Escape from Women's Prison (1978) User Reviews

One for fans of Italian exploitation only.

[BA_Harrison · 6/10 · 26 November 2014]

70s Euro-sleaze movie, Jailbirds, features loads of nekkidness, a good deal of perversity, and a little violence, making it a reasonable way to while away the time if you're into exploitation flicks.

This sexy slice of shock cinema sees four tough female prison escapees hijack a bus-load of nubile tennis players (along with the driver and tennis coach) and hold them hostage in a large country villa, owned by a judge. The four fugitives spend their time harassing the judge and sexually abusing the prisoners (one of the crims is a full-on lezza, whilst another is a nympho who has her eye on the 'hunky' bus driver), until the inevitable showdown with the police interrupts their partying.

Jailbirds doesn't hold back on the T&A (with practically everyone getting their kit off to some degree) and features several raunchy sex scenes. Even the seemingly upright judge throws caution to the wind and, in one particularly unbelievable moment, rapes the (admittedly rather tasty) leader of the lawbreakers to teach her a lesson.

The story is no classic, and the movie is unlikely to blow you away with its technical merits or Oscar-worthy acting, but fans of movie trash should still have a fairly fun time with this deplorable (in a good way) little treat.

Political sexploitation

[prohibited-name-1142 · 6/10 · 4 September 1999]

JAILBIRDS is a movie whose storyline is appealing for sick fans like me : 4 women who just broke out of prison get a lift from a bus full of young and innocent female tennis players. They take hostages and bring them all into a judge's house. Then the fun begins.

Beautifully photographed, but badly written and poorly acted, this "carceral drama" mixes a political content with some gratuitous sex and rape scenes. We get to see every actress undress and I wouldn't complain if it wasn't so softcore...

The music, as I recall, is hilarious, and the ending is not really surprising. Well, this one's not bad but it is just another of those numerous 70's plotless softcore sleaze numbers... For lovers only.

ATTENTION : In Canada, the movie is released under the title WOMEN AGAINST WOMEN as well as under the title VIOLEZ LES OTAGES! - and I know that cuz I've been ripped off, I bought both...

only just manages to keep going

[christopher-underwood · 6/10 · 11 January 2007]

This is one grubby little flick with four girl prison escapees hijacking a coach load of female tennis players. Lilli Carati (The Alcove and To Be Twenty) stars and is lovely throughout whilst seemingly everyone in the film, takes their clothes off at some point, even the judge who rapes the star! Lots of running about and fighting plus the aforementioned undressing to keep the interest but whilst the pseudo intellectual political chat may have seemed 'right on' in 1978 it is a real embarrassment now. We get the odd twist and turn but really it is all rather predictable and it only just manages to keep going.

Decent movie, but not for WIP fans

[lazarillo · 16 January 2007]

This movie has kind of a bad reputation, largely because people expect it to be an American WIP movie (it was released on video in a double bill with "Sweet Sugar") when really it is an Italian "terror film" along the lines of "Late Night Trains", "The Last House on the Beach", and the notorious "House by the Edge of the Park". These films, inspired by the seminal American horror movie "Last House on the Left", typically involve often young and always comfortably middle-class protagonists being held captive and/or terrorized by lower-class miscreants until they find the strength to fight back, often proving even more vicious than their tormentors. This film is an interesting variation on this in that the captives are a girls' tennis team being held in a judge's isolated villa and the tormentors are four escaped female convicts. And while some elements, like the Marxist terrorist leader of the gang, may seem strange to the terminal Americans out there, you have to remember this movie was made in Europe in the 1970's when the Bader-Meinhoff cells in Germany and Red Army cells in Italy were still running loose.

This movie is actually somewhat realistic with decent character development and pretty good acting (especially considering that two of the leads, Lili Karati and Dirce Funari, would later move to hardcore sex films, and two others, Zora Kerova and Marina D'Ania, were usually reduced to piece-of-tail supporting roles in the more vile Italian cannibal and Nazi prison camp flicks). It does, of course, have to make the standard nods to the demands of sexploitation--most of the female cast have (usually pretty gratuitous)nude scenes and there is a whole variety of ridiculous rape scenes--man by woman, woman by woman, the female Marxist terrorist by a bourgeois judge (the latter is either incisive political commentary or a sorry excuse to get the luscious Lili Karati naked again). On the other hand, this movie is nowhere near as violent or harrowing as many films of it's kind (it's a Disney film compared to "House by the Edge of the Park"). It's kind of like "Terror Express" with its over-the-top sexscapades, but more realistic with a nice cynical ending. It's a decent movie if you know what you're in for, even though it will probably disappoint American WIP fans.

Foreign muck

[SheriffOFlannahan · 2/10 · 10 February 2005]

The plot outline for this film promised so much, a group of French/Italian (its difficult to tell) female prisoners break out of their prison, and set out on the run, killing a few police officers and kidnapping a bus load of young tennis players, this seems a perfect setting for an "erotic thriller", but as is to be expected from a very low budget European film from the late seventies, the film fails to live up to any of this potential. This film is a laughable, poorly dubbed, appallingly edited story which tries to be intelligent, managing to achieve the seemingly impossible combination of pretentiousness and stupidity. The film has few redeeming features, but the main one is that it is quite a good laugh to watch with a few mates when drunk, especially at the hilarious musical score and the cheap and nasty production values, (at one point it actually switches from widescreen to normal, then back to widescreen a few minutes later). If you wanted you could probably kid yourself into thinking this was an art-house film since its foreign and attempts to deal with "issues" in societies, which it does rather clumsily, otherwise just watch it and laugh.

Awful movie.

[thegovernator · 3/10 · 13 July 2007]

This is really bad. Awful dubbing, rubbish acting, badly shot, choppily edited and generally terrible.

I also didn't like the fact that the scummy rapist judge didn't get shot at the end and was allowed to completely get away with forcing himself on another woman! that was a sickening scene and its a fairly misogynistic film.

However, there are 3 plus points. All of them are the foxy women. Erica (Ada Pometti) is particularly sexy and has a great but brief sex scene. Patrizia Funari has a nice backside which is shown off. And the girl who isn't listed here but plays 'Susanna' is very gorgeous.

I shall be checking out more of their films!

However, they were the ONLY three plus points and thats why the film gets 3 from me. 1 POINT for each sexy woman!

Hatchet Job

[royepullen-94237 · 3/10 · 13 April 2024]

Used to see these type of films from Italian cinema in the 70s so thought I'd give it a try. Watched this on Amazon Prime, big mistake, reduced to 56mins, should have realised then. All the nudity and some violence had been cut out, wasn't even done coherently, story appeared to jump all over the place. Might have been better with Italian dialogue and English subtitles. Will be wary about watching others of this genre from Italy. Strange as a Deborah Wiseman's film from the 60s at a nudist resort, a crime thriller, didn't appear edited at all, lots of nudity, not full frontal, also on Amazon Prime.

Mean Italian exploitation flick

[oraklon · 6/10 · 17 April 2009]

With the undertitle "a story of sex and violence", this Last House on the Left-type exploitationer doesn't excuse itself. A very cheap production with unknown actors (lots of women in hotpants and disco dues and men with greasy moustaches and tight blue jeans... Zora Zerova was the only actor I recognized) and dull photography in brown, grey and orange color schemes. The story is about a couple of female convicts, a leftwing political terrorist and her jaded band of robbers, whores and dykes, who've escape from prison and hide out at a luxurious mansion where they hold a judge and a female basketball team hostage. The schtick being, of course, that its the females that bring the terror and havoc this time around! Highlights include female-on-female rape, the gals forcing the judge to pee his pants, forced dogfood-eating and of course lots of nasty, hateful dialogue! Not the strongest or best in its genre, but I liked it, these nasty Italian disco era exploitation flicks are always enjoyable at worst (and from all the wrong reasons).

THE MOVIE THAT FELL BEHIND THE COUCH AND WARPED

[whipsmart80 · 8/10 · 3 May 2002]

"ESCAPE" is a wonderful film from the land that time forgot. Actually it's pretty much a cut-rate exploitation movie, but it's got a lot going for it: sex, violence, some pretty hilarious dialouge, and a busload of nubile tennis players. throw a terrorist, a judge, a nymphomaniac, a lesbian prostitute, and a woman who is obsessed with food and you have the ultimate party movie. Actually, your friends will probably hate it, but for you undiscriminate types out there (and you know who you are) search out this gem before it becomes extinct. Originally on a double feature tape with "Sweet Sugar" at a running time of 70 min. I have the original uncut version at 100 min. (get this one).

Top Notch Exploitation Flick

[Syd! · 10/10 · 25 December 2001]

Wow! What a great movie! Why has nobody heard of this one? It was released as a double bill tape with SWEET SUGAR, but the tape doesn't contain any credits for the film besides the title. It does seem to be an Italian release, but I'm not sure whether it was made in 1974, though: there's a reference in the film to one of the characters being in prison since 1975. Maybe it was dubbed into English after 1975. Who knows?

This is one taut, zippy (70 minutes) and surprisingly political thriller, with enough sex, nudity, lesbianism, rape, violence and murder to please any exploitation fan. The movie begins with a gang of sex starved Communist revolutionaries on the run from a prison break. They hijack a bus load of nubile tennis players and hold them hostage at a mansion owned by the bourgeois capitalist judge who put the girls away in the first place. Amazing stuff. Rent it now!

A nice'n'sleazy slice of Italian exploitation trash

[Woodyanders · 8/10 · 4 September 2006]

A dangerous quartet of vicious female criminals -- ruthless Communist terrorist Monica, predatory aggressive lesbian Diana, dumpy cow Betty and insatiable nympho slut Erica -- break out of jail and hijack a school bus full of lovely young teenage girl tennis players. The ferocious foursome seek refuge in the swanky house of a powerful judge. Naturally, things go from already pretty bad to much, much worse. Director Conrad Buegnel really pours on the succulent scintillating sleaze with commendable glee and gusto: we've got rape (Erica has her wanton way with the hunky bus driver!), lesbianism, voyeurism, gratuitous nudity, catfights, verbal harassment and degradation galore, all served up hot'n'nasty in a tight and snappy 75 minute running time. Moreover, such delectable damsels as Lilli ("To Be Twenty") Carati, Ines ("Eyeball") Pellegrini, Marina ("SS Extermination Camp") Daunia, Dirce ("Porno Holocaust") Funari, Ada ("French Sex Murders") Pometti, and Zora ("Cannibal Ferox") Kerova all dutifully doff their duds and bare their beautiful bodies in the name of blithely low-grade and unapologetic down'n'dirty exploitation. Pippo Caruso's funky, hard-grooving, pulsating rock score, an incredibly crappy'n'sappy insipid pop theme song, Nino Celeste's grotty photography, a tense last reel siege situation between the cops and the convicts, the laughably lousy dubbing, a pleasingly downbeat ending and the excessively coarse dialogue further enhance the infectiously scummy and sordid fun. Only a clunky political subtext that's articulated in a few heavy-handed speeches by Monica to the judge detracts a bit from the slimy merriment, but that minor fault aside this baby overall rates as a perfectly putrid piece of utter grindhouse trash.

Batteries, and prison, not included

[lor_ · 9 February 2023]

My review was written in June 1984 after a Times Square screening.

"Escape from Womens Prison" is an obnoxious Italian exploitation film, lensed in 1978 under the more grammatically acceptable title "Breakout from a Women's Prison". Despite these come-on titles, film is not a prison picture, as it opens with the women already escaped.

Poorly developed story is sort of a femme variation on "The Desperate Hours": four women bust out of an Italian prison and take hostage a bus filled with a women's tennis team, hiding out in the mansion of a local judge, who is also taken prisoner. The women subject their prisoners to forced lesbian sex sets and even ludicrously force a captured man to have sex with one of them, until the police lay siege to the house, in-fightiing occurs among the foursome and handy nihilistic ending is delivered.

Ludicrous film is laughable in spots, especially when the role reversals are carried to extremes. Filmmakers include timeouts for dialectical politics in the form of harangues, but crude dubbing renders such diversions meaningless. Nadir of the film is probably when the judge beats jup and rapes the leader of the escaped foursome, in a turnabout cynically inserted to make the viewer side with the underdogs against the symbols of order: she is a political terrorist while the other thre women are hardened criminals.

Two prominent cast members are wasted: Lilli Carati, a beautiful and popular starlet cast as the tough terrorist, and Ines Pellegrini, an Ethiopian actress featured by Pier Paolo Pasolini in his "The Arabian Nights" and "Salo", here marking time as a wide-eyed victim.

Tech credits are poor, especially the brackish color and generally underlit visuals.

Le erase it's not that bad at all and it's worthy for your collection!

[zombidad · 8/10 · 31 March 2024]

Escape from a women's prison a story of sex and violence 1978. Four female convicts Escape find a bus of people to kidnap and are apparently tennis players and one of the tennis players apparently know where to hide out and it's a home of a judge which is crazy because what do judges do lock you up take that freedom away! Really cool and pretty over the top! They do it the best the Italians not really a women in prison movie they literally Escape 2 minutes into the movie LOL. After that they somehow kill a cough and someone else and then eventually to a bus and kidnap the people on the bus. And then from there ridiculous rape scenes happen and it says it don't mind it who would ever want to get raped. So they get to the house very big house a villa possibly and eventually the cops come ready for a Siege. I won't spoil anything about the siege I will say this though the movie has an awesome soundtrack super groovy and just even the the disco songs with lyrics are pretty cool too it's definitely recommended if you like exploitation!