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How to prep Paris for prison? B movies |
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Written by Howie Rumberg, asap
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Thursday, 10 May 2007 |
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Paris Hilton is about to experience a new reality.
The 26-year-old hotel heiress and star of “The Simple Life” will have to curtail her partying and put her sybaritic lifestyle on hold for 45 days. She is most likely going to jail.
Hilton’s carousing has finally caught up with her. She was sentenced last week for violating the terms of her probation in an alcohol related reckless driving case and has until June 5 to report to the Century Regional Detention Center in Los Angeles or face a 90-day stint in the slammer.
Raised in a bubble of wealth, Hilton is about find out that iron bars don’t part like velvet ropes. There will be no paparazzi (except on the way in), no late-night carousing and no sex tapes to make her more famous.
How does one prepare someone for the harsh realities of prison life especially when their only brush with reality has been as the star of a reality TV show? Well, we thought it would be appropriate to speak to her in her own language: the fantasy world of entertainment.
asap put together a list of some noted women’s prison movies to help Hilton make the adjustment to life as a number instead of a boldface name.
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CAGED (1950)
Directed by: John Cromwell.
Sadistic prison matron: Hope Emerson.
The Academy Award-nominated movie is the benchmark for the genre. In this film noir, a 19-year-old widow (Elanor Parker) is sent to prison for being an accessory to a crime — she was in the car when her husband was killed in a botched robbery. While behind bars, she undergoes a transformation from frightened young woman to hardened con.
There’s the evil matron, pregnancy, suicide and hints of lesbianism — “If you stay in here too long, you don’t think about guys at all. You just get out of the habit.”
Advice to Paris: Don’t let prison life harden those soft edges.
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WOMEN’S PRISON (1955)
Directed by: Lewis Seiler.
Sadistic prison warden: Ida Lupino.
Likely the first “babes behind bars” movie, leading up to the sexploitation films of the 1970s. Lupino in a scene-stealing performance as Amelia VanZant runs the prison as a sinister supervisor, taking out her sexual frustrations on her inmates. In his 1989 book “Captured on Film: The Prison Movie,” Bruce Crowther said this movie addressed the “disturbance prison can wreak upon the sexuality of inmates and custodians alike.” (Don’t look for hot action, it’s the 1950s after all).
Advice to Paris: Be careful of sexual predators. With your famous name and good looks you’ll be a target. And who knows what videos they have in the jailhouse library.
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THE BIG DOLL HOUSE (1971) & THE BIG BIRD CAGE (1972)
Director: Jack Hill
Two sexploitation movies set in the Philippines from B-movie maven Roger Corman and starring Pam Grier. The “Big Doll House” has shower scenes, nudity, a brawl in a muddy rice paddy, a food fight and an evil guard with a penchant for poisonous snakes. The Isolation cell is a bamboo cage suspended 10 feet above the prison yard. The guards dress in oh-so-fashionable tight miniskirts.
“The Big Bird Cage” might or might not be a parody. Hill said it was, but the inconsistent tone makes it hard to tell. The movie has all the above (sans the snakes), plus a big bamboo sugar mill — it’s a labor camp. Here Grier plays Blosson, who is dating Django (Sid Haig), a revolutionary. Django and Blossom plan a prison break to get dates for his fellow revolutionaries. The prisoners in these movies wear about as much clothing as Hilton does on a night on the town.
Advice to Paris: Stay away from the revolutionary elements, fit in and avoid confrontation.
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CAGED HEAT (1974)
Director: Jonathan Demme (Yes, the “Silence of the Lambs” Jonathan Demme)
Sadistic prison warden: Barbara Steele. (But the doctor is the real sadist in “Caged Heat.”)
A little more depth than the typical sexploitation prison film, but it’s still a sexploitation film with cat fights, violence and tons of nudity. It’s a Roger Corman production. A woman caught in a drug bust is sent to a prison where a sign in the yard reads, “No laughing.” A shower fight leads to electroshock therapy, which in turn hatches an escape plot. Despite the absurd plot summary, Demme, in his directorial debut, touches on feminism, politics and women’s rights in a film that was photographed by up-and-coming star cinematographer Tak Fujimoto.
Advice: If you get sent to the prison doctor, refuse all treatment until you consult a lawyer. Could your ditzy disposition handle electroshock therapy?
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REFORM SCHOOL GIRLS (1986)
Director: Tom DeSimone
Sadistic prison warden: Sybil Danning.
Free-spirited Jenny is sent to the Pridemore Juvenile Facility for Girls after being busted on robbery charges. There she has to deal with badass inmate Charlie Chambliss (Wendy O. Williams of the punk band “The Plasmatics”), and the bible-toting, baton-thumping warden Sutter. At Pridemore, the inmates are brutalized, branded and beaten with rubber hoses. The big difference between “Reform School Girls” and other exploitation movies is that there is no discernible plot here. Violence is the through line.
Advice to Paris: For one, don’t adopt a cat if the prison you’re in is this violent. Get on the good side of the prison tough.
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Howie Rumberg is an asap reporter in New York. | Only registered users can write comments.
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