Barbed Wire Dolls (AKA Frauengefangnis) (1975)

Barbed Wire Dolls begins with a cruel jailer in a cell with a somewhat less-than-attractive naked girl who has a collar around her neck which is attaching her to the cell wall by a chain. There is a bowl of food just out of her reach. Every time she reaches for the food, the jailer snaps his whip at her or whips her (it is difficult to tell). She is begging and pleading for food. She is dying of hunger and will do anything they want her to do. (If she were to turn around and reach her feet out, instead of using her hands, she could easily snag the bowl of food and drag it back toward her. I'm just saying.)

Cut to titles and credits. This is a Jess Franco WIP film, starring his (second and current) muse, Lina Romay. She was 21 at the time of this film's release. While the credits are flashing, we get a travelogue of the terrain and prison, all via that stationary camera pan and zoom method Franco always employs.

We see three women in a cell, one of which is the naked chained girl (no longer naked or chained) who sounds like she's crazy. The second girl is kind of quiet. The third one is on her back on her cot with her legs spread and not wearing underwear and the camera is always focused on her hairy crotch. She is the horny one.

Lina Romay is the newest prisoner. She gets a lecture by the warden, a butch looking gal wearing really short shorts and a white shirt belted with a wide black leather belt. She is also holding a crop. And she wears a monocle. I haven't seen one of those since Colonel Klink in Hogan's Heroes. Prisoner Lina is made to sign a release allowing them to subject her to shock therapy.

Sure enough, two days later we hear screams and follow them to a cell with a naked Lina Romay stretched out face down and bound AOH to the metal springs of a cot, being shocked. So, electro-torture less than 10 minutes into the movie. There are several flashes and blackouts during Lina's torture. I'm not sure whether that is a cinematic choice or we're to believe the power is flickering during her electro-torture.

Cut to some government official's office. He orders a woman to undress. She offers her body to him and touches him and he freaks. He practically throws her onto the bed. He doesn't like being touched by sluts, he tells us under his breath. He calls in Nestor, his bodyguard (who looks a little like Harry Hamlin) and says she's all yours. Nestor climbs into bed, threatens to whip her if she talks about this, and strokes her, fingers her, kisses her, and off-camera fucks her. The official stands with his back to the action, his mouth twitching.

Typical WIP stuff happens. A prisoner manages to sneak a note out that could have alerted the government or the "liberals" to the torture and abuse going on in the prison. They think the quiet girl did it. The butch warden has the quiet girl brought to her room, where she is in a black negligee, reading a book about Nazi Germany.

The butch warden orders the girl to strip, then crawl over to her bed. She asks if she's still a virgin and when the girl answers in the affirmative she has her lay down on the table on her belly. She strokes her and then sticks her finger into the girl and proclaims, "Someone's been picking cherries." There is some dialog during which the girl admits she wrote the note. They have generally consensual non-XXX sex. Then the girl is taken back to solitary confinement.

In solitary confinement, the girl is wearing a metal collar and she is naked and chained to the wall with a cruel jailer in the cell with her, tormenting her. Sleep deprivation, in this case. I was hoping for something more violent.

The government official asks that the prisoner who wrote the note be delivered to him. The doctor gives her an injection where he really jabs the needle into her thigh hard. So if you like that kind of thing, there you go. She arrives and Nestor is told to take her to the bedroom. There, he undresses her and tells her to masturbate while he watches, which she does and which he watches.

Back in the prison cell, Lina is having a nightmare and is flailing around on the bed spreading her legs and exposing her hairy bush. Her nightmare is the memory of her sleeping in a room naked when her father comes in and tries to have sex with her. She flees, they struggle, she pushes him, he falls and hits his head. This is all in a kind of weird slow motion ballet which robs it of its urgency and violence in my opinion.

Prisoner Lina finds a mouse in her food and refuses to eat it, even though she is assured it will be some added protein. She is taken back to electro-torture, but this time a guard puts a log under her hips to force her butt up in the air and rapes her with a crop until she passes out. Mostly we just see her face as she screams, though.

Prisoner Lina is taken to the infirmary because she was tortured too severely. The doctor has eyes for Lina, who is laying on a cot with her prison gown open, exposing her breasts and bush. The doctor tells her if she comes to him and brings a friend and they are "nice to him," he will protect them both. Uh-huh.

So the doctor has sex with Lina, and it isn't exactly rape and it isn't exactly nonconsensual, but you can tell she isn't having any fun doing it. Next time, she brings the quiet one and the crazy one with her. They kill the doctor and escape. The cruel jailer fastens the horny one face down and with legs spread onto the metal bed frame and brutally, umm, tickles her with his crop, trying to get her to tell where the escapees went. Lots of closeups of her pussy, zooming in and out frequently. Ultimately, he kills her, although it isn't revealed exactly how he did it. He was just tickling her. Another missed GIMP moment.

Meanwhile, out in the jungle, evil guard Nestor and a topless female guard have tracked down the girls. The quiet one runs. Nestor follows, tackles her, and starts to rape her. The crazy one jumps the topless guard and beats her senseless. Lina just watches, then tells the crazy one they must run. Jose, the guard whom we suspect helped the quiet one smuggle the note out (and "picked her cherry," so to speak), suddenly shows up while Nestor is raping the quiet one and machine guns him.

Lina and the crazy one make it to the governor's house but the butch warden is there waiting and shoots them both dead. I think Jose and the quiet one got away and lived happily ever after, but I'm not sure.

So, we start off with the naked bondage and whipping with the not-all-that-attractive crazy girl. However, we quickly proceed to the full-body electro-torture of naked Lina Romay bound hand and foot to the metal bed frame, which was pretty awesome. More bondage featuring the quiet girl but she is only being sleep deprived, which doesn't count as titillating torture in my book. Lina has a dream flashback where her father attempts to rape her. Lina is bound and electro-tortured again and raped with a riding crop. And the horny girl is strapped to the metal bed frame and, apparently, tickled to death. Then there is the one last attempted rape during the escape. Borderline coerced but generally consensual sexual encounters are sprinkled throughout the film. There is a lot of nudity and there are a lot of hairy crotch shots complete with close-ups. No XXX sex. No gags.

Although it could have been more explicit, I have to give high marks for the naked full-body electro-torture scenes. The riding crop rape was a bonus. None of the rapes were very good. This gets a B-, mostly on the strength of that full-body electro-torture. Oh my god would I love to see that done on Sex and Submission or one of those sites. Can you imagine? That would so totally rock.