User reviews

The Jail: The Women's Hell (2006)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

A new group of women are dropped off at a prison located deep in the jungles of the Philippines. Little do they know the horror that is about to follow as the evil warden has no issues forcing gang rapes and various bits of torture. A few of the women have finally had enough and plan their escape but more brutality awaits them.

Towards the end of his life Bruno Mattei made a rather remarkable comeback with a number of direct-to-video releases. Out of all the titles it was the zombie, cannibal and women-in-prison that fans wanted the most and this one here is without question one of the most brutal and most entertaining. Of course, this is Mattei we're dealing with so if you're looking for the work of Douglas Sirk or Orson Welles then it's best you check out one of their films. If you're wanting downright cheap, nasty and taboo stuff then THE JAIL: THE WOMEN'S HELL is just for you.

The amount of brutality here is rather remarkable and best of all is that it's actually make-up effects and not CGI. It's rather amazing that so many filmmakers of today try to recapture the various grindhouse movies of the 70s but often fail. This film has director Mattei falling back into his glory days of the 80s and perfectly making a film that might look current but has all the elements of the trash from previous decades. The first portion of the film is full of nudity as it takes place in the jail and of course there are the shower scenes that you'd expect, the lesbian scenes and just non-stop nudity. There's also whippings, a hot box and various other forms of torture that can only be found in the WIP genre.

The last portion of the movie turns into a bizarre jungle adventure and this here is where the brutality really comes into play. Mattei was obviously influenced by several Italian cannibal pictures because the death's of the women feature all sorts of craziness including breasts and nipples being cut off. The special effects certainly aren't the greatest but at least they're real practical effects and not CGI. The film also features the typical awful dubbing that you've come to expect with some of the funniest and most insane bits of dialogue that you'll ever hear. You'll also notice that it appears certain characters were dubbed by different people at times because their accents are constantly changing.

If I had to say anything bad about the picture it's the fact that at 96 minutes it runs a bit too long. Had fifteen or so minutes been trimmed off the film would have been much more entertaining. With that said, if you're looking for gore, trash, violence and an insane amount of craziness then this is just the film for you.

Italian director Bruno Mattei wasn't exactly a great director, but he stayed true to his colours, proudly flying the exploitation flag right to the very end, and for that, he has my respect. The man made his share of dross, but from time to time, he would turn out a hugely entertaining piece of trash. The Jail: The Women's Hell is one such film.

As the title suggests, this is a women in prison film, a genre Mattei had touched upon with his Nazisploitation movies of the '70s, and fully embraced with Violence in a Women's Prison (1982) and Womens Prison Massacre (1983). Mattei knows what is required of him, and duly ticks the boxes: sadistic warden, sneering guards, sexy prisoners, lesbian inmates, forced labour, communal showers and brutal punishment are all present and incorrect. But as someone who has seen more than a few WIP movies, I found all of this rather pedestrian, and hoped that Mattei would raise his game. He doesn't disappoint...

Mattei turns the second half of his film into a super gory version of The Most Dangerous Game, a handful of prisoners escaping into the jungle, pursued by a group of armed, maniacally laughing and very sadistic men. The escapees are caught one by one, in lethal traps, or alive and then mutilated: a spiked booby trap kills one prisoner; another is impaled on a stake, Cannibal Holocaust style; the terrified fugitives find one of their friends with a large knife rammed between her legs; the men use a girl for target practice; they tie another to a tree, cut out her tongue and slice off her breasts. And when one of the women manages to stab one of the gun-toting goons in the crotch with a large knife, he retaliates by pulling the blade out and decapitating her. All of this is very graphic and very bloody: exactly what I want from a Mattei movie.

Technically, the film is fairly poor, with shoddy cinematography, terrible acting and wholly inappropriate music, but this only adds to the sleazy exploitation vibe. With wall-to wall nudity, over the top characters, and an excess of violence, The Jail: The Women's Hell is definitely one of the director's more outrageously enjoyable efforts - fans of his work will not be disappointed.

5.5/10 for the first half, 8.5/10 for the second half - which averages out at a very reasonable 7/10.

Bruno Mattei learned his craft well, this a is modern take on the Italian sleeze films of the 70s, a film filled with nudity, deprevity, gore and twists, nude inmates, a sadistic warden, the local governor who just happens to run a whore house and inmates that have had enough and decide to fight back. Not suitable for those under 18, this film has it all. A welcome addition to your WIP collection. While some of the gore effects are cheesy and lack believability it's easy to follow and not too complicated.

Weird as it may sound I got a bit of a lump in my throat watching this one. I'm not going to claim that Bruno Mattei was any kind of genuinely quality film-maker or that he wasn't a shameless hack but unlike many of his contemporaries he kept on trucking right till the end. Now many would say that he kept on making films until he croaked because it was the only thing he knew how to do but me, I'm a romantic. I like to think that he kept going because he loved what he did, because in some measure he knew he was appreciated and didn't want to disappoint. This is actually his third last film, but gets a boost in credibility since to the best of my knowledge it isn't a direct rip-off at any point. Yes we've all seen tons of crackpot sleazed up WIP flicks but here he makes the genre his own for a glorious hour and a half or so. Several luckless women get banged up in a particularly heinous prison and we get showers, ice cold hose downs, beatings, lesbianism and rape, then in the latter half the whole thing goes Most Dangerous Game and we get some wholly righteous gore as well. In more serious hands there's potential here for something rather grim, but Mattei is all about having a good time here. Uniformly hammy actors and ridiculous dialogue combine with inspired bad dubbing (this here is multi national, so we get French, English and American accents as well was less identifiable European) to produce virtually zero in the way of sympathy, but bucket-loads of amusement and enough of a hook that things are always interesting at least. There are lulls in the pacing where shenanigans are a bit too familiar, but the overall mean spirit is effective and there are some nicely far out scenes, particularly adventures with a snake complete with madly grinning audience that are just bliss to see. Style is perfunctory at best, but in the latter half things rev up rather nicely and the brutality meted out is terrific, with a graphic knife wound and nasty breast abuse among other delights. The best thing about it all though is how old school it all is. If this were shot on film rather than DV there would be no way of distinguishing it from something made 20 or even 30 years previous, its a perfect throwback because it comes from a place that never looked forward. There isn't a trace of morality, conscience or art here, this is an unmitigated wallow in base exploitation that comes across as having no higher purpose than defeating its competition and when you consider that its competition is from another age, well the whole endeavour just becomes more fun. I mean, 2006 saw films like the fun but daft Hostel and the po faced Hills Have Eyes remake as well as all sorts of other films with their ambitions and their old school pretensions and all the nonsense that seems so appealing these days, so its just wonderful to see a film like this, an older age frozen in time. Not for everyone that's for sure, but if its sleazy trash you dig this is an essential watch. 8/10.

You gotta hand it to Bruno Mattei, when it came to WIP films that dude sure knew how to deliver the goods.

Out of all those latter day Mattei films this is by far the most extreme of the bunch. It's parade of full frontal nudity, rape, BDSM and gore serves to remind you just how spineless and watered down the faux-grindhouse movies that started to appear soon after really were. Pity then that the exaggerated acting and cheap, digital video look tends to give The Jail: Women's Hell the appearance of a day time soap opera rather than something from 42nd street's heyday.

More Mattei greatness for you.

Mattei never stopped making films, even the year he died he released a film, he probably loved doing them, but is obvious he didn't love them.

"The Jail" its cheesy, gory, sleazy, filthy, raunchy, disgusting, funny and lovable. It definitely feels like an Italian director made a 70's exploitation film in the 2000's, and its glorious.

Way above your average direct to video trash, I had a great time watching it, I wasn't expecting much but it seems to me that Mattei will almost never disappoint me.