Recurring Plot Elements
Most women-in-prison films employ the same stock characters and formulaic situations which have since become cinematic cliches. Such scenes usually include:
- an innocent girl (or group) being wrongfully sent to a corrupt penitentiary or reform school run by a brutal and lecherous male or lesbian warden (who might also be running an inmate prostitution ring on the side)
- an extremely humiliating group strip search
- lesbian sex scenes between prisoners and the guards, or the female prisoners being raped (or forced into prostitution) by male guards
- female prisoners being sentenced to extremely humiliating hard labor (such as scrubbing floors or digging dirt holes completely naked)
- fights between the prisoners (sometimes completely naked in the shower)
- cruel beatings and punishment by sadistic guards
- female prisoners being sprayed by a firehose
The story usually concludes with a bloody uprising or escape sequence in which the villains meet with a grisly death.
Occasionally the "new fish" inmate is an undercover reporter investigating corruption as in Bare Behind Bars or a government agent sent to rescue a political prisoner (Caged Heat 2, Love Camp 7).
Read more about this topic: Women In Prison Film
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