his office into a luxurious loft where he shoots private sex film starring the inmates and forces them to snitch on the others. His first captain – Stella Stevens – desperately wants to steal his position and does whatever she can to frame him. She and her lover Lester (played by Henry Silva who's the personification of sleaze) also run a very profitable escort service for which he smoothly sneaks out prisoners and rents them out to wealthy customers. Then there's another duo of wardens who pay tough chick Ericka (Sybil Danning) to rape and abuse defenseless new arrivals and then, last but not least of course, there's the usual type of conflicts between the prisoners mutually. You know; the gang of Ericka versus the black girls led by the tall-legged Tamara Dobson and Linda Blair's diplomatic attempts to unite them all together against the prison authorities. "Chained Heat" is a stupendously terrific and ultra-trashy classic in the field of 80's exploitation classics. Writer/director Paul Nicholas clearly wanted to pay tribute to the preceding 'Women in Prison' movies of the seventies (like, for example "Caged Heat" and "The Big Bird Cage") but actually surpassed all those titles in terms of dementia and sheer entertainment value. The film provides full frontal female nudity every couple of minutes and even the slightly more prominent ladies in the cast aren't too embarrassed to show a little bit of T&A. Personally, I sure as hell prefer gazing at a fully matured Linda Blair showering in prison rather than a 13-year-old version possessed by the devil and vomiting pea soup! "Chained Heat" comes with my highest possible recommendation, in case that wasn't made clear enough yet.

**SPOILERS** A somewhat chubby but very sexy looking Linda Blair as woman prisoner Carol Henderson is run through the ringer in this classic "Women in Prison" movie where she ends up not only saving the day but losing a few pounds of baby fat that she put on since growing into adulthood.Carol for her part just wants to put her time in, 18 months, for a hit and run rap where she ended up killing a pedestrian. Not knowing what she's got herself into Carol ends up engineering a major prison riot that puts an end to a reign of terror at the prison. Warden Bacman, John Vernon, running the women's prison has been also running a drug ring and using the profits to built an elaborate penthouse for himself where he entertains the women prisoners he's in charge of.Anything goes in Warden Bacman's house of horrors with the horny male prison guards paying for sex with the shapely woman prisoners. This leads at the beginning of the movie a terrified woman prisoner Susie, Jonna Lee, being gunned down when she, with a toy gun, resisted the advances of prison guard Stone,Robert Miano.It doesn't take long for a sweet and inoffensive Carol to become a hardened convict when she's messed with by not only her fellow women prisoners but by Warden Bacman who's got his eye on her. The warden likes them, his women, young and innocent and Carol is just what he's been looking for since his former prison girlfriend Debbie,Monique Gabriell, was found murdered in the prison laundry room. Debbie besides engaging in the wardens many personal pleasures, like having himself and her video taped having sex, was snitching on her fellow prisoners.We soon learn that as Warden Bacman was enjoying himself, with women booze and drugs, his second in command Captain Taylor, Stella Stevens, has been planning a coup to overthrow him and take over the prison with her pimp boyfriend Lester, Henry Silva. Meanwhile Carol has gotten in with woman prison leaders Ericka, Sybil Danning, and The Dutchess, Tamara Dobson, who despite being bitter enemies have joined together to crash out of prison before either Warden Bacman or Captain Taylor stage an unfortunate accident for both of them.One of the best,and unintentionally funny, prison films ever made "Chained Heat" really gets going when Carol whips up the women prisoners after Captain Taylor took over the prison. That was due to Warden Bacman's "accidental" drowning in his king-size bathtub. Running the prison like a concentration camp commandant Captain Taylor has the state prison administration start to put the heat on her in why so many of her inmates are ending up either dead or in the prison infirmary.With the rioting woman prisoners on the verge of taking control of the prison Carol, knowing what will put an end to Captain Taylor's dreams of power and glory, breaks into Warden Bacman's penthouse in search of the incriminating evidence that would put Captain Taylor behind bars! A hidden video tape of Captain Taylor and head woman guard Boots,Kendal Kaldwell, drowning the very drunk Warden Bacman while he's entertaining one of his woman prisoners in his hot-tub! Bacman has a tape recording system hooked up in his pad, that Captain Taylor didn't now about, that recorded everything that happened there even his murder!Without a doubt "Chained Heat" is by far the best and most hilarious womens prison movie ever made. As bad as the film is in its unbelievable story and the atrocious acting in it doesn't for a moment let its audience down. Even now, some 25 years after is initial release, "Chained Heat" has never been eclipsed, much less duplicated, in the many bad womens prison flicks that had since followed it.