Riot in a Women’s Prison (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Feb 14, 2025
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
Brunello RondiRelease Date(s)
1974 (October 8, 2024)Studio(s)
Thousand Cinematografica/Alpherat S.p.a. (Raro Video/Kino Lorber)- Film/Program Grade: C
- Video Grade: B+
- Audio Grade: C
- Extras Grade: B-
Review
As women-in-prison (or, as fans call them “WiP”) films go, the Italian-made Riot in a Women’s Prison (Prigione di donne, 1974) hits the usual exploitation genre tropes with nothing new or original to liven things up. Typically borderline softcore pornography, such films are virtually interchangeable with nearly identical components: group shower scenes, lesbianism, voyeurism, masturbation, torture, sadistic keepers, cat fights, strip searches, etc. The Italian origins of the picture result in very slight variations and emphases, but Riot in a Women’s Prison is otherwise vehemently routine.
Raro Video’s Blu-ray doesn’t add to what appeal it has. This is a disappointing, even sloppy release, for reasons described below.
French tourist Martine (Martine Brochard) is wandering the countryside when she encounters some hippies. Police suddenly appear, and one of the hippies slips some drugs into Martine’s coat pocket, resulting in her being incarcerated for drug possession, despite Martine’s obvious, wide-eyed innocence.
The nearly plotless films goes through nearly all the above genre requisites: Martine is humiliated by a strip search that includes various body cavities; she’s alternately harassed and protected by various inmates, particularly hardened con Susanna (Marilù Tolo); she’s bemused by the bodacious babes (all the women are attractive, of course) luxuriating with the sudsy soap in the communal showers, etc. Mostly, though, she struggles to maintain her sanity throughout her undeserved ordeal.
What little variances there are relative to other women-in-prison movies have to do with the Italian setting. I have no idea at all how the female penal system worked in 1970s Italy, but here they’re looked after by Catholic nuns. Nunsploitation picture erupted concurrent with the wave of ‘70s women-in-prison films, but this picture goes light on the nuns; one sister obviously longs for one of the female prisoners, but the stern-looking Mother Superior isn’t the expected sadomasochist, and there’s no whipping and other blaspheming common to those films.
French actress Brochard is undeniably attractive, and Tolo has a kind of early ‘60s Suzanne Pleshette look about her here. Those who enjoy seeing busty naked women showering and the like will get their money’s worth, so there’s that.
Raro Video’s Blu-ray is another matter. On the plus side, the disc is Region-Free and the video transfer, 1920x1080p in 1.85:1 widescreen, is impressively sharp and relatively free of damage. However, the color timing is noticeably off, the image a little green around the gills, though nowhere near as appalling as Kino’s release of Les Femmes, an atrocity. The bigger issue is the audio and subtitling. For some reason this Blu-ray offers English only (DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono), with no Italian audio option. The credits are in English also (actual onscreen title: Women’s Prison), but the English audio is so tinny and limited in range it’s either too loud or too soft, and distorted to the point where it’s often hard to make out the dialogue.
For this reason, I elected to watch the bulk of the film with the optional English subtitles turned on, but—and not for the first time with a Raro Video release—the subtitles were obviously done using some kind of AI program no one bothered to proofread. Lines like “while reciting the rosary” become “What resides in her rosary?” A crucial scene—at least as crucial as a movie like Riot in a Women’s Prison can have—is a meeting between Martine and her parents. All three speak French throughout, and that is not subtitled at all. Didn’t anyone at Raro check this stuff? Sloppy work, indeed.
The lone extra is an audio commentary track by film historians Troy Howarth and Eugenio Ercolani.
Hardcore genre enthusiasts might enjoy Riot in a Women’s Prison but this entry is of minimal interest, and Raro Video’s sloppiness is pretty inexcusable.
- Stuart Galbraith IV