Long before the days of Ellen DeGeneres, Go Fish and Rosie O’Donnell’s haiku blog, fringe movies with titles such as Chained Girls and Caged Heat – what we now call “lesploitation” – were virtually the only place gays and lesbians could find themselves represented on-screen. While there is certainly plenty of material in these films that could be deemed offensive, in general the more outrageous a film was, the less judgmental it was. By today’s standards, even the most risqué of them are relatively tame.
The word “lesploitation” describes a film in which the use of lesbian imagery and content are used for commercial purposes. And though the lesploitation genre came about strictly as a cash-grab, exploitation films – including categories such as blaxploitation and sexploitation – served a societal purpose as well. Their production values were quite low, but they represented an alternative to mainstream Hollywood and were some of the few films that presented same-sex sexuality in a relatively positive light.
Exploitation movies often justified their lurid story lines by framing them with a moralizing introduction in pseudo-educational language. For example, the 1965 lesploitation classic Chained Girls purports to raise public awareness about the “complex problem” of lesbianism, beginning with the following introduction:
Who and what is a lesbian? Is lesbianism a disease, or a natural occurrence? Is lesbianism reserved for only a few people, or is it a common happening? How do lesbians live? Are they happy with their lives? And how does society view them?This Wild Kingdom-like outlook reflects the time period in which the films were made, and watched in hindsight, they manage to be entertaining and offensive, progressive and archaic, titillating and revolting all at once. They are often shockingly bad, but they are also campy and queer, as well as incredible examples of the stereotypes that still plague lesbians and bisexual women in the media today.
The Schoolhouse
Equal parts “documentary” and skin flick, Chained Girls is a prime example of filmmakers using the guise of “scientific study” to skirt censorship and get topless women on the screen. Here, a narrator intones various “facts” about lesbians, whether it be cataloguing the various types (femmes, dolls, dykes, stompin’ butches, baby butches) or behaviors (“Many lesbians, as a rule, are heavy drinkers”). Then, the filmmakers actually provide displays of such behavior on-screen. It’s sort of a “Yeah, women making out with each other is so weird and wrong … let’s watch!” approach that is nothing short of hilarious.
There are ample mouth-droppingly ridiculous statements and sequences throughout the film, from “The dyke is a very selfish person who will fight … sometimes to the death!” to the “coming-out party,” in which a bunch of “dykes” draw straws to see who will “initiate” the “deb.” Helpful statistics pop up on-screen now and again as well. Chained Girls makes some statements that are meant to be provocative and outrageous, but the reality is they’re unintentionally quite progressive for 1965. Some of the utterly shocking “facts” the narrator relates include:
- Lesbians are largely indistinguishable from other women!
- Lesbians can be found in many professions!
- Lesbians mingle within the bounds of society!
The film ends on a bit of a downer, though, as one of the “bull dykes” has to transform back into a “woman” when the Sapphic weekend comes to a close and the work week begins. As she stares at herself plaintively, the narrator reminds us that, like everyone else, lesbians are just searching for that someone who will love them for the rest of their lives. What’s a pipe-smoking, woman-loving woman to do? We get an in-depth peek at the secret inner workings of lesbian society in Daughters of Lesbos (1968), as lesbians hold meetings featuring “good conversation and fine wine topped off with some wild sexual escapades.”
Daughters of Lesbos leans far more toward titillation than Chained Girls does; here the narrator is a breathy, purring woman – not a guy who sounds like the school principal. She walks us through various ways in which women “become” lesbians, whether it be a reaction to a date rape, the result of being picked up by an aggressive lesbian while hitchhiking, or seduced while at summer camp. Where the narration leaves off, the bongo drums and trumpets pick up as we see exactly what happens when these women get their lez on in all their full-frontal glory. This “strange” society isn’t all about sex, however – these women will stop at nothing to prove their superiority to men in every way. As such, Daughters of Lesbos climaxes with a bizarre scene of vengeance against a male offender, all in the name of “justice.”
What lessons can you expect to take away from these educational lesploitation films? Here are just a few:
- Lesbians, with their cultish leanings and weird secret rituals, are kinda like witches.
- Lip-licking was the gaydar of the 1960s.
- Women can slip in and out of lesbianism without even knowing it.
- Lesbians only become lesbians after some cataclysmic event.
- Lesbianism can be cured.
- Lesbianism cannot be cured.
The Big House
It’s impossible to talk “lesploitation” without talking “women in prison flicks,” a subgenre that, while in existence since the 1930s (such as the1931 film Ladies of the Big House), really rose to prominence in the early 1970s. Along the way, the “babes behind bars” films evolved from poignant melodrama to sexploitation to shock cinema (a particularly violent and exploitative category). While there are obviously permutations and variations, women in prison films tend to adhere to a formula so closely that virtually every film in the subgenre has most, if not all, of the following elements:
- The innocent, falsely accused young lass unfairly sentenced and thrown to the wolves.
- The Queen Bee: the butch leader of the cell block, sometimes tight with the prison administration.
- The evil warden and/or the sadistic matron who lust after the inmates and/or exploit them for financial gain.
- The one who befriends the innocent protagonist – and usually dies by the film’s end.
- The crazy one: a junkie, a nympho or just plain crazy, she has usually committed suicide by the film’s end.
- The prison doctor: friend or foe … or both!
- An appearance by Pam Grier, Linda Blair, Roberta Collins or Sybil Danning … or all four!
- Ample gratuitous nudity, in particular very lengthy shower scenes.
- Ample gratuitous violence: Women engage in catfights over anything and everything, from cigarettes to each other.
- Prison life that, one can safely assume, is far from reality: Cells come in many shapes and sizes, from art studios to studio apartments, while the women can dress however they wish.
- An action-packed prison-break finale, generally involving guns in some fashion, be it intimate and small scale, as in Caged Heat:
… or riotous and large-scale, as in Chained Heat 2:Pick and choose from these elements and you, too, can write a women in prison flick, Mad Libs-style!
Despite the common themes and similarities, there are babes behind bars films to suit virtually any taste, spanning multiple decades. If you want a film that’s a bit more tame and features women performing in drag, check out Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme’s freshman effort, Caged Heat (1974). If you’re looking for something a bit more action-oriented, featuring roundhouse kicks and women performing in drag – as Prince! – then Vendetta (1986) is calling your name.
If you’re just into nudity, you can’t go wrong with Chained Heat 2 (1993), where inmates are forced to run a nude drug operation. If you don’t want to feel smutty while getting your women in prison groove on (and you dig Bob Fosse), you’ll be pleased to know that Chicago (2002) took home six Oscars.
No matter the film, of course, there’s lesbian sex galore; however, it’s only on occasion that homosexual relationships in fictional jailhouse scenarios move beyond the superficial. In general, if it’s not a scary butch Queen Bee forcing a young nubile inmate into a sexual relationship, then it’s two women forced together out of “necessity” (i.e., there are no men available), and there’s usually a tragic end to be found.
Top 5 Evil Wardens
Most of the sex behind bars, whether realized or simply attempted, comes courtesy of that stock character, the Evil Warden. When she’s working in tandem with her No. 2, the Sadistic Matron, then look out ladies: It’s gonna be a tumultuous time in the big house. Who’s the worst (or is that best?) of the worst? Let’s count ’em down:
5. Mrs. Charles (Deborah May), Caged Fear, aka Jail Force (1992) – She might look nice, but beware: She forces inmates into prostitution! 4. Bri Terry (Georgia Morgan), 10 Violent Women (1982) – This bitter old lesbian tortures any girl who dares resist her creepy advances.
3. McQueen (Barbara Steele), Caged Heat (1974) – Sexually repressed due to her disability (or maybe her Sally Jesse Raphael glasses), the wheelchair-bound McQueen allows the sadistic prison doctor to run rampant, molesting and lobotomizing inmates at his will. 2. Sutter (Sybil Danning) and Edna (Pat Ast), Reform School Girls (1986) – Warden Sutter allows her sadistic matron Edna to run rampant, molesting inmates and squashing kittens at her will! 1. Magda Kassar (Brigitte Nielsen) and Rosa Schmidt (Jana Svandová), Chained Heat 2 (1993) – The dastardliest of the dastardly warden/matron duos, Magda and Rosa will stop at nothing to satisfy their greedy urges. They force the convicts into the aforementioned nude drug operation, they force the convicts into prostitution, and they force the convicts into their beds! Not one prisoner is tough enough to withstand the mighty power of Brigitte Nielsen’s enormous shoulder pads. Though the women in prison flick’s heyday has passed, the subgenre is still alive and kicking on television, from a series devoted to it (Bad Girls) to the random episode here and there on any number of shows, new or old: there’s the infamous “Angels in Chains” episode of Charlie’s Angels, “Locked Up and Tied Down” from Season 4 of Xena, “Locked Up” from The L Word‘s inaugural season, and many more, from CSI to Quantum Leap to Knight Rider. It seems the chicks in chains fad will never completely die.
The House Next Door
The last lesploitation category I’m going to examine is – there’s really no other way to put it – just plain ol’ softcore. The content of the softcore varies wildly from film to film. Some manage to deftly tackle relevant social issues; some are outrageous; some are action-packed; but across the board, they’re the campiest and most fun of all.
Perhaps the most well-known softcore lesploitation film is Just the Two of Us, aka The Dark Side of Tomorrow (1970), which holds up remarkably well and is absolutely as progressive as it is conservative.
Denise (Elizabeth Plumb) and Adria (Alisa Courtney) are suburban housewives bored with their marriages because their husbands are gone for weeks at a time doing Very Important Work. The friends have lunch at a “kooky little place” where they spy two lesbians openly engaging in hand-holding. Adria’s a bit scandalized: “It’s probably very exciting and all, but it’s not quite normal, you must admit that.”
To Adria’s surprise, Denise doesn’t seem all that nonplussed. “No matter who’s in love,” she says, “no matter what person they’re in love with, it’s good – it’s beautiful.”
Denise and Adria relate their experience to their bridge partners, who are completely shocked. The group debates the merits of homosexuality and whether or not it’s a mental illness, and there are far more liberal thoughts thrown around the table than one might expect.
The lonely housewives spend the night together – you know, ’cause they’re lonely – and before long, trumpets are playing and nightgowns are coming off. All is well and good in lonely housewifeland until Adria decides to try another diversion, this time a fella. Denise, who has realized that she was so unhappy in her marriage because she’s been living in the closet, is devastated. You can imagine where things go from there, right?
Fortunately, Just the Two of Us features a rather ambiguous ending – a deathless ambiguous ending, even.
The same, unfortunately, can’t be said for That Tender Touch (1969), a flick positively dripping with enough melodrama to make your average soap opera blush. Terry (Sue Bernard) and Marsha (Bee Tompkins) are roommates-cum-lovers – and then Terry has to go and get married.
Marsha decides to move in with the newlyweds, and though she manages to catch the eye of virtually every woman she encounters, her heart belongs to Terry. Terry’s heart, however, belongs to her husband, so for Marsha it’s a life of anguish, anguish and more anguish until she ends up face-down in Terry’s pool. If you want a little more noirish murder and a little less depressing suicide, you might try Sugar Cookies (1973), a quirky, sexed-up take on Hitchcock’s Vertigo. This film, which features miles and miles of nudity and sex, boasts the tagline, “How far would you go to get revenge on the killer of your lesbian lover?” The answer is, “Far enough to find another woman who looks just like my dead lesbian lover, then seduce her, and then get my revenge on the killer!” Now that’s a proactive lesbian.
The sex in these films is surprisingly sweet, and not at all as outrageous as the notoriety associated with the word “exploitation” would have you think. Though there’s often full-frontal nudity, the scenes don’t smack of smut; what was shocking 30-odd years ago is tamer than mainstream today. As Mary Woronov (Sugar Cookies) says on the film’s DVD, “Now they’re [lesbians] getting married, so it’s not hot stuff at all – it’s like suburban stuff!”
Generally, these films feature a courtship where the women engage in such total debauchery as checkers, tandem biking and frolicking in fields, followed by nicely lit caressing and kissing accompanied by the typical violins, trumpets and bongos.
Make Your Own Lesploitation Classic
Though the golden age of the lesploitation film is over, fans of the genre can handily make their own – especially since one of the hallmarks of these movies is the low-budget look. All you’ll need are the following tips, culled from the experience of the actresses who made these movies in the first place:
1. Have your husband write it for you.
At the time she was making Sugar Cookies, star Mary Woronov was married to the film’s writer/director, Theodore Gershuny. “He said he would write it especially for me,” she said in a 2004 interview, “so I was a little surprised when I turned out to be a murderous lesbian.” 2. Remain clueless!
Though the lesbian subtext in Russ Meyer’s 1965 exploitation classic Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is blatantly clear to anyone who sees the film, stars Tura Satana (Varla) and Haji (Rosie) were unaware that their characters were supposed to be romantically involved. On the film’s DVD, Tura and Haji admit:
Tura: If we had known we were supposed to be lovers, we would’ve acted a little differently. Haji: She would have touched me, or … I thought she was just tougher than I was, bossing me around!3. Do the lesbian stuff with a real, live lesbian.
In another amazing film from Russ Meyer, the infamous Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), sweet and innocent Casey (Cynthia Myers) finds herself seduced by Roxanne (Erica Gavin), and they enter into a sweet, loving, steamy relationship. Myers was a bit nervous about shooting the lesbian scenes because she’d never been with a woman before – unlike her co-star, openly bisexual actress Gavin. From the DVD:
Myers: I didn’t know what to do … Gavin: Was I a good teacher? Myers: Yes!
4. When all else fails … act!
Cult film star Lynn Lowry didn’t shy away from lesbian sex scenes in Sugar Cookies or Score (1973) – she just, er, did it. “Just try to do it as honestly as you can from moment to moment and make it believable and real,” she advises on the film’s DVD. She makes it sound so easy. Wait, get naked and make out with your attractive co-star? That is easy! Smut is smut, to be sure, but the time capsules of these films can now be enjoyed by lesbians and bisexual women for their historical and entertainment value. Just don’t take them too seriously.
