Oddball mixture of women-in-prison, zombie, and kung-fu genre elements has Tony Todd starring as an executed psychopath who murdered and raped women before his death by lethal injection. Todd's name is Shadow and his blood is powerful due to a successful ritual which equipped him with superhuman capabilities. When a riot breaks out after Shadow's body explodes(!), during the process of his execution, the prisoners are gunned down by a prison warden's guards. They are buried in a pit on the grounds of the prison along with Shadow's remains, to be forgotten.
20 years later, the prison is a women's reformatory, built as a sort of rehabilitation center for female criminals to help them recover from their past mistakes which brought them to their current situation. A new prisoner is entering the institution, her name Solitaire(Clare Green), a tough young woman with amazing martial arts fighting skills..which she'll need in order to combat a nasty, muscular felon named Mondo who commands an authoritative, intimidating presence among the other inmates, afraid of her because she's stronger and bigger than they are.
The prison's doctor has a vial of Shadow's blood and begins injecting Solitaire with it, hoping the powerful properties will prove that it is a source of eternal life. Meanwhile, Shadow's remains will be resurrected when an inmate(Misti Mundae, AKA, Erin Brown), attempting to escape, snaps her ankle, bleeding into the ground which represents his burial place. Not only will Shadow rise from the earth, but so will the dead inmates buried along with him. Shadow will confront and attempt to destroy Solitaire, the one he sought after when he killed her mother many years ago.
Director Derek Wan is mostly concerned with showing bodies hurled in the air and up against walls with brute force. Solitaire has the uncanny ability to withstand brutal punishment which would paralyze most people, but the excuse for this is Shadow's blood which courses through her veins. Included are the sleazy head of security, Elsa Thorne(Andrea Langi), a lesbian who offers certain inmates privileges as long as they service her sexual needs, and the usual naked showers. Tatianna Butler is Mondo, one of the major antagonists which Solitaire must contend with, although our heroine gets the best of her every time. Michael Quinlan is the other antagonist, Dr. Swann, who actually injects the newborn baby of an inmate, Emily(Cat Miller), with Shadow's blood turning the infant into a bloodthirsty monster reminiscent to the creature in IT'S ALIVE. Swann wants to test Shadow's blood on others before using it on himself. He also supplies a junkie inmate with pills in exchange for sexual favors. But Todd and Greene own this movie as villain and heroine respectively. They have not one but two showdowns and there's plenty of wire-fu where poor Greene gets tossed around, not without getting her licks in. Misty Mundae has a minor role as one of those abused inmates who Mondo mistreats..and, yes, she does get naked on occasion, but leaves the film far too soon. Nina Hodoruk is the warden who desperately wants to rehabilitate and help her prisoners, deeply worried about the occurrences which threaten her institution. You get plenty of zombie carnage at the end, when the female prisoners must ward off(mostly unsuccessfully)the undead awakened by Shadow's blood. Todd makes his appearance in the beginning and end of the film, showing up in flashback when past incidents pop up in Solitaire's mind after she touches a ritualistic symbol carved in the floor of a solitary prison cell she's confined to for fighting with Mondo. Most of the effects are small scale which is probably why Wan edits violent scenes with the gore fast as to not dwell too long on them. The ending involving a special knife and the mark on Shadow's hand makes no sense at all.
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