A few years before the Arnold S. / Jim Belushi team up action movie Red Heat, Linda Blair made yet another prison flick under that same title. As these exercises go it wasn't bad. The look of the picture is very Eastern Bloc - lots of dimly lit concrete corridors and depressing gray uniforms - and pretty realistic. The tone is one of grim Cold War authoritarianism. East Germany is made to look like just about the least welcoming place on earth, which it pretty much was. Plus, the script is a bit more literate, more realistic, less exploitative and more politically aware than what we usually get in one of these women-in- prison flicks. The resulting movie is a little better but a lot less fun to watch than the typical women-behind-bars (WBB) flick.
And honestly, just who exactly wants a more realistic, less exploitative WBB? Most of these movies are chock full of exploitative silliness and don't take themselves very seriously, which makes for a fun / campy viewing experience. Chained Heat, for instance, is objectively a pretty terrible movie but is a lot of fun to watch, mostly because it IS so exploitative and silly. Red Heat by comparison, is more convincingly realistic than Chained Heat, but also relentlessly grim and more than a little tedious as its unpleasant tourist-in-hell story line slowly works it way along.
And honestly, just who exactly wants a more realistic, less exploitative WBB? Most of these movies are chock full of exploitative silliness and don't take themselves very seriously, which makes for a fun / campy viewing experience. Chained Heat, for instance, is objectively a pretty terrible movie but is a lot of fun to watch, mostly because it IS so exploitative and silly. Red Heat by comparison, is more convincingly realistic than Chained Heat, but also relentlessly grim and more than a little tedious as its unpleasant tourist-in-hell story line slowly works it way along.