Laura Gemser was a big star in the sexploitation realm, but we’re still searching for a movie of hers that was actually good. Emanuelle in America was okay. So was La via della prostituzione, aka Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade. All the others we’ve seen have been calamities, if imaginative ones. In Violenza in un carcere femminile, seventh in Gemser’s Black Emanuelle series and known in English as Violence in a Women’s Prison or sometimes Caged Women, she’s sent to an Italian prison named Santa Catarina for prostitution, drug trafficking, and attempted murder.
Gemser is usually an undercover reporter in these films, playing a character named Emanuelle Sturman (yes, she has a last name). In this case she’s been sent by Amnesty International to expose corruption and cruelty in the prison. While there are numerous set pieces both humiliating and titillating throughout the movie, there isn’t much actual plot. Gemser gathers plenty of evidence but is of course stuck behind bars, degraded, beaten, solitarily confined, raped, gnawed on by red-eyed rats, beaten again, placed in a resonating bell torture device, drugged, and sent to swing a pickaxe at the stony earth. Geez, being an undercover reporter is hard. But she’s also made sweet love to, so at least there’s that.
Gemser is eventually assisted in her escape from hell by prison doctor Gabriele Tinti. No spoiler there. The Emanuelle series wasn’t over yet, so freedom was in the cards. Is Violenza in un carcere femminile the good Emanuelle movie we were searching for? Hah hah—it’s awful. We recommend giving it a wide berth. By the way, don’t get it confused with 1983’s Blade Violent – I violenti. The latter was filmed at the same time using the same sets, costumes, and performers, but it’s a different movie—barely. Violenza in un carcere femminile premiered in Italy today in 1982.
