Oooh Ernie..Snitch..Snitch!
March 5, 2010 by Editor
Filed under Film Reviews
Chained Heat (1983)
Directed By: Paul Nicholas
Written By: Ken Knight
Mondo Film & Video Guide Feature Contributor
The ultimate example of the “women-in-prison” Exploitation Film Genre coming out of the late 70’s and early 1980’s with a bare naked vengeance! Guy-Flick staples Sybil Danning and Linda Blair team up as female inmates in a prison run by ultra-corrupt guards and a warden who is more villainous than most of the prisoners. One of the openers shows the “body that won’t quit” Monique Gabrielle screwing the warden (John Vernon) in his bathtub and sharing dope was enough to hook me into seeing this film multiple times!
Seeing that body of hers on screen fires up the blood of any straight American male, and that one she did with the warden was the best sex-scene in the entire movie.
Of course the more-nude-than-not Monique’s character hears the word “SNITCH!” whispered in a dark hallway en route to her cellblock and as we all know…snitches get stitches!! Sybil Danning is convincingly tough and sexy as “Ericka” who runs the white side of the female prison population while the black side is run by the leering Tamara Dobson and the animus between these two is brutal until they are later forced to join forces against the corrupt prison staff looking to do them both in.
Dope, sex, and brutal enforcement are the fare in this women’s prison, and Linda Blair’s naïve inmate character ponies-up towards the middle of the film to see what-time-it-is and act accordingly. Seeing a naked Sybil Danning and a naked Linda Blair in a communal shower together is enough gratuitous entertainment in itself, these two actresses pull off their roles convincingly and in doing so pushes up CHAINED HEAT just enough to make its base-storyline a semi-believable drama!
Only Linda Blair and Sybil Danning could pull off tough roles like that while facing each other in the buff! For fans of early 80’s “guy-flicks” the cameo appearance of Louisa Moritz (“Carmella” in THE LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN) is an additional treat as well as the “cat-fights” between quarreling female prisoners choreographed in a way that makes them fun to watch! During it’s short theatrical release in the spring of 1983, Gay/Lesbian Rights groups strongly criticized the film for portraying lesbians as violent and predatory. (Come on guys and dolls, it’s just fiction!!).
Rumored to become available on DVD soon, I strongly recommend you buy a copy. It has also been re-featured during the past year on late night Cable TV if you’re lucky to have caught it.
I give it one thumb’s up with a get-out-of-jail-free card for Linda Blair!
Ken Knight is the author of the book – The Midnight Show: Late Night Cable TV “Guy-Flicks” Of the 80′s. The book is available now thru www.amazon.com You can email Ken Knight directly at The Mondo Film & Video Guide at kenknight@mondo-video.com or you can contact him thru Facebook.
This work, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
