I should have known better. Hell Hole (1978) is actually Escape from Women’s Hell Hole transferred to DVD and packaged with the alternate title. It’s a Filipino production that is easily surpassed by the stuff that Corman and others cranked out in that part of the world. Of all the women-in-prison flicks I’ve seen (and I’ve seen far too many) this is absolutely the worst.
Oh, it has most of the necessary ingredients: forced labor, shower scenes, whippings, (attempted) rape and the big bust out at the end. Somehow, these folks managed to get through the movie without any nudity. Even the shower scenes were done discreetly to protect the actresses’ modesty. Now really, what’s the point of making a movie like this if you’re going to be squeamish?
Why are these girls captured? The story’s beginning would lead you to believe that good-looking girls are being procured for sexual slavery. So what do they spend their time doing? Collecting rocks from a river.
In the few, brief whipping scenes, the girls are fully clothed and the action is disastrously fake. Can’t somebody rip a woman’s clothes off?
One girl is strapped to a rotating X device so that a guard can demonstrate his knife-tossing skills. The entire scene is shown from behind! Is that a real girl or a dummy? Lame!
What I don’t understand is why this movie was made. It’s too cheesy to be taken seriously and too sanitized to draw any interest from pervs.
Please don’t make the mistake I made. Skip this one.
Movie plusses: A few of the lead actresses are cute.
Movie minuses: Everything else is horribly, horribly wrong.