Lash of the Scorpion

For those of you who may have missed out on the past seven years or so of the adult entertainment industry, ever since the fall of communism in Eastern Europe their women have all of a sudden become the hottest pieces of tail on the planet. Who would have guessed that under the frumpy, shapeless factory worker uniforms and drab demeanors there lurked an entire generation of leggy, suntanned hottiez just waiting for a chance to strip naked for the amusement of audiences the world over. Here is ample proof that totalitarianism is simply bad for the libido.

Basically this film is a lesbian Women in Prison thriller: ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ meets the Czech Republic's Girls of Penthouse. I'm not a big fan of WiP sleaze-fests so I don't know if this is even a good example (hence my neutral 5/10 rating: how do you tell a good WiP from a bad one??), even though it was all I was thinking about for it's runtime & was never bored. The women are all aggressively gorgeous: There are apparently no overweight or unattractive women in Czechloslovakian cinema, and the girls all strip down (repeatedly) with a kind of enthusiasm that suggests they feel it is their patriotic duty to parade around nude in front of a camera. The undressing scenes have an odd feel to them, as if the girls were trained to undress in a manner that would appeal to voyeuristic minded people who's hobby is imagining what it would be like to watch girls take off their clothes. Nobody just slips off their undies -- it is done slowly, with the girls sighing softly whilst turning around or raising various limbs so we can follow the progress closely & take notes.

THE PLOT: A fetching young full breasted blond buxom pixie type (played by Katerina Hovorek) is stopped for speeding by sleazy Czech police who plant drugs in her purse, and she is thrown into a women's prison consisting of a few office sets and a stall shower. After being singled out by the incredibly sexy lesbian warden (Czech TV starlet Elin Spidlová, who sadly remains fully clothed during the entire affair) she is "transferred" by some kind of a ruse to a special secret prison where the uber-sexy inmates all dress up in skimpy rags or schoolgirl outfits, depending upon scene, and are forced to work in the infamous Cocaine Mines (??), then slip packets of coke into toys that are sold for "charity". Or whatever. Like it's South American made sister films, the secret prison is apparently kept at about 90 degrees so the prisoners & guards alike are always covered with a thin, glistening film of sweat or some kind of body oil, and their makeup + hair is always perfect. The girls of course sleep topless two to a bed in addition to showering together, and are constantly being ogled, felt-up and otherwise molested by the meanie, leggy, fetishistic costumed lesbian guards who naturally carry riding crops ... And one of whom is the most outrageously sexy red headed creature I have seen outside of the dining hall at the all-female dormitory on campus that my roommates & I always made a point to have our meals at. We weren't stupid, you know.

Eventually the girls come up with a plan for escape that of course goes bad, leading to a couple of whipping scenes that are curiously edited so that you don't see the riding crops smacking any backsides. The film also has a couple of lesbian scenes that suggest bondage which also seem curiously edited in the 82 minute British Cert18 version I latched onto. At one point this *MAY* have been full-blown porno (and the IMDb cites a 96 minute Japan version) that some quick-thinking distributor realized could be morphed into a standard retail release with a bit of editing, though where they got the title MIDEIVAL FLESHPOTS 2 from is anyone's guess since the film is set in the present.

Who knows. I will say this about the movie: For a WiP epic it is surprisingly watchable & gentle -- missing are the standard torture, rape and humiliation scenes that usually typify the genre, there is only one on screen death, and it's a guy getting shot. This could be WiP for couples too, since all of the male performers in the movie look like rock stars, and one of them (Noel le Bon, of Colorfactory fame) actually is. They all keep their trousers on though, so anyone expecting fireworks ala SADOMANIA or AMAZON JAIL will probably be disappointed by both the absence of graphic sexual content and nauseatingly sadistic cruelty. The film is just sort of mean & suggestive, with enough exploitational female nudity to be entertainingly arousing. But it's NOT porn, at least in the form of this 82 minute British print.

So the bottom line is that if you consider watching a bunch of Czech hottiez lounging around on their cots topless entertaining, seeing girls get undressed or undress other girls, and have a thing for sneering, gorgeous blond leggy women's prison warden types, this movie was made just for you. The rest of us will be left puzzled by one question that is probably a leftover of anti-communist Cold War propaganda: Where the hell are they sunbathing over in Czechloslovakia so much that every girl in the film has nice, sexy bikini tan lines? I thought all they had was tanks and munitions factories and war crimes tribunals -- where'd they get all the thongs??

5/10: Just for fun, someone should send screen grabs of this movie to the Washington Post & say they are evidence of a secret CIA prison run by Haliburton operatives working under the direct orders of Dick Cheney's secret Lesbian Pinup Torture Brigade. That oughtta learn 'em!