by Keri O’Shea
Editor’s note, 23/02/2012 – since we posted this article, it has come to light that Lina Romay, star of this film and lifelong muse to Jess Franco, passed away last week after a long battle with cancer. We at Brutal As Hell are deeply saddened by this news and offer our deepest condolences to Jess and to all those that knew and loved Lina, and we hope this light-hearted look at what that dynamic duo did so well together can stand as an affectionate tribute. (See also Keri’s touching obituary.)
Ah, Jess Franco. Uncle Jess, if I may. Is there anything you can’t do?
Well, to answer that now non-rhetorical question – actually yes, yes there is. Uncle Jess has tried his hand at many types of genre movie during his long (and ongoing) career, with varying outcomes. This has, seemingly, not put him off by so much as a fraction. From my point of view, however, I really enjoy the outcome, regardless. Be the movie bloody good (such as Venus in Furs, for instance) or bloody bad (see, ahem, later on in this article), I seem to have a bloody good time, and there aren’t many filmmakers about whom I can say that. Sure, Franco’s evidently never had much money to play around with… at times, it looks as though he has had no money at all. He plays fast and loose with that cherished zoom lens of his until his viewers feel like the world’s most short-sighted voyeurs, and he seems to be in a perpetual rush to finish his film in as little time as possible. No perfectionism here, folks!
Nonetheless, his movie-making manifesto – to start with the premise of copious nudity and work backwards from there to something approximating a plot (perhaps) – has churned out some notable, enjoyably crazy cult cinema over the years. We wouldn’t have him any other way, would we? Let’s bear that in mind, as I take a rather teasing look at a Franco foray into the Women in Prison genre as part of our month-long focus here at Brutal as Hell. Jess, we salute you.
As this is not your average movie-going experience, it seemed inappropriate to review Barbed Wire Dolls (1976) in any sort of conventional way. I’ve seen the film once before this revisit and, trust me, it doesn’t lend itself happily to critique. Does any film, which follows the fate of a young woman doing hard jail time for the murder of her slow-motion attempted rapist father in an institution rife with S&M and illicit sex? Instead, what I did was to treat the movie as a bizarre set of life lessons which, to be fair, it absolutely is. So, without further ado, here’s what Barbed Wire Dolls taught me. This may mean some spoilers, but again, that’s assuming you think this is a regular film…
1: Not all all-girl hellholes serve the proverbial bread and water. By the looks of it, this gaol dishes up bowls of pasta spirals. Garlic bread presumably just out of shot…
2: Splashing out on this slightly higher-grade prison food (sometimes all too literally) may mean cutbacks have to be made elsewhere. That is why this castle…sorry, prison, prison…provides no underwear – as amply evidenced by cellmates Bertha (Martine Stedil), the perpetually-singing Rosaria (Beni Cardoso) and ‘friendly’ Ingrid (uncredited!) at a mere five minutes in.
3: Evil lesbian prison wardens need not place themselves on a higher footing than the women in their charge, especially in times of austerity. The warden accordingly has no trousers on, just pants and jack boots. Every little helps, after all, and it is always good to save unnecessary wear-and-tear.
4: Evidently, however, times have only got this tough in recent days, as by eleven minutes in it’s obvious that some of the girls have noticeable tan lines where, one presumes, bikini bottoms have been worn. Welfare rates highly in this place. How many prisons do you know who show this sort of compassion for vitamin D levels?
5: Budding filmmakers might find ready-made epic material in Barbed Wire Dolls. Ingrid’s vision of the afterlife, for instance – ‘One eternal orgy’ populated by close relatives, kings, queens and Greek gods – would make an interesting sleaze movie in its own right. An imaginative character like this is worth her weight in gold, and may explain why Ingrid gets to wear stockings when the boring old warden doesn’t even have a pair of slacks to her name.
6: If it is possible to accurately date a film by careful study of the ladygardens therein – and I hold that it is indeed possible – then there is no finer starting point than this movie. It’s like counting the rings in trees, only, well.. with a lot more zoom for starters. By twenty five minutes of running time and many rather intimate close-ups, one could even try to tell what Ingrid had for breakfast, if you didn’t already know it was pasta spirals.
7: When a trouserless sadistic lesbian warden is shown reading a book on the Third Reich whilst wearing a monocle, either a) run or b) get the popcorn.
8: If there was a cinematic award for naked thrashing around, Lina Romay should receive that award with all due ceremony and aplomb.
9: Speaking of the inimitable Ms. Romay… Jess Franco his very own self plays a cameo as the wannabe rapist dad to her outraged and murderous daughter. Romay was and still is, of course, Franco’s partner in real life. Interesting. It seems a strong couple can indeed get through anything, even…
10: … when your partner/director wants to shoot a slow motion scene but blatantly can’t fucking afford it, and – instead of thinking, fair enough, we’d better drop that bit – just goes for it anyway by getting you both to pretend you are moving in slow-mo during your scene together! This is genius, exacerbated only by the fact that the lampshade in shot is rocking back and forth at normal speed. Bloody-mindedness – Jess Franco haz it.
11: If there was a cinematic award for awful, awful naked thrashing about then Lina Romay should win that as well, for her sex scene with the prison doctor, played by Franco regular Howard Vernon: a weird tangle of elbows and calves all liberally sprinkled with body hair will scare anyone, anywhere.
12: If cigarettes cause lung cancer when you smoke them in the conventional manner, then dear old Ingrid should be an interesting case study in years to come for her, err, novel approach.
13: Shit escape plans can work fairly well in prisons which apparently have only two guards.
14: Stock footage of palm trees is always interesting, timely and relevant, and never, ever distracting or suspiciously like filler.
15: No one but Jess Franco could ever script lines like ‘I’ll be the Belle of the Ball – and I’ll ball everyone!’, ‘You’re made of ice, and I’d rather have a snowman,’ and ”I’m a low and filthy woman – I’ve tried sex with everything – I’m not even really Queen Isabella!’ For that, we can be truly thankful.
