The Doll House of Size

Another movie that I recently got around to watching is the exploitation film The Big Doll House.

Judy Brown plays Collier, a young woman who, at the start of the movie, is spending her first day at a prison in a tropical third world country that I think isn't mentioned, but a few signs have place names from the Philippines. Collier is put in a cell with five other women, all of whom only use their surnames to address each other. Pam Grier plays "Grear", a lesbian (albeit maybe by convenience) who procures heroin for Harrad (Brooke Mills); Alcott (Robert Collins) and Bodine (Pat Woodell) are dreaming of escape; and Ferina (Gina Stuart) is along for the ride.

The prison is run by warden Dietrich (Christiane Schmidtmer), who is assisted by the chief guard Lucian (Kathryn Loder). Those two use all sorts of torture on the prisoners to punish them, something that concerns new prison doctor Phillips (Jack Davis), although he doesn't know the extent of what's going on, only what he hears from the prisoners he has to see for medical reasons. Dietrich and Lucian suggest the prisoners are creating tall tales, which they obviously have reason to do.

Rounding out this little world are the two guys who have the contract to supply the prison with fresh produce, Harry (Sid Haig) and Fred (Jerry Franks). They seem to have relatively unfettered access to prison, surprisingly so in fact for a place that includes political prisoners among its inmates. They go through the hallways, dealing with the women who want a man's touch not having had it for years in some cases.

Eventually, Alcott and Bodine do put their escape plans into motion. But none of this is why you watch a women in prison movie. Instead, you watch it for the exploitation: the catfights among the women, the guards' sadistic treatment of the prisoners, the food fight, and the sexuality which is clearly much more open than any prison movies made even just a few short years before under the Prodction Code. There's a lot of women's breasts on display here.

If you were looking to do a technical review of The Big Doll House, you'd have to say that it's not very good. It's cheap and tawdry; there's nothing original in the plot; and people like Grier would go on to put in much better performances in later movies. Caged this isn't. But I can certainly recommend this one because it's so much fun for what it does. The mud wrestling scene between Grear and Alcott is one of the highlights; the food fight scene is laughably bad; and there's a well-done torture sequence involving a cobra.

If you want to watch something undemanding that you can just have fun yelling back at the TV screen as you watch it, you could do a lot worse than to watch The Big Doll House. It's avaialble on DVD as part of a three-film box set.