Women in Prison Triple Feature [DVD] [1973] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

I must admit, when Amazon announced the release of this set I was enthused, having seen 'Women In Cell Block 7' in a grindhouse theater when I was a teen. Propped-up as great exploitation in the product details, I purchased it almost immediately (at least I got it from a secondary seller and didn`t pay Amazon pricing, thankfully). Unfortunately, the 3 films come from a wretched source, all the colors bleed and/or are washed out, creating an almost hot orange haze throughout, the films are edited/hacked to pieces, and all are poorly, annoyingly dubbed, resulting in an abyssmal viewing experience, even w/ the fast-forward button engaged. `Felt like I was the one imprisoned ... look elsewhere for your WIP kicks, you won`t find them here.

This is not worth purchasing. The video quality is so grainy that the movies are almost unwatchable. The movies themselves low budget "B" movies and not very good either.

None of the films comprising the 'Women in Prison Triple Feature' are remotely interesting. Each follows an insultingly silly format: innocent(ish) babe gets locked away in the jungle; falls for guard/governor/doctor/Sandinista-style revolutionary/bloke off Hill St. Blues; much unfeasible degradation; mass shoot-up; then finally 'escape' - culminating in the totally blasé' decimation of the entire cast.
Credits.
Films like these have no business being boring, but never-ending shower scenes and poorly staged battle sequences, do not a gripping viewing experience make. Dripping wet women's breasts are a wondrous Heavenly creation, but even my almost psychotically obsessive propensity was at its limits, after the umpteenth pair wobbled and splashed across the screen..

Collectively, the picture quality is shocking; the colours have all bled into each other giving everything a glaring orange glow.
Worse, I couldn't tell if the films were panned and scanned from some kind of Scope or not: the titles fitted the 4:3 pretty good without letterboxing or obvious squeezing, and yet conversations are regularly to be seen between two noses, and that - mixed with the horror orange - makes the numerous, tepid sex-scenes visually impenetrable.
This may be just down to terrible film-making and perhaps not any technical butchery.
Either way, it's pathetic.
The music is similarly frightful; vibrating your eardrums with buzz even when you've got your volume turned right down, and interspersed with the type of screeched euro-ballad that'll have you dashing for the bathroom to indulge in involuntary, but deliriously satisfying vomiting.

The sexploitation factor? Grim, artless and tawdry. Nothing anywhere near the vicious fun levels of 'Women of Cell Block 9,' 'Violence in a Women's Prison' or even 'Bamboo House of Dolls' - films made with same sleazy mind-set as 'WIPTF' but - at the very least - brimming with the essential WIP factor: the encouragement of the basic human desire to watch terrible things happening to other people - a quality this collection flagrantly lacks.
'The Hot Box' isn't a WIP anyway - do we look gullible as well as stupid?

I've given Shock-o-Rama another star for a set of insane trailers including 'Five Bloody Graves,' 'Creature From the Hillbilly Lagoon' and 'Necroville,' but it's strictly a gesture.
The B.B.F.C. have snipped bits from this for the UK release - but Heaven only knows from where.

260-odd minutes of your precious life.. think seriously about it.

Yes, the video quality is lousy. But a pristine print of any of these movies defeats the purpose. Anyway, I am sure the original prints are long lost and forgotten. These movies are down and dirty and that's part of the fun. We are conditioned by big budget commercial entertainment to reject anything that doesn't quite fit that norm. That incompatibility with the sleek and shiny norm is precisely why I enjoy these movies.

All three films deliver the lurid thrills fans of the women in prison genre come to expect. They were shot on the fly and, yes, the transfers are crummy. But if you're looking for some surprising examples of the genre that are a bit off the beaten path, you'll get a kick out of these. You can find poetry in the strangest places.

I must admit I got this for "The Hot Box" alone after seeing clips from it in another movie about exploitation films (Machete Maidens Unleashed, I believe). Anyway, this movie IS a great exploitation films and has some really nice looking ladies in it ... but the source print is indeed scratchy and washed out. I can't believe this is the best source possible, because the clips in that other film were better. On top of that the disc I got was defective, and I doubt I can be bothered to try to get a replacement. Someone mentioned by the way the Corman films were better -- this was produced by New World, which was Corman's company. The story in The Hot Box is indeed only half way interesting, though, and you'd do better getting some other compilation than this one.