''Frauengefängnis'' (lit. Women's prison; released in the US as ''Barbed Wire Dolls'' and in the UK as ''Caged Women'') is a 1975

Swiss Swiss most commonly refers to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland * Swiss people Swiss may also refer to: Places * Swiss, Missouri * Swiss, North Carolina * Swiss, West Virginia * Swiss, Wisconsin Other uses * Swiss Café, an old café located ...

-West German

horror film Horror is a film genre that seeks to elicit physical or psychological fear in its viewers. Horror films often explore dark subject matter and may deal with Transgressive art, transgressive topics or themes. Broad elements of the genre include Mo ...

directed by

Jesús Franco Jesús Franco Manera (12 May 1930 – 2 April 2013), also commonly known as Jess Franco, was a Spanish filmmaker, composer, and actor, known as a highly prolific director of low-budget exploitation and B-movies. He worked in many different gen ...

. It is part of the women in prison cycle of violent

sexploitation film A sexploitation film (or sex-exploitation film) is a class of independently produced, low-budget feature film that is generally associated with the 1960s and early 1970s, and that serves largely as a vehicle for the exhibition of non-explicit se ...

s that flourished in the 1970s and early 1980s. A women's prison tale, it stars Lina Romay as Maria, who has been jailed after killing her father, played by director Jesús Franco himself. When originally submitted for release in 1976, the

British Board of Film Classification The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) is a non-governmental organization, non-governmental organisation founded by the British film industry in 1912 and responsible for the national classification and censorship of films exhibited ...

rejected it. It was only passed the following year after extensive cuts as was the case in Australia.

Plot

Maria da Guerra kills her father, who was trying to rape her. She is imprisoned in a jail where lesbian wardens torture the inmates. The women's prison, set on an isolated island, is run by a man who impersonates a doctor, Carlos Costa. In fact, he is a killer who murdered the actual doctor of that name, whose name he then assumed. Assisting him is a monocled lesbian woman known only as The Wardress who regulates the prison with an iron fist. The Wardress reads Nazi volumes such as

Albert Speer Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer (; ; 19 March 1905 – 1 September 1981) was a German architect who served as Reich Ministry of Armaments and War Production, Minister of Armaments and War Production in Nazi Germany during most of W ...

's history of the

Third Reich Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictat ...

as leisure reading. She wears jackboots and tight shorts under a white shirt in some scenes. In other scenes she wears a see-through black sheer fabric top. Due to the practice of placing prisoners in isolation and torturing them (for example, via chaining them naked to a wall just out of reach of food, or placing them naked on a wire-frame bed where they receive electric shocks), several prisoners in the past have died. The current authorities in charge of the prison have concealed this by claiming these prisoners died of heart failure; but they are reaching the point where any more reported 'heart failures' will appear suspicious to the authorities on the mainland.

Cast

* Lina Romay – Maria da Guerra * Monica Swinn – The Wardress (credited as Monika Swinn) * Paul Muller – Carlos Costa (credited as Paul Müller) * Ramon Ardid (Raymond Hardy) – José (credited as Ray Hardy) * Roger Darton – Milton Warren * Ronald Weiss – The Warden * Martine Stedil – Bertha Contrini * Eric Falk – Nestor * Peggy Markoff – Pompadour (as credited as Peggy Markhoff) * Nathalie Mann * Denis Torre *

– Maria's Father (uncredited) * Beni Cardoso – Rosaria Cortina

Release

* Italian title: ''Penitenziario femminile per reati sessuali''

Reception

The film has been described as follows: "Typically sleazy women-in-prison nonsense from Franco with the expected nudity, humiliation and torture. Worth watching for the hilarious scene in which Franco attempts to assault the lovely Lina Romay in slow motion."

Legacy

The film was followed by various sequels, including ''Frauengefängnis 2'' and ', directed by Franco, and the 2007 German film ''Frauengefängnis 4,'' the last three starring Franco and Romay playing different roles.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Frauengefangnis 1975 films 1975 horror films Swiss horror films West German films German horror films 1970s French-language films Films directed by Jesús Franco Sexploitation films Women in prison films 1970s exploitation films French-language Swiss films 1970s German films Films scored by Walter Baumgartner French-language horror films