Frauengefängnis

Frauengefängnis (released in the US as Barbed Wire Dolls and in the UK as Caged Women) is a 1975 Swiss horror film directed by Jesús Franco. It is part of the women in prison cycle of violent sexploitation films that flourished in the 1970s and early 1980s.[1]

Frauengefängnis
US theatrical release poster
Directed byJesús Franco
Written by
  • Jesús Franco
  • Connie Grau
  • Christine Lembach
Produced byErwin C. Dietrich
Starring
CinematographyJesús Franco
Edited by
  • Peter Baumgartner
  • Marie-Luise Buschke
Music by
Distributed byAquarius Releasing
Release date
  • 23 April 1976 (1976-04-23) (West Germany)
Running time
81 minutes
Countries
LanguageFrench

When originally submitted for release in 1976, the British Board of Film Classification rejected it. It was only passed the following year after extensive cuts.

Plot

Cult director Jesús Franco's Swiss-West German production is a women's prison tale, with Lina Romay as Maria who is jailed after killing her father, played by director Jesús Franco,[2] who tries to rape her. Lesbian wardens, torture, nudity, sex, insanity, conspiracy and a downbeat twist ending round out the formula.

The women's prison, based on an isolated island, is run by a man who impersonates a doctor, Carlos Costa. In fact, he is a killer who murdered the actual doctor of that name, whose name he then assumed. Assisting him is a monocled lesbian woman known only as The Wardress who regulates the prison with an iron fist. The Wardress reads Nazi volumes such as Albert Speer's history of the Third Reich as leisure reading. She wears jackboots and tight shorts under a white shirt in some scenes. In other scenes she wears a see-through black sheer fabric top.

Due to the practice of placing prisoners in isolation and torturing them (for example, via chaining them naked to a wall just out of reach of food, or placing them naked on a wire-frame bed where they receive electric shocks), several prisoners in the past have died. The current authorities in charge of the prison have concealed this by claiming these prisoners died of heart failure; but they are reaching the point where any more reported 'heart failures' will appear suspicious to the authorities on the mainland.

Cast
  • Lina Romay – Maria da Guerra
  • Monica Swinn – The Wardress (credited as Monika Swinn)
  • Paul Muller – Carlos Costa (credited as Paul Müller)
  • Ramon Ardid (Raymond Hardy) – José (credited as Ray Hardy)
  • Roger Darton – Milton Warren
  • Ronald Weiss – The Warden
  • Martine Stedil – Bertha Contrini
  • Eric Falk – Nestor
  • Peggy Markoff – Pompadour (as credited as Peggy Markhoff)
  • Nathalie Mann
  • Denis Torre
  • Jesús Franco – Maria's Father (uncredited)
  • Beni Cardoso – Rosaria Cortina

References
  1. Judith Mayne (2000). Framed: lesbians, feminists, and media culture. University of Minnesota Press. p. 131. ISBN 978-0-8166-3456-9.
  2. Tatjana Pavlović (2003). Despotic bodies and transgressive bodies: Spanish culture from Francisco Franco to Jesús Franco. SUNY series in Latin American and Iberian thought and culture. SUNY Press. p. 117. ISBN 978-0-7914-5569-2.


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