With a climax escape scene rivaling the frightfully awful belly laughs of Plan 9 From Outer Space, Prison Heat boasts a bevy of bimbos behind bars enduring a host of midnight male abuse from the usual suspects.
If one isn't careful to pay close attention to what would seem was just another excuse to drop drawers in the wee B-hours, one could miss the genius behind this stupendous assault on cinema.
Clad in mini-skirts and body stockings for their stretch in a Turkish cooler, a quartet of framed females sidestep lesbian lovers and Curly Joe prison guards with an arsenal of lame escape tactics that would put the Lucy Show to shame in the just-crazy-enough-to-work department.
The four foxy heroes play it painfully straight in contrast to their cartoonish stereotype-on-steroids foes.
(As Prison Heat can be enjoyed many times over for connoisseurs of bad film, those who have yet to see the film might not want to read the following as some key elements are revealed.)
The whimsical writing flip flops the characters from 'fraidy cats to vicious vixens without missing a beat of nutcase rhythm. At first, the girls seem skittish to actually hurt anybody. Rather than shooting anyone with their purloined pistol, they dump sleeping pills down the gurgling gullets of guards and others in their way.
But the kid gloves come way off when they whittle down the sadistic warden by conking his cranium with everything from crash cymbals to the kitchen sink -- before castrating him with a penknife (!) and making a run for an unattended rental car.
And what prison escape epic would be complete without breaking into a melancholy sing along of `Oh Susannah?'
The quirky, weird-o-rama dynamics of Prison Heat are guaranteed fun for lovers of scatterbrained B-hits.
