I'm always up for a women-in-prison movie, if only because every time Hollywood makes on, whoever does it can't help but be lurid and exploitative, and even if the movie isn't overall all that good, that luridness makes watching the movie a lot of fun. So when I saw the synopsis for the movie House of Women the last time it showed up on TCM, I just had to record it to do the eventual post on it.
The movie starts off with a woman named Erica Hayden (Shirley Knight) being brought into the women's prison, against her protestations of innocence. They all say they're innocent. As part of the intake, she's given the obligatory physical examination, and like Eleanor Parker's character in Caged, Erica is pregnant. She doesn't want to have the baby be born in prison, which she considers quite the shame, but this is a slightly more progressive prison, in that the authorities let mothers keep custody of their babies at least until the babies turn three. At that point, it's make arrangements for somebody to take custody of the baby, or else have it put up for adoption.
Not that the warden, Frank Cole (Andrew Duggan) likes any of this. Or any type of progressive reform, for that matter. His philosphy seems to be that the same sort of discipline that would be used in men's prison should be used in women's prison. Put a woman in solitary for 10 days? No big deal. Make lights out a half hour earlier, and take away their radios? Also no big deal. The prison doctor, Dr. Conrad (Jason Evers), disagrees with the warden, but as if this prison movie doesn't have enough tropes, Conrad is also an alcoholic.
Fast forward three years. Erica has been a model prisoner, and even gets a job as a maid in the warden's house. But her kid is about to turn three, and the timing of her parole application means that even if the application is accepted, she won't get out of prison until about a month after her daughter's third birthday. She tries to get one of her fellow prisoners who's going to get out before she does to take the child for a month or two, but none of them are able to. The prison welfare officer takes the daughter away one day early, when the prisoners are planning a birthday party for her, and that leads to a riot.
But things are about to get even worse. Somehow, the kids are able to get enough free run of the prison that one prisoner's inquisitive child goes climing staircases that give access to the roofs of various buildings. It's something that's clearly dangerous, and it's also a bit of obvious foreshadowing as to what's going to happen to that kid. That kid's mother starts an even bigger riot in which the prisoner takes one of the members of the parole board hostage.
House of Women doesn't really break any new ground, but when you're watching a women's prison movie, you have to ask yourself whether you really want any new ground broken. The tropes that make up women's movies are fun enough that if you have a prurient interest -- and who doesn't -- you can't help but be entertained by how over the top the stuff is, even if it's formulaic.
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