Women in Prison Film

Women in prison film (or WiP) is a subgenre of exploitation film that began in the late 1960s and continues to the present day.

Their stories feature imprisoned women who are subjected to sexual and physical abuse, typically by sadistic male or female prison wardens and guards. The genre also features many films in which imprisoned women engage in lesbian sex.

Before the late 1960s, films on women behind bars were serious, realistic dramas that depicted the miseries of prison life. They also carried an implied moralistic or cautionary message about the consequences of breaking the law.

The exploitation WiP films that followed discarded all moralistic pretensions. Instead, they are works of pure fantasy intended only to titillate the audience with a lurid mix of sex and violence. The flexible format, and the loosening of censorship laws, allowed filmmakers to choose from an extensive menu of taboos. From voyeurism (strip searches, group shower scenes, cat-fights) to sexual fantasies (lesbianism, rape, sexual slavery), to fetishism (bondage, whipping, degradation), and outright sadism (beatings, torture, cruelty).

Prior to these films, the only expression of such fantasy material was found in the many "true adventure" men's magazines such as Argosy in the 1950s and 1960s, although a plausible case could be made that Denis Diderot's novel The Nun anticipated the genre. Nazis tormenting damsels in distress were perennial favorite subjects for the lurid, sub-pornographic covers of these sensationalistic magazines which, by the end of the '60s, were in decline.