PRISONER OF LOVE: A TRIBUTE TO THE WOMEN-IN-PRISON FILM GENRE
by Lem Cottonwood

I was eight years old when I saw my first women’s prison movie - “Maximum Security T & A”. I dug it out of an old chest in my granddaddy’s basement containing a reel-to-reel player and dozens of reels of film. The old boy had one hum-dinger of a collection.It was by no coincidence that I stopped browsing the women's underwear section of the JCPenney catalog on that day.

Those movies impacted me the way Star Wars riled up my friends. Group shower scenes, spankings, strip searches. I will never forget the scene in “The Federal Penetration-ary” when Angela "Cunning" Lingus tunnels her way to freedom only to turn back at the very end to join an all-girl orgy back inside the prison. Powerful stuff. No wonder I became a prison guard as soon as I graduated from Birmingham Community College.

The women’s prison movie genre is really a collection of distinct sub-genres. Women in solitary confinement. Women on Georgia chain gangs. Women in Mexican prisons. Warden/guard domination and submission flicks. Hard labor camps. Juvenile detention centers. Halfway houses. Mental institutions. You name it. I personally lean toward Viet Nam style women-confined-in-bamboo-huts-in-the-sweltering-heat movies.

A woman's prison breakout that just happens to include a midget

In all of the above, barbed wire is prominently featured. As are leather hats, muscular dykes, wet t-shirts, elaborate bondage sequences, and (usually) Nazi paraphernalia. Were it not for these movies, I probably wouldn’t know how to treat a lady today.

In fact, women’s prison movies are the one of the best measures of male sexuality. Any god-fearing male not turned on by the cellblock “bull dyke” forcing a wrongly imprisoned girl-next-door into a lesbian encounter against her will is probably not too long from acquiring a subscription to “Playgirl” magazine.

I think you know what I'm saying.

I once met Quentin Tarantino at a low-end titty bar just outside Little Rock. (He was, incidentally, dressed in a powder-blue tuxedo, pounding a bottle of very expensive chardonnay.) We got into a long discussion of our favorite exploitation flicks. He liked the old grainy b-movies like “Miranda’s Rights”, the ones that he said, “really make you feel like you’re the one forcing the girls to lather one another in the shower, man, you know?” It was like he was speaking my mind.

“Nine Inches of Warden Bob” is generally considered the best movie of this stripe ever made. But that's bullshit. It's like how every pompous dickbrain who ever took a film studies course says "Citizen Kane" is the best movie ever made. Everybody knows "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" is the best movie ever made. And it is because of this confusion that I, as a public service announcement, will reveal the top five women's prison movies of all time:

	No woman's prison film is complete without a group shower scene

5. “Pearl’s Harbor” (1976)
4. “Womb Raider” (1982)
3. “A Suspect Wrongly Fingered” (1990)
2. "Easy Bitches Doin' Hard Time" (1977)
1. "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" (1975)*

* editor's note: It is true that while "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" is not a women's prison movie per se there is a great scene wherein Sir Gallahad the Chaste stumbles upon a castle filled with girls between the ages of sixteen and nineteen and a half, each deserving of a spanking.

Keep in mind that these movies are discriminated against by all kinds of people, especially Mormons and bow tie wearing Muslims. These people need to hear the gospel of EasyMidget in a bad way. If the front desk of your local video store is not manned by a fat, sweaty guy with a great big jelly stain across the front of his "wife beater", you probably will not find any of these movies there.

Good luck and enjoy your next trip to the movies!.