United States

The Place: Connorville, an American Women's Prison. The Time: Now. Petty criminal Wilson (ERICA GAVIN), apprehended when her male companion is shot by police, is sentenced and thrown into the penal hell of Connorville, a maximum security prison/work camp where the female inmates are torn by frustrated sexual desires and tormented by the cruel injustices of the System as personified by McQueen (BARBARA STEELE), the warden-a voluptuous cripple whose affliction has twisted her mind to the point that she runs her prison like a virtual concentration camp. Aiding her campaign to turn the inmates' existences into indi- vidual living hells is Randolph (WARREN MILLER), the unscrup- ulous (to say the least) prison doctor who delights in performing "Corrective Physical Therapy" on troublesome inmates, an unorthodox brain operation which leaves its victims mindless vegetables, easy prey to the doctor's warped sexual proclivities. Wilson makes a fast enemy of Maggie (JUANITA BROWN), a haughty black girl who engages her in a violent brawl in the showers, to the screeching delight of their stir-crazed onlookers. When Pandora (ELLA REID), another black girl, is tossed nude into solitary confinement on trumped-up charges, her friend Belle (ROBERTA COLLINS) risks the same fate to crawl through a vent in the shower room and deliver stolen food to Pandora. Unfortunately, Belle is found out when she accidentally kills an elderly prison employee while stealing food, and is dragged kicking and screaming off to the "clinic." Several girls join Maggie in an escape attempt, but only Wilson makes it with her to safety in a truck located in the grove where prisoners break their backs picking fruit all day while trying to avoid the amorous, overweight male guards. Escaping the guard's gunfire, the girls discover an unexpected common bond and become friends. They 'liberate" Wilson's friend Crazy (LYNDA GOLD) from her physical labors in a massage parlor in a wild fracas with a disgruntled customer who turns out to be an off- duty cop. To pass the time, the trio decide to rob a bank, their plan almost backfiring when they find a robbery already under- way inside the bank. Ingenuously they get the drop on the male bandits and force them into a gun battle with police while the girls get away with all the loot. In a show of spectacular loyalty the girls decide to break back into prison and help their friends escape, which they accomplish by hijacking a prison vanywith which they gain access. The doctor is a flick of the wrist away from making the fatal incision into Belle's skull when the girls break in and take both the doctor and McQueen hostage. The entire prison police force is mobilized but the girls fearlessly blast their way to freedom as McQueen and the doctor die as they lived, killed by the bullets of their own corrupt Establishment forces.