Women in Prison Film - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

  • Charlie's Angels "Angels in Chains" episode (1976) is a tongue-in-cheek homage to the genre; the angels (Kate Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Jaclyn Smith) go undercover as convicts. (Future angel Tanya Roberts also made the 1989 prison film Purgatory.)
  • The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977) features a mock trailer for the film Catholic High School Girls in Trouble.
  • In 1980 Saturday Night Live performed "Debs Behind Bars", a satire of Prisoner, an Australian prison soap opera series. Guest host Teri Garr and other cast members played spoiled debutantes behind bars.
  • The 1984 video (directed by Bob Giraldi ) for Jermaine Jackson's song "Dynamite" reverses the gender of the prisoners and staff, with Jackson attempting to lead an escape from a prison dominated by ruthless female guards.
  • Jailbird Rock (1985) is a campy musical set in a prison.
  • Slammer Girls (1986) spoofs prison film cliches and stereotypes.
  • Reform School Girls (1986) with Sybil Danning and Wendy O. Williams, former singer for the punk band Plasmatics, is partly a homage, partly a parody of the genre.
  • In a 1994 appearance by Judith Light on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno to promote her TV movie Against Their Will: Women in Prison, Leno poked fun that it must be sweeps and noted that most women in prison are, in fact, there against their will.
  • In a 1996 episode of Night Stand with Dick Dietrick Dick's guest is a woman who was falsely imprisoned in an abusive jail. Dick takes up her cause by making an exploitive WiP film (starring himself as the sadistic warden.)
  • The short-lived American television series Women in Prison was a sitcom variation on the genre.
  • Prison-A-Go-Go! (2003) with Mary Woronov and Rhonda Shear is a broad spoof of prison films. There is even a countdown clock indicating when the next shower scene occurs.
  • The Halfway House (2004) with Mary Woronov is a combined satire of women in prison films, nunsploitation, and z-grade occult horror flicks.
  • Janet Perlman's satirical graphic novel Penguins Behind Bars is a parody of the women in prison genre. It was later adapted by Perlman as an animated short which aired in the U.S. on Cartoon Network.
  • Lady Gaga pays homage to the genre in her 2010 music video for "Telephone".

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