In the silent era, only a few films featured women as leading characters in crime dramas. A silent film star who perfected such roles was
Priscilla Dean, most notably in
The Wicked Darling (1919) and
Outside the Law (1920). But it was not until the 1930s that Hollywood began making movies partially set in women's prisons, such as
Up the River (1930), with
Claire Luce,
Ladies They Talk About (1933), with
Barbara Stanwyck,
Hold Your Man (1933), with
Jean Harlow, and
Girls on Probation (1938), with
Jane Bryan, but generally, only a small part of the action took place inside the institution. Women-in-prison films developed in the 1930s as
melodramas in which young heroines were shown the way to a righteous life by way of the prison. Under the influence of
pulp magazines and paperbacks, they became popular
B movies during this period. It was not until the 1950s, beginning with the release of
Caged (1950), starring
Eleanor Parker and
Agnes Moorehead,
So Young, So Bad (also 1950), with
Anne Francis and
Rita Moreno, ''
Women's Prison (1955) with Ida Lupino and Cleo Moore and, in Great Britain, The Weak and the Wicked'' (1954), with
Glynis Johns and
Diana Dors, that an entire film was set inside a women's correctional facility. Several films were made about women prisoners interned by the Germans and Japanese during the Second World War such as
Two Thousand Women and
Three Came Home. The film that kicked off the genre in a new direction was
Jesús Franco's
99 Women, which was a big box office success in the U.S. in 1969. That year
Love Camp 7 was also among the first pure
exploitation films that influenced the women in prison and
Nazi exploitation genres. From 1979 to 1986, Australian Television's hit women's incarceration drama,
Prisoner: Cell Block H, ran to 692 episodes. In 1999, the popular TV series
Bad Girls was released on Britain's television network, ITV.
Bad Girls took a turn from the usual prison drama seen before to show a different perspective of women's lives and sexuality in prison. Sociologist Didi Herman states, "Unlike other mainstream television products that may have lesbian or gay characters within a prevailing context of heteronormativity, [
Bad Girls] represents lesbian sexuality as normal, desirable, and possible." A number of the WiP films remain banned by the
BBFC in the
United Kingdom. Among them are
Love Camp 7 (rejected in 2022) and
Women in Cellblock 9 (rejected in 2004), on the grounds that they contain substantial scenes of
sexual violence and in the case of the latter an actress who at 16 was under age at the time of production, rendering it
child pornography under U.K. law.
American films Examples of traditional WiP films set in the U.S. include:
The Concrete Jungle (1982), and
Chained Heat (1983) with
Linda Blair,
Tamara Dobson and
Sybil Danning,
Cell Block Sisters (1995),
Caged Hearts (1995),
Bad Girls Dormitory (1985),
Under Lock & Key,
Caged Fear (1991),
Caged (1950),
Freeway (1996) with
Reese Witherspoon and
Brittany Murphy, and
Stranger Inside (2001). American tourists are incarcerated overseas in
Chained Heat 2 (1993) with
Brigitte Nielsen and
Red Heat (1985) with Linda Blair. Both films are about innocent women who are thrown into foreign prisons and forced to face sadistic guards and brutal rape. Mainstream, non-exploitation prison films dealing with this theme include
Bangkok Hilton (1989) starring
Nicole Kidman and
Brokedown Palace (1999) with
Claire Danes, both which are set in Thailand and are focused on women who are imprisoned for smuggling drugs. Also
Prison Heat (1993 film), set in Turkey, is about four innocent American women who are mistakenly thrown in prison for cocaine possession.
Jonathan Demme's
Caged Heat (1974) is one of the better known WiP films and has a cult following due to its tongue-in-cheek approach and casting of horror icon
Barbara Steele as the warden. Demme also co-wrote
The Hot Box in 1972, which is about female prisoners who break free and start a rebellion against their captors. In recent years, films that parody or pay homage to the classic WiP films of the '70s have emerged such as Cody Jarrett's
Sugar Boxx (2009) and
Steve Balderson's
Stuck! (2010). Both of these films mimic classic WiP films by including typical WiP film characters, predictable scenes, and similar plots overall.
Italian films Italian exploitation directors have produced scores of WiP films with far more graphic sex and violence than those produced in the U.S.
Bruno Mattei directed ''
Women's Prison Massacre (1985), Caged Women (1982), and Jail — A Women's Hell
(2006). Other films include Women in Fury
(1985) and Caged Women in Purgatory'' (1991). The
Nazi exploitation subgenre centers on the same theme of captive women suffering abuses in war-time prison camps. Many of these films were developed in the late 1970s and the early 1980s as the industry continued to grow. Films such as
SS Experiment Love Camp, ''SS Camp 5: Women's Hell
, Hell Behind the Bars
and Hell Penitentiary
directed by Sergio Garrone in 1983, Gestapo's Last Orgy (1977) directed by Cesare Canevari, Helga, She Wolf of Spilberg
(1978) and Fraulein Devil (1977) directed by Patrice Rhomm, SS Hell Camp (1977) directed by Luigi Batzella, Women in Cell Block 7 (1973) directed by Rino Di Silvestro and Nazi Love Camp 27 (1977) directed by Mario Caiano were partly inspired by the U.S./Canadian Ilsa'' series.
Asian films The abuse of Chinese women in Japanese detention or prisoner-of-war camps during World War II is depicted in a series of Hong Kong films, including
Bamboo House of Dolls (1973) with
Birte Tove, and ''Great Escape from a Women's Prison
. Comfort Women'' (1992), which is based on real events, depicted Chinese prostitutes abducted by Japanese soldiers and used for brutal scientific experiments at the notorious
Unit 731 medical camp.
A Chinese Torture Chamber Story (1994) and its sequel are based on historical records of China's
Qing dynasty. The topic of sex was usually considered taboo in traditional Chinese society, which makes the film industry scandalous and frowned upon by many. One of the very early examples of the genre in Japan is
Death Row Woman, a noir drama made by the master of
J-horror Nobuo Nakagawa in 1960, although the plot doesn't entirely take place inside a prison. Later WiP films were orften adaptations of popular
manga,
Prisoner Maria and the
Female Prisoner 701: Scorpion series of films starring
Meiko Kaji. Many Japanese films include themes of vengeance and retribution with a heroine who takes revenge against the drug or prostitution syndicates responsible for her incarceration. The film
Female Prisoner 701: Scorpion depicted "a story of Japanese women in captivity, with lots of very life-like scenes" due to the director's desire to produce "natural-looking stories" with an enhanced sense of reality.
Sub-genres The "jungle prison" subgenre has films set in fictional
banana republics run by corrupt dictators in either South America or Southeast Asia. The majority of these were filmed in the
Philippines, where production costs are low. Here, a group of nubile prisoners are herded together in a stockade prison camp and used as slave labor, doing tasks such as cutting sugar cane or digging in a quarry. These films usually involve a revolution subplot with political prisoners freed by other inmates in a climactic raid where the villains are killed. Actress
Pam Grier starred in several Filipino jungle films such as
Roger Corman's
The Big Doll House and its sequel
The Big Bird Cage, plus
Women in Cages, and
Black Mama White Mama (story co-written by Jonathan Demme).
Sweet Sugar (1972) starred
Phyllis Davis,
Caged Heat 2: Stripped of Freedom (1994) featured
Jewel Shepard as an undercover agent. The especially brutal
Escape from Hell, a.k.a.
Escape (1979) and its sequel
Hotel Paradise came from Italy.
Jesús Franco's
Sadomania features scenes such as gladiator fights to the death and prisoners hunted like animals in an alligator-infested swamp. ==Related genres==