The Big Doll House is a 1971 film directed by Jack Hill.
It's a women-in-prison movie set in some vaguely tropical location in vaguely Southeast Asia (the film was shot in the Philippines). New fish Collier is thrown into prison for killing her husband. She is cast in a six-woman cell that includes Grear (Pam Grier), Harrad, Alcott, Ferina, and Bodine. Harrad is Grear's girlfriend as well as a heroin addict, while Bodine is a political prisoner and lover of "Rafael", a guerrilla fighter on the outside.
The prison is run by Warden Dietrich, who projects an aura of reasonableness, but the head guard, a woman named Lucian, is a vicious sadist. Eventually, the women decide to escape.
Film debut of Pam Grier (not counting her appearance as an extra in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls). Followed by a Spiritual Sequel or quasi-remake, The Big Bird Cage, which also starred Pam Grier.
See also The Bamboo House of Dolls, a remake from Shaw Brothers released two years later.
Tropes:
- Banana Republic: A sign over the prison gate apparently names the country as "Rizal". There's no further mention of even the name of the country or where it's supposed to be, but the background characters are all Filipinos. Bodine, who's the lover of a revolutionary, actually calls the country a "banana republic".
- Big Bad: Miss Dietrich, the seemingly-kindly warden, turns out to be facilitating the corruption and torture going on.
- Butch Lesbian: Lucien wears her hair in a severely pulled-back style, coding her as a mean and vicious Butch Lesbian.
- Captain Smooth and Sergeant Rough: Warden Dietrich is the Captain Smooth, saying that cruelty will not be tolerated at her prison and listening politely to complaints from prisoners or from Dr. Phillips, the sympathetic prison doctor. Lucien the guard, however, is a brutal sociopath who delights in torturing any prisoner that falls into her clutches.
- Cat Fight: Not just a cat fight but a mud-wrestling cat fight, as a brawl between Alcott and Grear ends with the two of them plunging into a muddy rice paddy and rolling around as their already skimpy clothing gets pulled askew. (Somewhat improbably, the short and slender Alcott winds up pinning tall, statuesque Grear.)
- Cold-Blooded Torture: Lucien is a sadistic torturer. She flogs Bodine in an ultimately futile effort to get Bodine to reveal the location of Rafael's hideout. She also practices Electric Torture. At the end when she's trying to get Collier to reveal the details of the breakout, she lowers a cobra down from the ceiling.
- Crapsack World: The unnamed country the film takes place in is a dictatorship on the brink of a civil war. Anybody can be thrown in prison for knowing too much, killing one of the upper class in self-defense or even knowing a rebel. The prisons themselves are hellholes full of hard labour and torture, where the guards can basically do whatever they want to the inmates and corruption is practiced openly.
- Does Not Like Men: It's not like Grear doesn't have reason to think this way, having been a prostitute who was thrown into prison for knowing too much. But after Harry tricks her into letting him feel her up, she snaps and goes on a rant.Grear: You're rotten, Harry! You know why? 'Cos you're a man! All men are filthy. All they ever want to do is to get at you. For a long time I let them get at me. That's why I'm in this dump! But no more! You hear me? I'm not going to let a man's filthy hands touch me again!
- Downer Ending: Everybody except Collier is killed in the prison break and ensuing shootout. Bodine gives Collier a letter to her lover on the outside and makes her promise to deliver it. She narrowly escapes the carnage, only to be picked up by a guard who takes her right back to prison.
- Dramatic Gun Cock: Bodine dramatically racks the action on an assault weapon as the women make their escape.
- Dramatic Unmask: Lucien's torture sessions are observed by a mysterious hooded figure. When Collier is rescued from the torture chamber as the women are making their escape, they rip off the mask from the mystery person, who is revealed to be Warden Dietrich.
- Food Fight: An argument at chow between a couple of our heroines ends in an all-out food fight between everyone in the mess hall.
- Girls Behind Bars: Although this trope dates back in Unbuilt Trope form at least as far as 1950 and Caged, this film is probably the real Trope Maker for the women-in-prison subgenre of Exploitation Film, with all the lesbianism and Fanservice nudity that one would expect.
- Godiva Hair: For a women-in-prison movie this film is oddly coy about nudity in many scenes, like in the scene where Lucien is whipping Bodine, with Bodine's long hair carefully staged over her breasts.
- Guns Akimbo: Instead of going back to jail, Bodine has a Defiant to the End exit where she picks up a machine gun in each arm and attacks the guards, taking quite a few of them out before she's eventually shot down.
- Hellhole Prison: The prison is a cruel and nightmarish place where sadistic guards regularly torture the inmates, sometimes to death.
- Letting Her Hair Down: Rather disturbingly, Lucien the guard, who usually wears her hair pinned back in a Butch Lesbian bun, always lets it down right before torturing a prisoner.
- Mortal Wound Reveal: Even before the guards show up, Bodine has realized she's not going to make it, writing a farewell letter to Rafael and dramatically revealing to Collier what is apparently supposed to be a mortal wound. (It's kind of ambigious, since the wound appears to be in her armpit.)
- Naïve Newcomer: Collier is thrown into prison, which provides a means of introducing the setting and all the other characters, as she in turn meets Lucien for the Shameful Strip, Dr. Phillips for the exam, and all the other characters when she's put in their cell.
- Off-into-the-Distance Ending: The last shot is poor Collier in a jeep as she's being driven off into the distance, back to jail.
- The Place: The Big Doll House.
- Shameful Strip: The tone of the film is set when Collier has to strip and submit to a body cavity search from sadistic Lucien, as she's arriving in prison.
- Shower Scene: Well naturally there's a shower scene in which all the women, their hair carefully styled, get clean. Collier makes an overt lesbian offer when she tries to wash Alcott's back, but Alcott rejects her.
- Sudden Downer Ending: Bodine and Alcott go down fighting, in a shootout with the guards, but Collier makes her escape, with Bodine's farewell letter to Rafael. She makes it through the ring of guards, runs through the jungle, and finds a road. She puts out her thumb, and a jeep driver stops to pick her up. The driver asks her where she's going and she says "Wherever you're going!". Then we hear the following line of dialogue from the driver, which is the last line in the movie:"I'm glad to hear you say that, Miss Collier, because I'm taking you straight back to prison. We've been looking for you all day."
- A Taste of the Lash: Lucien whips Bodine as part of her Cold-Blooded Torture.
- Title Drop: Bodine, plotting an escape, says "And who's the main support in this big doll house?"
- Unusual Euphemism: Fred the scuzzball is telling his partner and fellow scuzzball Harry that he, Fred, anticipates that he will get a lot of action from all the horny female prisoners. He says that there are usually too many guards around, but "One of these days, zap!". When Harry asks what the heck "zap" means, Fred says "Zap! R-A-P-E, zap!". (He further clarifies that he expects one of the women to rape him.)
- Voiceover Letter: Near the end there's a voiceover letter in which a mortally wounded Bodine writes her final goodbye to Rafael.
- Wardens Are Evil: Dietrich acts reasonable and fair, until the Dramatic Unmask reveals her to be just as much a vicious, evil sociopath as Lucien is.
