"Girls in Prison" Review

 

by Daniel White

Diane Richard's is one hot mama and she opens 1956's Girls in Prison with a sizzling bebop number, "Tom's Beat " ("Take a solid beat, add a little heat"). Set in the dimly lit Starlit Cafe, La Richards growls and shimmies, while a young woman frantically attempts to cross the dance floor. Blocked by jitterbugging couples caught up, no doubt in the sexual frenzy of Tom's rhythmic beat, she is summarily escorted off the premises by the police. It's a fantastic, perfectly prepped scene, and while nothing that follows quite matches , Girls in Prison is still a fun, well-made B "Women in prison" flick. A genre that dates back to silent film, it flourished in the fifties after the success of Caged (1950).

Produced by Samuel Z. Arkoff, with a story by Leo Rusoff, and released through American International Pictures, the movie originally played on a double bill with Hot Rod Girls. Ooh, drag racing dames and bad broads in the Big House, it doesn't get any better than this!

That was the hope anyway, and while Girls in Prison never fails to entertain, it only occasionally hits the high level of camp that one craves in a chicks-in-chains flick. Ann Carson (the smart-looking Joan Taylor), the beleaguered gal in the first scene, quickly goes from nightclub to cop car. The opening credits running, we watch as she is deposited at the ladies penitentiary. After being brusquely interviewed by the prison matron, (the fabulous Jane Darwell), Ann lands in a four-woman cell, and quickly learns the ropes as the "new fish." An accomplice in a bank robbery in which the loot was never recovered, Ann piques the interest of the other inmates. Hounded and harassed, she turns to her cellie, the seasoned Jenny (the statuesque Adele Jergens), for protection.

While the story unfolds predictably, the actresses are a gas and give spirited performances. Besides Taylor, Darwell and Jergens, there is Helen Gilbert as Melanee, a faux-Southern belle who has the hots for the uninitiated Ann ("I declare...doesn't she have the prettiest skin"). Though the producers were warned to avoid any scenes that were suggestive of lesbianism, it is very clear what Miss Melanee wants, and it ain't Ashley Wilkes!

Mae Marsh plays Grandma, the old lady con who has spent her life in stir, a stock character that no WIP film would be complete without. Marsh, a one-time star of silent cinema has one of her last speaking parts here, and it's a delight to see her in action.

If the opening scene has the most sizzle, things spark up again in the last twenty minutes with the snuffing of a snitch, an earthquake to rival the one in 1906, and a prison breakout. It's deliciously preposterous, and the campiness I was craving finally shows up.

Not quite the schlock masterpiece I hoped for, Girls in Prison is still a worthwhile B movie excursion, a titillating trip I was more than happy to take. Directed by Edward L. Cahn, and co-starring Richard Denning, Lance Fuller, Phyllis Coates, Raymond Hatton, and Lottie Salisbury, Girls in Prison is currently streaming on Tubi.