The women in prison genre is no newcomer to the realm of exploitation, and in fact is one of the oldest; second only perhaps to the reform school or nuns gone sour films.  It is near impossible to be a fan of sleazy cinema without having seen such masterpieces as Caged Heat or Sweet Sugar (aka Hellfire On Ice); but no matter how many films have come before, there is certain ground never before trodden.

At no time has an exploitation gone into depth of its characters lives, exposing all of the fears, pain and uncertainties which accompany life in a concrete cell.  Never has the tale of the abusive guards been told through the helpless eyes of those who have no choice but to act out their rage and fantasies on their helpless charges because of past traumas and tragedies in their own lives.  The material has never been treated with reverence and care instead of a sole desire to exploit the bodies and helplessness of a woman prisoner.  And quite frankly, it is about time this bold and daring journey takes place in a genre that we have come to see as sleazy and cheap!

But if you think that there is any of that crap in this film, you are in for a rude f***ing awakening my friend!  Prison-A-Go-Go is just what prison exploitation films have always been and will continue to be throughout cinema history, only a lot more rough around the edges and made with the budget of a 5th grade science project.  Well, maybe not THAT much...but a good $20 bux or so!  Prison-A-Go-Go is quite possibly the most crass, irreverent, poorly conceptualized, horribly executed piles of rat feces that has ever tried to pass itself off as a film...and you KNOW you want to watch it!

Fans will delight at the triumphant return of Rhonda Sheer, who many of us haven't seen nor heard from since her stint on television channel USA's "Up All Night" back in the late 80's when she became the "slutty" late night horror hostess and replaced the cynical "witty" hostess, Caroline Schlitt.  She is just as promiscuous here and looks just as good after all these years!  Of course, her acting hasn't gotten any better, but I imagine that is exactly the reason she was cast in this little gem...we wouldn't want her to stand out of the crowd!

Shear plays Jackpot, a prison inmate who has been around the yard and back a few times; keeping a rag tag group of female convicts together in an all women prison somewhere deep in the Philippines.  Now, if this were a normal woman in prison film, this is where the description could end and the review begin...but in this case, I believe the review needs to be primarily description; cause this sucker defies belief!

Jackpot's girls consist of a complete lunatic whose violent tendencies are matched only by her continual cursing, an overweight smuggler who has a knack for getting anything you want by hiding it in her ass, and a drug-addict who is hooked on the frion from air-conditioners!  There are more of course, and other interesting aspects such as a pet porcupine and a staff of guards which is entirely composed of gay men...but we'll save some of all that for later.

Doesn't sound like the sort of place that people would be trying to get into, but for Janie, it is exactly where she needs to go.  You see, Janie's sister has been kidnapped from her home by a mad scientist who wants to use her in experiments for the curing of a terrible affliction...the cold.  By using her in his attempts to fuse the DNA of an animal with that of a human and make her a half-porcupine being, his dreams of a world with hope for no more sniffly noses may become reality.  But how is Janie going to get into the prison and put her rescue plan into motion?

She is going to have to do something awful, which I was hoping would be her first choice (clubbing a small jump-roping child to death with a crowbar); but unfortunately she opted for choice number two...clubbing a kindly bum to death with a crowbar.  So it is that she is off to jail without passing go and without collecting $200.  Really she doesn't do much more than wait a moment or two while some stock footage of an airplane plays and wham, bam, thank you ma'am, she is there.

I don't want to get too into detail about the upcoming escape plan...not because I don't want to ruin it for you, but because Janie never bothered to come up with one.  Whatever it would have been, I am sure it would have gone sour given all the interruptions which pop up over the next hour or so of film.  In her defense, it really is hard to pull off an escape plan when there are mud wrestling fights taking place, or when there are spats between the gay guards and Jackpot every time she tries to take advantage of them.  But nothing makes an escape plan as difficult as when you are minding your business in the prison cafeteria with all the other girls, listening to a shock-rock industrial glam band singing a song about doing drugs, when ninjas suddenly attack thinking that it is Sushi Saturday but when finding that it is not, decide to engage in a martial arts infused food fight featuring both guards and inmates. 

Hmm...I really think I can stop right here and you will have taken away everything you need to about this film.  But how can I cut this short without telling you about the shower scenes?  "Shower scenes?", you might ask?  Yes, shower scenes.  So many in fact that there is a clock which appears throughout the film giving you a countdown to the next one, and let me tell you how disappointed I was when I knew there were 10 or so more minutes of ass-stuffing, porcupine stealing, snake-fighting, guard raping, foot tickling, dance number, ear-flicking, slap fight, acid-in-the-face action between me and the next batch of naked wet bodies.  What a jip!

Now, needing to leave a little of the film as a surprise I won't give away anything about the zombies...but suffice it to say that at least 15 more readers of this review will now buy this film because they linked to it via a search for "zombies" on Google.  We zombie fans are a hardcore bunch and I have at least a few films on the ole DVD shelf that I have to explain away when people come over to visit.  "Oh yeah!  XXXX...yeah I got that cause there are zombies in it!  Really!"

So if your looking for a new DVD that will need to be explained away something fierce, you can rest assured that Prison-A-Go-Go is that film.  Your parents will disown you, your girlfriend won't come over for a week, your co-workers will stop inviting you out to lunch, your best friend will borrow it and never give it back, and that Russian mail-order bride that you stole off your neighbors porch before he got home from the hobby store will swim back to her Motherland!  In other words...its a must have.

-aaron-