Shameless Self Expression

Innocent Maria Rohm and heroin-addicted Luciana Paluzzi are two of the newbies at a remote island women’s prison run by a brutal and sadistic lesbian warden (Mercedes McCambridge) and overseen by a sleazy governor (Herbert Lom). Maria Schell plays a well-meaning but useless prison shrink, who tries to get better treatment for the prisoners, but eventually Rohm and Paluzzi realise their only chance for survival is escape. Rosalba Neri plays the requisite 'warden’s pet' who has her eyes on one of the newbies in particular.   1969 Jesus Franco ( “Vampyros Lesbos” , “Eugenie de Sade” , “Count Dracula” ) film is one of the earlier versions of the kind of sleazy, exploitative women in prison (WIP for short) films that would become a bit of a schlock staple in the 70s and 80s. It’s probably one of the best as well, at least from the ones I’ve seen. It’s a solid effort from the erratic but prolific Franco who made several films in this subgenre.   If this is your kind of film,...

Stefanie Powers is an American in Britain currently engaged to Maurice Kaufmann. Whilst in the country, she decides to visit the mother (Tallulah Bankhead) of her previous fiancé who died a few years back. What Powers had hoped would be a quick pop-in to pay her respects, turns into a seemingly unending bizarre nightmare as the old bible-thumping battle-axe ensures Powers can’t leave. Peter Vaughan and Yootha Joyce play Bankhead’s creepy servants who have their own alternate reasons for staying in Bankhead’s employ. Donald Sutherland turns up in the role of an intellectually challenged handyman.   Although it’s not among the better-known or more widely seen Hammer films, this 1965 outing from director Silvio Narizzano ( “Georgy Girl” , “Loot” ) has its fans out there. I’m not among them. Also known as “Fanatic” and scripted by the pretty reliable Richard Matheson ( “The Incredible Shrinking Man” , “The Fall of the House of Usher” ), this adaptation of an Anne Blaisdell novel r...