Women's Prison Massacre (1983)
Do you remember that women-in-prison movie that starred Laura Gemser? And was co-written by Olivier Lefait? And was directed by Bruno Mattei? You know the one - Laura was wrongly imprisoned in the scuzziest women's prison in Italy and was relentlessly tormented by the evil guards and depraved inmates. Ursula Flores and Franca Stoppi were a couple of Laura's enemies that made sure her life was hell. And it also featured Gabriele Tinti as the nice guy who found himself battling along side Laura inside the prison.
1982's Violence In A Women's Prison you say? Well, I guess that was a pretty easy one, since Violence In A Women's Prison is right at the top of everyone's list of great movies about gals getting poop tossed on them. But what if you've already seen it about 25 times and have a hankering for something the same, but not? What if somehow, someone could come along and re-mix your favorite movie about spoon-stabbings into a completely similar concoction of prison indignities? Would you take advantage of this opportunity? More importantly, would Bruno Mattei?
I know, I know. Dumb question. This after all is the guy who let pal Claudio Fragasso use all his gear during the night to make Zombie 4: After
Death with a gay porn star while he shot the Reb Brown-less Strike Commando 2 during the day! Rest assured that Bruno knew what a winner he had on his hands with Violence In A Women's Prison and didn't want the magic to end. Besides, when you can marry the women-in-prison genre with the Emanuelle genre, you'd deserve to be locked in a prison yourself if you didn't do it! And I mean a men's prison!
Shot right after Violence In A Women's Prison with pretty much the same people behind and in front of the camera, Women's Prison Massacre known variously as Blade Violent, Emanuelle Escapes from Hell, and Emanuelle in Prison proves that even when faced with making the same movie as he just finished making, Bruno has the skills to make it even better than before! And he does it right from the beginning!
Emanuelle is in the middle of putting on a play for the rest of the prisoners and it's one of those cutting edge performance art pieces that involves her and a couple of her compatriots describing how they got hosed by being put in the slammer. One of the gals even begins to babble about snakes and a praying mantis to evoke something I'm sure was so profound it was over my head. Heck, I'm just here to see guards get impaled by kitchen utensils. What do I know about the philosophy of crime, punishment, and scary-looking bugs? 
I suppose that having a captive audience can be a double-edged sword though. On the one hand, they may be glad to sit through any old show you put on, even something like The Vagina Monologues. On the other hand, they may be pissed that they are being forced to sit through pretentious trash when they could be out raping each other in the shower. Sadly for Emanuelle, the latter attitude among the rest of the prisoners prevails and they are not shy about expressing their displeasure. Emanuelle gets hit in the face with a tomato and I suddenly found myself standing on my couch yelling "food fight!"
Once the food fight kicks in, Bruno doesn't let up on the gas for the next 80 minutes, giving us one awesome set piece of sleaze and violence after another. What I liked about this movie was that Bruno held nothing back for any kind of big finish (which was good since the movie didn't have a big finish). You know how some Hollywood movies always save the big arm wrestling scene for the very end of the movie? Movies like Sly Stallone's Over the Top and all those other arm wrestling movies always tease the big showdown with hours and hours of training, domestic strife, and sweaty grimacing.
Women's Prison Massacre though knows you probably have a family that won't be patient enough to put their lives on hold for you while you wait for Emanuelle to finally put that blonde tramp Albina in her place with some dinner time arm wrestling. Families can be selfish bastards that way. So it gives it to you almost immediately following the opening food fight! But not before the warden complains to Emanuelle about how her play sucks and utters that most famous of showbiz lines: "the show must NOT go on!"
It's also around the big arm wrestling match that some of the movie's other great dialogue gets uttered such as when Albina calls Emanuelle a "haughty hot-n-tot" and another gal says to Albina "I want to bite your nipples off!" And she's not smiling when she says it either!
Now, unlike Over the Top and all those other big budget arm wrestling movies Hollywood likes to churn out every summer, Albina's shocking loss to Emanuelle doesn't end their rivalry! No siree! Why, there's still the showdown in the shower where Emanuelle gets the better of Albina again by pulling her wig off of her! Then there's still the showdown in the prison yard where Emanuelle gets the better of Albina by stabbing her with her own knife! And who could forget that we still have the showdown where Emanuelle gets the better of Albina again during a friendly game of Russian Roulette? 
I think that Bruno must have somehow figured out a way to compress time with this movie because looking back, you would think that the four death matches that Albina and Emanuelle engaged in would have been more than enough action for a single three hour long wrestling pay-per-view, but here it wasn't even the main story line in a movie that didn't even last an hour and a half! This classic good-looking prisoner vs. skanky-hag prisoner dynamic only served as the backdrop against which a prison hostage situation involving four male criminals holed up in the prison played out!
They were Italy's four most dangerous criminals! Robbery, rape, drug smuggling, murder, bad dubbing - their crimes a veritable catalog of the worst humanity has to offer! Their leader killed seven cops all by himself the last time they busted out of jail! Blade von Bauer is a maniac who kills with a razor blade while their leader is such a bad customer the press just calls him Crazy Boy! And so, while they await trial, they'll be held in the women's prison.
Sure, it sounds a bit questionable now. And in hindsight, things didn't work out for anyone, but really who could have foreseen that bad guys dressed as cops would try to carjack that prison van on the way there? And kill two of the three cops guarding them? And really, could any of us have predicted that while the lone surviving cop wasn't paying attention that the prisoners would slash a guard's throat and take the warden hostage? And could he have known that when he gave up his shotgun that they would have used it on him? It's just one of those deals where everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.
Generally, I don't sweat it anymore whether the version of the movie I'm watching has all the gore and violence intact. If there's an uncut version of something out there, that's what I'll get, but I'm not going to get all worked up if the Greek VHS version runs 31 seconds longer than my German DVD. Does it really matter in the grand scheme of things if I don't see a fake head roll down the floor for the full 20 seconds? Or that I only get to see a chick get stabbed, but don't get to see the blade come back out? 
However, this is a different case. First and most obviously, the more Bruno you can get the better. Second, the cuts made in the version of Women's Prison Massacre I saw messed up some of the story and actually could be dangerous to kids! Since I unwittingly picked up the R-rated version, I was not able to see what happened when this girl pulled the old "razor blade in the cork trick" on some guy that was trying to rape her. It didn't affect me that much - I'm an old hand at these flicks and as soon as I saw her sticking the razor blade in the cork, I knew exactly what she was going to do. But what about the kids? Shouldn't they be fully aware of this method of self-defense? And shouldn't over-eager guys on prom night at least have this in the back of their mind before they try to get too frisky?
One of the other cuts that sort of put a crimp in things was when they cut out some dialogue where Emanuelle is told she'll be getting out of prison soon. The way the version of this movie ended is that Emanuelle is locked back up in her prison cell as the credits roll! You'd think that after besting Albina 4-0 in their series of battles as well as aiding a police officer during the hostage stand-off she'd at least get time off for good behavior!
I also think the Russian Roulette scene was another unwise cut. As it plays out in the censored version the only thing the kids will learn about the popular party game is that you don't want to be the person sitting next to the gal who pulls the trigger because you'll end up with red gunk all over you. Don't these bluenoses that make these cuts think about the harm they're potentially doing to America's youth by not showing heads being blown off and ding dongs getting sliced up? Recommended, but only provided you get your kids the unrated version.
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