There’s corruption going on in the maximum security women’s prison. What else is new? Every prison in the world is crooked, corrupt, and committing something dang nasty to prisoners and what not. “Chained Heat” is yet another women’s in prison flick and apparently one of the last, sadly. Still trying to rebound from “The Exorcist” and dwelling in the pits of exploitation, Linda Blair plays Carol Henderson, a young girl who killed a man by running him over with her car, and now has to serve a lengthy eighteen month sentence with other young women in a prison teeming with violent lesbians, young lolitas, and a prison staff of perverted guards straight out of a Franco movie, and tough female wardens. There’s a massive drug ring taking rule in the prison, and most of the girls are picking off traitors threatening to reveal the conspiracy while Carol finds herself in the midst of a veritable gang war between Aryans and Latinas. Paul Nicholas’s thrillers strives for a sense of realism, and while it does tend to be as goofy as every other women in prison flick ever made, he accomplishes a gritty disturbing violence that seems grounded in reality in many instances. The rape and abuse suffered by prisoners here thankfully lack any over the top torture devices as Franco’s flicks and are mainly based around the typical prison beatings and shankings that make “Chained Heat” a disturbing but well rounded prison flick.
 

Nicholas asks a lot from his cast, and even gives us the pleasure of glancing at the dynamite gazungas of folks like Sybil Danning, and of course, Linda Blair. Blair’s performance is competent and pretty simple, as the writers don’t ask much from her except to play on the same old vulnerable young “gee whiz” innocent character we saw in “Hell Night” and “The Exorcist.” But Blair attempts to break free from her pigeon hole shackles with a reach for complexity and darkness that doesn’t always come through.

She begins as a new inmate at the mercy of violent lesbians, and transforms gradually into a warrior who begins to fight back eventually. Blaxploitation veteran (the late great) Tamara Dobson gives a memorable walk on as a civil rights counselor who attempts to protect one of the few black inmates in the all white facility, while John Vernon is very good as the dictatorial warden who takes to sleeping with the prison mates and covering up any wrong doings with the help of his right hand woman. The shining pearl though is Dobson who is just top notch as Dutchess, the “black power” ring leader who never hesitates to challenge fellow prisoners to a yard match, and takes great pains to show off her guts whenever the occasion calls for it. When she teams with Carol to find out who murdered a local black prisoner, the tension is amped considerably. “Chained Heat” may be a typical women in prison flick, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a damn good one.

Thanks to the respective performances of Tamara Dobson and John Vernon, “Chained Heat” goes from a typical women-in-prison entry with the same B grade cheese and hokum, to a tightly wound glance at women’s prison life with a good idea of narrative, characters, and Linda Blair’s incredible sweater meat. I wish we had more of these movies.