Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

Excellent but underrated film

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

One would think that putting Linda Blair (from "Chained Heat") and Sylvia Kristol (from "Emmanuelle") together in a women-in-prison flick would equal a great movie, or at least an entertaining heap of rubbish. Alas, no such luck. Blair plays the wrongfully-accused innocent well enough, and Kristol puts in a convincing performance as the prison's top bully, but both performances lack the necessary nuances - the good girl has to have an inner reserve of strength to help her survive the harsh prison, while the bully must occasionally show a seductive side. Absent those elements, what you get is an hour or so in which Kristol snarls and glowers and Blair whines. Even the obligatory cat-fight is botched, thanks to extremely poor lighting and ridiculously incompetent editing - apparently, someone believed that the spectacle of Blair and Kristol beating the crap out of each other was the LAST thing that anyone wanted to see.Of course, "Red Heat" has a bigger problem than the under-exploitation of its two main attractions: it's dreary as hell. There's the obligatory shower scenes and the lesbianism, but far more attention is paid to the less exciting indignities of life in an East German prison. True, it's more realistic, but does anyone really go to a women-in-prison movie to see realism?

A few years before the Arnold S. / Jim Belushi team up action movie Red Heat, Linda Blair made yet another prison flick under that same title. As these exercises go it wasn't bad. The look of the picture is very Eastern Bloc - lots of dimly lit concrete corridors and depressing gray uniforms - and pretty realistic. The tone is one of grim Cold War authoritarianism. East Germany is made to look like just about the least welcoming place on earth, which it pretty much was. Plus, the script is a bit more literate, more realistic, less exploitative and more politically aware than what we usually get in one of these women-in- prison flicks. The resulting movie is a little better but a lot less fun to watch than the typical women-behind-bars (WBB) flick.And honestly, just who exactly wants a more realistic, less exploitative WBB? Most of these movies are chock full of exploitative silliness and don't take themselves very seriously, which makes for a fun / campy viewing experience. Chained Heat, for instance, is objectively a pretty terrible movie but is a lot of fun to watch, mostly because it IS so exploitative and silly. Red Heat by comparison, is more convincingly realistic than Chained Heat, but also relentlessly grim and more than a little tedious as its unpleasant tourist-in-hell story line slowly works it way along.

Decent entry into the Women In Prison genre finds Linda Blair, two years after "Chained Heat", back in the slammer in this politically loaded yarn. She plays Christine Carlson, an innocent college student visiting her fiancée, Mike (William Ostrander), an Army lieutenant stationed in Germany. After a fight with Mike, Christine finds herself in one of those "wrong place at the wrong time" scenarios by witnessing the abduction of Hedda (Sue Kiel), a spy who was trying to defect. The evil authorities force Christine to confess to espionage activities, and both she and Hedda are thrown in an East German prison. This particular place is ruled by alluring Sylvia "Emmanuelle" Kristel as Sofia, a top con who relishes her position in the pecking order - and relishes enforcing it. "Red Heat" is all just somber enough, trashy enough, and entertaining enough to make it an acceptable diversion. The requirements of the genre are satisfactorily met, with the standard display of delectable female nudity, lesbian couplings, harsh violence, and mean, sadistic villains that fans come to expect. Linda is appealing as always, and compelling to watch as we see her prison stay start changing her - not exactly for the better, of course. One can hardly blame her whenever she does snap. The sub plot of Mike doing everything he possibly can do - his career be damned - helps keep the movie moving along nicely, and the story leads right up to a respectably rousing climactic prison break. Beefy actor Ostrander, whom you may recognize as having played bully Buddy Repperton in the film version of "Christine", is good, as is Kiel, although Kristel remains the most fun to watch as she clearly enjoys playing the part of the bad girl. With the action enhanced by typically fine and atmospheric music by Tangerine Dream, and capable direction by Robert Collector, this movie is definitely good of its kind, with a palpably serious mood and a lack of camp. Overall, solidly done and worth a look. Seven out of 10.

Linda Blair gets mistaken for someone else and she and another woman are thrown into a brutal german prison where she has no rights now. Sylvia Kristel plays the leader of the in for life inmates and she torments others until Blair cannot stand it and fights her. Blair doesn't know that her fiancee and his friends are planning to break her out but they better do it quick before angry Kristel gets to her first. Pretty good with a good score by Tangerine Dream.