Caryn James of
The New York Times wrote, "The worst kind of
exploitation film masquerades as a spoof, luring innocent but otherwise intelligent people to the theater." James wrote that from the time Gillian arrives in the prison, "it is clear that this movie will never again cross the line from exploitation into fun. 'I knew a lot of brutality and perversion was going on in those cells, but I didn't care,' Gillian whines, and throughout the movie her helpless depression is an excuse for showing brutality and perversion, as the film makers try to mask the sadistic and sexist heart of their story." Michael Wilmington of the
Los Angeles Times called the film a "low-rent women's prison movie which gives us plenty of lust and little freedom. Shot with the elan of a TV
soap opera on a bad day and packed with performances for which 'staggeringly inept' might be a mild compliment, this appalling little Troma Team release offers murder, mayhem, kidnapping, drugs, false arrest, perversion, rape, pornography, white slavery, arson, carnage—and, as if all that weren't enough, a rigged wrestling match." Wilmington wrote, "As Gillian's whacked-out narration drones on, we can sense discontent brewing among her fellow inmates. Soon, the prison populace explodes into revolt, overwhelmed by the lust for freedom—or perhaps just sick of hearing the same two Grim Reaper songs repeated endlessly on the sound track." Wilmington wrote that the film "has one thing going for it: It looks as though it cost almost nothing to make. That's a relief. Even if this movie is abysmal, at least it doesn't look profligate."
Lou Lumenick of
The Record wrote, "While this may not actually be the case, 'Lust for Freedom' looks as if its creators started out making a hard-core porno film and switched midway to a soft-core, women's prison picture. If there were any criteria for casting most of the women other than their willingness to take off their clothes, it isn't apparent in the final product, which is unprofessional even by the standards of the Troma Team, whose last effort was '
Surf Nazis Must Die.' When the women prisoners aren't parading in halter, shorts, and heavy makeup, they are as consistently overexposed in the endless shower and lesbian scenes as the movie's photography is underexposed." Lumenick wrote that although Coll does not appear nude in any scenes, "the moronic script abundantly makes up for that with other humiliations such as encounters with crazed lady wrestlers and psychotic Indians.
Kevin Costner's career may have survived Eric Louzil's direction in '
Sizzle Beach, U.S.A.,' but it's doubtful Coll will be able to say the same." In 2005, Christopher Curry of
Film Threat gave the film two and a half stars out of five and called it a "by-the-books women in prison movie". Curry stated that like many Troma films,
Lust for Freedom "is steeped in amateurish acting, erratic pacing and, just to keep the action moving along, massive plot holes. Marry all this with a
snuff film subplot and a soundtrack by British Heavy Metal act Grim Reaper and you have one nasty little film." The following year, Bill Gibron of
PopMatters wrote, "You only need three words to understand why
Lust for Freedom is such a fantastic freak-out of a film: three simple pieces of the English language that say so very much while remaining so basic and pure. Trapped within their vowels and consonants are the tone, the timbre, and the type of cinematic sensation you're in for. And what is this lexis of lunacy, you ask—this triumvirate of telltale phonics? Why,
women in prison, of course." Gibron noted the poor acting, but wrote that the film "is so ripe with seedy shenanigans and despicable ideas that makers of autopsy porn look down on its delicious tawdriness. [...] this is one exploitation gambol that takes the tired conventions of
the jailbird genre and pumps them full of radioactive iniquity." Gibron concluded that
Lust for Freedom "makes you understand instantly why films of this genre—namely gals in gulags—are so cotton-picking pleasing." In 2010, Mark Burger of
Yes! Weekly gave the film zero stars and described it as a "low-rent" film, writing, "The laughs are unintentional and frequent [...]. Entertaining in spite of itself, with Coll's incongruous narration and a hilarious, head-banging soundtrack by Grim Reaper among the proverbial 'highlights.' Laughable trash in the best (and worst) Troma tradition." ==References==