Bare Behind Bars
Banned in U.K. and X-rated in the U.S.,Bare Behind Barsis a horrible-but-great film about a sadistic warden (Maria Stella Splendore) who tortures her lesbian prison inmates until her fantasies of ruling the jail come crashing down around her.  Brazilian director Oswaldo De Oliveira reinvents the women-in-prison genre by introducing not only scantily clad prisoners who relish in taking soapy showers together, but also hot blonde prison officers and an ether-sniffing nurse (Marta Anderson) who has transformed the infirmary into a massage parlor. The plot, in which four inmates break out during Brazilian Carnival, dulls in comparison to the sexy scenes between prison employees and prisoners. Between female-on-female sex scenes, everyone, especially the warden, drinks alcohol and pops pills to facilitate this lascivious take on women’s prison. Depressing scenes, for example the one in which a prisoner in solitary confinement talks to a rat for company, are counterbalanced with humor, like when that same prisoner hooks up with a guard through her small cell window. Aesthetically,Bare Behind Barshas the camp quality of early John Waters.--Trinie Dalton