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The Grindhouse Revisited

Chained Heat

Paul NICHOLAS

USA / Germany1983 95min 35mm Color Korean Premiere

Synopsis

Carol (Linda BLAIR), after accidentally killing a man, is serving time in prison. For this paragon of "good girl," "proper upbringing," the lock-up is nothing but hell unleashed. The inmates have their own power structure, lesbian sexual violence, and constant #999999 vs. white racial tension. Ericka (leader of white group) is framed for the murder of Warden (corrupt warden), who was killed by TAYLOR (drug-smuggling female guard), amidst the growing tension between the two prison employees over drug trafficking. To save Ericka, all the inmates now join forces to plan a massive revolt. Chained Heat is your typical "women in prison" fare, which comprises grindhouse genre movies along with no-class action splatter horror and European yellow cinema. This particular sub-genre was hugely popular from the 1970s, as represented by Jack HILL's The Big Doll House (1971) and Don EDMONDS' Ilsa: She Wolf Of The SS (1975), until the '80s, when Linda BLAIR (The Exorcist) became the queen of grindhouse films. (Jin PARK)

Diretor

Paul NICHOLAS

Paul NICHOLAS has existed in the shadows of exploitation cinema for the last three decades, providing us with films that range from the quietly seedy to women-in-prison blowouts. Though he's only managed to release two or three films per decade, his work is reliably and uniquely haunting.