Chained Heat is a 1983 American-West German women-in-prison Exploitation Film.
Naive teenager Carol Henderson (Linda Blair) is sentenced to serve 18 months in a California women's prison for accidentally killing a man in a vehicular manslaughter. The prison's leadership is corrupt: Warden Backman (John Vernon) has a hot tub in his office; his assistant, Captain Taylor (Stella Stevens) controls the prostitution in the prison, and to make the matters worse, the prison's population is split between the white prisoners, led by Ericka (Sybil Danning), and the black prisoners, led by Duchess (Tamara Dobson). Eventually the administration pushes the prisoners too far and they drop their race-based feuding to revolt against their common enemy.
The film was followed in 1993 by Chained Heat 2, starring Brigitte Nielsen, and in 1998 by Chained Heat 3: Hell Mountain, but both films bear little to no relation to the first film.
This film features examples of:
- The Aggressive Drug Dealer: The prisoners who are drug dealers push their stuff aggressively.
- Cat Fight: Several of the female inmates get into several cat fights with each other.
- Exploitation Film: A Girls Behind Bars film that takes every chance it gets of showing naked or topless women - and there were plenty of those.
- Girls Behind Bars: The depiction of the women's prison is a classic male fantasy, with beautiful, scantily-clad inmates, and lots of openly lesbian and sadistic inmates and staff.
- Hellhole Prison: The prison Carol is sent in. It has everything: Prostitution, drug-dealing, aggressive prisoners, aggressive jailers…
- Ms. Fanservice: The female inmates provide lots of fanservice. They are all very good-looking and spend nearly the entire film in very skimpy prison wear.
- Naïve Newcomer: Carol is clearly out of her depth in the violent prison.
- Psycho Lesbian: Some of the female prisoners are lesbians who are rapists and drug dealers.
- Shower Scene: There's the obligatory scene in Girls Behind Bars films of the female inmates having to shower, shot with loving attention to detail.
- Wardens Are Evil: Warden Backman, who takes advantage of the prison's prostitution ring (led by his right-hand woman), even having a hot tub in his office.
