Schoolgirls in Chains

Although this Grindhouse-era sleazer is the genuine article, and features enough griminess and mysogeny to merit its title, the film's relative tameness and tediousness made for a fatiguing watch. As such, this trash is recommended only to genre completists. The women are mixed, from very hot to rather plain, and they seem to be dispatched in order of their overall sexiness. That said, however, there isn't a lot of violence here, with the majority of the encounters relegated to generic harassment and lame-o psychological domineering. The story involves a pair of backwoods brothers, whose mentally ill, incestuous mother has twisted them into dementia. After years of abuse, the brothers eventually find solace in kidnapping young women and keeping them captive in a makeshift cellar, visiting them periodically for faux-childish "playtime," which involves anything from kiddie-style doctor scenarios, unwholesome "hide-and-seek" stuff, with the brother's shooting one girl as she runs away; and miscellaneous intimidation and humiliation. There is a decent amount of nudity, but no more so than your average grindhouse flick. The dialog and scene structures are repetitive, and the story is basically a joke. In the end, this one looks fugly and sounds fugly, and you'll spend the majority of the time just admiring the 70's skin. Been there, done that, friends, and I've seen it done a whole lot better than "Schoolgirls in Chains." Unless you just have to see every entry from the sleazier end of the Grindhouse front, you can pass on this one. ---|--- Was this review helpful?