This is a classic example of the worst sort of stuff used to hook in the grind-house crowd back in the 70's. Its title, poster and trailer would have been used to sell it but of course the movie itself bears no relevance to what could reasonably be expected from a film entitled Chain Gang Women. It's an escape convict movie with two women in minor roles in the latter half of the film. And not a very interesting escape convict movie at that. The acting is of course awful and the sexploitation element negligible. There are a couple of rape scenes where the women seem virtually disinterested in being sexually assaulted; which makes it less grimy but overall pretty ridiculous. The film totters on from scene to scene with very little dynamism until it ends with an ending that is, to say the least, underwhelming. So there's not a lot to recommend here to be perfectly honest. The most interesting element of the film is the quad-screen segments, and the soundtrack was pretty appropriate I guess. Other than that, it's strictly limited thrills and spills in this one I'm afraid.
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Red-Barracuda26 January 2011
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Zeegrade5 April 2009This is pure advertising 101 right here. You have a movie about a boring prison and two unappealing convicts that escape when the lone lardass sheriff is attacked on said chain gang. If the story was good and the action well paced then you would bill this as "Chain Gang Convicts" or "Escape from Prison Hell". Or you can look at your finished product, lament over what you created, and bill it as something it is not. Voila! You now have Chain Gang Women. I truly pity the poor dupe that paid for a ticket expecting titillation via semi-nude forlorn beauties in prison only to watch this crap. The first half-hour of this tripe is spent inside of a Georgian prison that looks eerily like southern California where we meet Harris who has six months to go until he is a free man. Harris has been sent to this labor camp to finish the rest of his prison term. While there he is chained/partnered with the brutish murderer Weed who is eager to escape. I thought of escaping too by the time they get around to fleeing the prison. On the lam we finally get to see one of the two, count em' two women in this movie as the convicts hide in Harris' wife's house where she is promptly raped by Weed. Charming. After securing a change of clothes the trio attempts to go north to Atlanta in hopes of evading the dragnet. When that fails they resort to strong-arming the inhabitants of a farmhouse and wait the rest of the night out. Here we meet the second and by far the most bizarre of our women as the very young beauty is apparently married to Colonel Sanders. This poor girl not only has to kiss this decrepit old man but also gets to become Weed's second rape victim in two days. Had enough "chain gang women"? Good, because there is no more much like the plot of this movie that ends with a bang. Offscreen of course. How this movie was named Chain Gang Women in the first place is beyond me but the fact that it was retitled Women in Chains in England is even more mind boggling! A better title would have been Coma Induced Audience.
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tomgillespie200225 August 2012In typical Grindhouse style, Chain Gang Women uses a suggestive title to mislead audiences into thinking they are in for 90 minutes of sweaty, sassy women smashing rocks and taking showers together. What we get instead, is two women, who only make their appearance 40 minutes in, and while they bare their flesh for all to see as per drive-in rules, they sadly wield no machine guns and lack anything resembling the charisma of a, say, Pam Grier. This is a Women in Prison (WiP) movie with no women in prison, and spends most of the time being a lame convicts-on-the-run story.
Harris (Robert Lott) has six months to go on his stint for possessing marijuana when he is moved to a chain gang and linked up to burly murderer Weed (Michael Stearns). When one of the other prisoners knocks out the prison guard with his pick-axe, the prisoners flee on foot. We see via montage the gang being gradually wound up/killed, while Harris and Weed reach the safety of Harris's wife Ann (Linda York). While Harris is out getting Weed some clothes, Weed rapes Ann, and the two hit the road again reaching the farm of an old farmer and his sexy young wife (Barbara Mills). Turned on by the prospect of danger, and leaving her dull life with the cruel old man, she takes off with the two criminals.
If all this sounds incredibly dull and methodical, well it's because it is. I would forgive the blatant lie of the title if the film managed to be interesting in its own right, but director Lee Frost has so few ideas as to how to progress the film, that is becomes reduced to a series of repetitive shots of prisoners working and fist fights, and then later a series of bland exchanges and car chases. A least they made a bit of an effort with Porter Jordan's score, as although I wouldn't exactly put it onto my iPod, it's not half bad by grindhouse standards (which is usually some twangy disco score played over and over throughout the movie).
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John_Mclaren23 February 2003This is a truly dreadful film. Despite its name, it is not a WIP outing. Nor indeed is it a convincing road movie (which I think is what it is trying to be).
It takes two guys half an hour to escape their unexciting prison confines, finding their couple of girls- and then that's basically it. Acting is dreadful and unredeemed by any of the usual sexploitation compensations. If you want nudity and violence, then go elsewhere. In fact go elsewhere anyway. On any basis you are wasting your time with this trash. -
krek20 March 2001Neither woman is on a chain gang, and neither one appears until half-way into the film. Our two "heroes" are (English teachers: here's a way to teach the difference between protagonist and hero) on the chain gang until they escape and find two women. I am a fan of sexploitation, but there just wasn't enough in this. The film is worth watching for the charming quad-split-screen effect maximized so beautifully in "Time Code." Lower all expectations--as if merely agreeing to see a movie entitled "Chain Gang Women" weren't enough--and enjoy.
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Wizard-818 December 2010Sometimes I wish there were truth-in-advertising laws when it comes to movies. With a title like "Chain Gang Women", you might think you know what the movie is about. Guess again. This is not a women-in-prison movie. In fact, there are no women to be seen in the movie until around the halfway point of the movie! Had the movie found other ways to be entertaining, I might have forgiven the person who titled this movie. But this is a slow and endless exercise. It takes half an hour before the jailbreak, then the movie slows down again with the escaped prisoners not doing much more than sit on their tails while hiding. I guess the production values are okay for a cheapie - there is some decent location shooting in what seems to be actual prisons, the movie is decently shot, and they even sprung for some filming from helicopters. But the movie is often so boring that you'll be thinking of things from why the rapes come across as so matter-of-fact, to why the filmmakers thought that southern California could pass as locations in Georgia.
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"Georgia" looked a lot like the semi-arid landscape of So California, the accents were bad and the title is extremely misleading. But as a Roger Corman fan, and the kind of person who would buy a movie called "Chain Gang Women", I pretty much got what I expected. It'll kill an hour and a half and you won't feel bad about yourself. Goes well with bourbon and a cigar.
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SnoopyStyle13 July 2015Billy Harris has only 6 months left to serve for grass. He gets transfered out of the easy library job into hard chain-gang Georgia State Labor Farm. He is chained up with Mike Weed who supposedly killed a girl. The prisoners attack the guards and everybody makes a break for it. Harris doesn't want to run but Weed threatens to chop off his leg. They go to Harris' girlfriend Ann. While Harris is out, Weed rapes Ann. They avoid a road block and stop at a farm where the farmer has a really young wife.
This is a horribly misleading title. The filmmaking is amateurish. The lead actors are not that compelling. They're not bad as amateur actors but don't expect more than that. Harris and Weed are set up for some very compelling conflict but the movie doesn't develop it. The farmer and his wife provide some additional possibilities. However I have no rooting interest in any of them. -
nogodnomasters16 April 2019There are no women in chains. The box doesn't claim there are women in chains, nor does it show women in chain. Captain Kangaroo was neither a captain nor a kangaroo. Get over it.
Harris (Robbie Lott) is in prison for pot. He plays horseshoes and works as the prison librarian. Suddenly Harris is transferred to a north Georgia chain gang with harden criminals who speak like they are trying out for a part in a Tennessee Williams play. They are guarded by Fat Sam (Bruce Kimball), a stereotypical pot belly guard who walks around carelessly with his shotgun....(key plot point).
They escape across Rt. 75 which is being widen (future I-75?) to some hillbilly running music. Harris is reluctant to escape. Given the choice between running and staying with his foot cut off, he chose the former. Note the cinematic 4 way split screen as we can see simultaneously 3 different groups of prisoners escaping and a policeman talking on his car radio! You never saw that in Lord of the Rings! Harris escapes with Weed (Michael Stearns) as most of the other prisoners are outwitted by the savvy folks of North Georgia.
They duo makes it to Harris' gf house where Ann (Linda York) abets them. Linda revives her role as a rape victim (Casting Call).
The plot which wasn't that good to begin with turns south in a hurry to an abrupt ending.
Nudity, sex, rape and the rape scenes were a bit lame by 70's standards. -
The DVD produced by Rhino doesn't show many, and very hot, sex scenes that can be found on "Nuovo Bigfilm" n.18, an Italian magazine of the early 70s which published transpositions on paper of (s)exploitation movies.
For instance, during the Weed's rape of Harris' girlfriend, the DVD entirely cuts from the point when the man undresses the girl, to the point when the rape has finished and Weed covers himself with a towel. The Italian magazine shows many photos of the very hot scenes between these two points, during the brutal rape. Even the other sex scenes performed by the old man and his wife, or by the wife herself and Harris, are by far hotter in the magazine than on the DVD.
Probably that's why the user comments above express a sort of delusion. -
Coventry2 May 2018Theoretically speaking, nothing should be simpler and more straightforward than (s)exploitation movies from the 1970s! The title should pretty much summarize the entire plot and furthermore there should only be a lot of sleaze, violence, naked women and filthy male pigs. Show the movie poster of "Chain Gang Women" to 100 neutral persons, and at least 99 of them will estimate that it's a by-the-numbers "Women in Prison" (WIP) grindhouse/exploitation effort. But this is where Lee Frost and Wes Bishop fooled us all! "Chain Gang Woman" is NOT a 'women in prison' flick. Heck, it's not even a regular prison thriller but a sort of dreadfully boring prison musical! The seemingly never-ending first half of the film exists of nothing but footage of male prisoners working in the middle of Georgia nowhere to the sound of dire country music songs. Eventually there's an outbreak, but don't start hoping for any action or rancid sleaze just yet. There are only 2 (TWO!) women in this dumb movie and sadly they confirm all the ghastly rape fantasy cliches. None of the male protagonists has any macho charisma, neither of the females has any sex-appeal and the entire film is boring, boring, boring... There are literally hundreds of worthwhile 70s exploitation classics out there, and numerous of them actually feature the stuff that you expected to see in "Chain Gang Women", so please don't waste your precious time on this dreck.
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Whiny, mellow dope dealer Harris (runty Robert Lott) and moody, scruffy murderer Weed (burly Michael Stearns) are a couple of dangerous no-count criminals. The pernicious pair escapes from a chain gang and go on the lam. Director Lee Frost, who also co-wrote the harsh script, did the fairly polished cinematography (the rousing break out sequence makes inspired use of split screen and freeze frames), and even co-edited the picture, crams a reasonable amount of gratuitous nudity, soft-core sex and raw violence into the flick to ensure that devout grindhouse sleaze movie fans will get their grubby money's worth. In addition, Frost keeps the pace suitably brisk throughout and effectively develops a fiercely hard'n'gritty tone. Porter Jordan's fantastic s**t-kicking hillbilly bluegrass score certainly hits the stirring and spirited spot; the bluesy theme song in particular rates as an absolute hoot. Popping up in nifty secondary roles are Linda York as Harris' lovely, loyal girlfriend Ann, Wes Bishop as trouble-making con Coleman, Bruce Kimball as tubby prison guard Fat Sam, Phil Hoover as a volatile racist Gentry, Ralph Campbell as an ornery farmer, and Barbara Mills as the farmer's lusty, unhappy young wife. Nice downbeat ending, too.
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natt-213 February 2009I was quite surprised by this film. Even if the acting at times is painfully bad, the twists and turning in the story kept me entertained for the full duration of the film.
I especially liked the surprise ending. That Weeds was going to die felt apparent, but I did not expect the "hero" to go down with him and even off-screen at that.
The story about the unwilling wife and the old husband came as a surprise as well.
Overall, an entertaining movie of a kind that is no longer made.
The only thing I was disturbed by was the lameness of the violence and sex scenes, they were very cut, looking almost like an episode of Dallas'(had kind of the same feeling to it as well). -
catfish-er19 June 2009I watched CHAIN GANG WOMEN as part of BCI Eclipse' Drive-in Cult Classics (featuring Crown International Pictures releases) on DVD.
From other comments, I'm sure this is the same digital transfer as from Rhino. As such, there is not much to get excited about here. And, as others noted, the title is very misleading.
*** SPOILER ALERT, this is the entire premise of the movie ***
Boy meets boy in jail. Boys escape; and, boy meets girl.
Other boy rapes girl; boys leave girl.
Boys find other girl; other boy rapes girl.
Girl seduces boy. Husband kills both boys.
Girl is miserable.
WHAT A STINKER -- though I did like that quad screen effect too.
The music was okay; but, it got on my nerves at the end. -
A dull 'home invasion' type thriller from Crown International Pictures. The film has nothing to do with the exploitative title, which makes it sound like one of those Filipino women-in-prison movies starring Pam Grier. Instead, it's a stodgy, slow moving tale about a couple of escaped convicts who take some women prisoner in their own homes.
It has much in common with the film WILD RIDERS, although it's nowhere near as sleazy in feel. In fact, it's rather dull and tame, and has little nudity. The actual jailbreak scene takes half a film to happen, and the resulting home invasion thrills are very diluted and lacklustre. As is so often the case from this era, the film only really gets going at the very end. Production values are sub-par, the acting is non-existent, and the film as a whole is a chore to sit through. Much like a lot of Crown's output, then. -
wznote9 December 2003If you're looking for campy, low quality 60's or 70's movies, you came to the right place. Corny dialogue, dorky jokes and all the built-in amusement the time period naturally provides. This is one of my favorite bad movies ever.