Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Big Doll House equels Big Fun, November 3, 2002
By A Customer
Wow....I just finished watching this movie and it is a real jem. Ladies in prison flicks are cool but this one takes the cake as far as campy goes. Here are some of the things you will experience if you watch this flick.
1. Tons of 70's babes with tight skimpy outfits on.
2. More babes with skimpy outfits on.
3. Homosexual prison gaurds
4. Homosexual prison warden
5. A Philipino Revolution
6. More 70's babes with tight outfits on.
7. A woman hanging by her ponytail as punishment for trying to escape
8. Mud wrestling
9. Crazed women inmates imprisoned in an cage with other crazy wild women (they act like animals....funny!)
10. Inmates who want to be "raped" by men, because they haven't "had any sex in a very long time".
11. More sex starved female inmates in tight outfits.....especially one very "hot blond babe" who begs for sex!!
I must admit this is by far the funniest and sickest movie I have seen in a long time. The plot centers around this band of revolutionaries who want to take over thier country by force. They come up with the crazy idea of breaking into an all "womens prison" and freeing the women who will help them with the revolution.(This is the first time I have ever seen anyone break "into" a prison.) Not much of what goes on makes any sence but it sure makes for one hell of a laugh riot. Roger Corman impressed me again. I have only seen one other Roger Corman movie "Bucket of Blood" and I have to admit that this film is stranger and funnier than "Bucket". As I was watching this film I kept asking myself "Is Roger Corman for real?... is he trying to be serious or trying to be funny?"....the script is a zany hoot and the film kept my attention all the way through. I recieved the VHS version and there was 2 spots where the audio did not sync up to the film, this error actually added to the wierdness of the flick. The entire movie had that "made for T.V" feel to it. There is some nudity and bad launguage but the contentnt is so bizzare and offbeat that it deserved a "R" rating. I highly recommned this film for the cinema nut who thinks he has seen it all. You will not be dissapointed!.....the highlight of the film is when halfway thru the movie you find out the prison guards and warden prefer men sexually over women...gay prison guards!!!!.....this twist in the scipt is just TOO FUNNY!!........buy it today....you will thank me!!
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Pam Grier stars in a "Women in Prison" action film., March 11, 1999
By A Customer
While any movie starring Pam Grier is worth watching, the Big Doll House is a particularly entertaining entry in the "Women in Prison" film genre. Produced by the great Roger Corman and filmed in the Philippines, this movie features all the violence, mayhem, and nudity one expects in a 70's "Girls Behind Bars" flick. It also has the added bonus of a great scene where Pam Grier and another woman fight it out in the mud of the rice fields (where the women are forced to toil). Don't miss it!
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A sleaze classic!, January 17, 2005
Good old Roger Corman; he never saw a film genre he didn't like. Moreover, he never hesitated to make cheap knockoffs of hit films. "Star Wars" breaking box office records? Enter Corman's "Battle Beyond the Stars." "Jurassic Park" raking in the dough? "Carnosaur" and its sequel will do quite nicely, thank you. How about films full of car chases? Those were quite popular in the 1970s, weren't they? You bet, and Corman rolled out "Eat My Dust" and "Grand Theft Auto" to capitalize on the craze. I could go on and on, mentioning how Rog saw fit to make "Big Bad Mama" to present his own take on 1930s gangster epics, or how he tossed out "Humanoids From the Deep" to cash in on a resurgence of monster films. The vaunted women in prison subgenre of the 1970s was yet another field of endeavor for this King of the B-movie rip off. Corman underwrote several of them, beginning with director Jack Hill's classic "The Big Doll House." Hill went on to make his own name in exploitation films with "Coffy" and "Foxy Brown," two movies that formed the foundation of the blaxploitation genre. Thanks to DVD, a new generation of schlock film lovers will finally see these classics.
We see "The Big Doll House" unfold through the eyes of Collier (Judy Brown), a woman convicted of murder on trumped up charges and sentenced to life in a Philippine prison. She has a tough time adjusting to her new digs at first, largely due to the tough as nail attitudes of her fellow cellmates. The tough and cynical Alcott (Roberta Collins) runs the cellblock with an iron fist, and she makes it crystal clear to Collier early on that she will not tolerate any dissension in the ranks. Of course, there is always opposition to Alcott's tyranny, usually in the form of Grear (Pam Grier), a just as tough black girl who smuggles drugs into the prison as well as acting as a stoolie for the prison authorities. Bodine (Pat Woodell) could run the entire prison if she wanted to thanks to her size and fearsome reputation, but she's one of these gals who finds contentment sitting back and avoiding prison politics. She also corresponds infrequently with her boyfriend, a revolutionary currently engaged in a struggle to overthrow the government. No discussion of the prison would be complete without mentioning the hapless Harrad (Brooke Mills), a kooky chick drifting along in a haze of heroin. Perhaps it is appropriate that the phrase "A Dead Bee Makes No Honey" is etched on the wall of the girls' cell because there is very little sweetness exhibited here.
It should go without saying that the name of the game in "The Big Doll House" is figuring out a way to escape from the prison. After the other girls finally come to accept Collier, grudgingly in a few instances, she starts agitating for a plan. No one has ever successfully fled the penitentiary, apparently, so it will take awhile to come up with a ploy that works. In the meantime, the film treats us to all sorts of sordid activities, including whippings, electroshock treatments, and poisonous cobras. We also see Grear make a play for power by wrestling Alcott in a mud pit. Other characters emerge to engage our attentions, too, such as the vicious female warden with her schemes of corruption and intrigue. Comic relief arrives in the form of a couple of guys from the outside, the most important of whom is Harry (Sid Haig), who brings supplies into the penitentiary. These two can get anything, including drugs and hard liquor, for the right price, a price most of the female inmates are unwilling to pay. If you think that most of these characters, the ones that survive anyway, will come together in the film's denouement, you would be correct. "The Big Doll House" is an often squalid film whose bleak tone carries all the way through to its downbeat conclusion.
This is the type of film that lovers of low budget cinema adore. It's got everything, from lots of beautiful '70s babes running around in prison attire to over the top violence to Sid Haig hamming it up. "The Big Doll House" also has Pam Grier, which is always a big bonus. Her acting isn't that great here, probably due to the fact that this was only her second film, but she puts enough heart into the role that the viewer quickly forgives her failings. Her scenes with Haig are particularly memorable. Hill was so impressed with Grier that he cast her in his future productions, namely the aforementioned "Coffy" and "Foxy Brown," which led to her becoming a major presence in 1970s' cult cinema. Considering how big a fan he is of these types of movies, it's no wonder that Quentin Tarentino based an entire film around the beautiful Grier, who, I might add, looks absolutely amazing today. Can you tell I'm a big Pam Grier fan? The primary reason I enjoyed this film is because Grier gets a lot of screen time. But even if you aren't a fan, you can still kick back and chuckle over the seedy set pieces, the crazy dialogue, and the wacky situations that pop up in this film every five minutes or so.
The DVD version of the film contains a commentary from Jack Hill, cast biographies, a trailer, and additional trailers for "Big Bird Cage," "The Arena," and "Women in Cages." The commentary track is rather dry, something I've found rings true for other Hill commentaries, but it does contain plenty of interesting information on the production of the film. "The Big Doll House" is arguably the best women in prison film I've seen so far; it's certainly light years ahead of films such as Pete Walker's "The House of Whipcord" and Bruno Mattei's "Violence in a Women's Prison."
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