JAILHOUSE GIRLS (1984) ** ½

Ginger Lynn desperately wants to be a fashion model, but pays the bills working the front desk at a sleazy motel.  Unbeknownst to her, prostitutes operate out of the rooms, and when the cops raid the place, they haul the innocent Ginger off to jail.  Once there, the sleazy guards and horny warden (played by Paul Thomas) all want to fuck Ginger (and who can blame them).  Eventually, Ginger says enough is enough and begins to plot her escape.

Director Henri Pachard’s Jailhouse Girls is mostly entertaining, although discerning fans of the Women in Prison may be left a little cold.  Sure, it’s full of all the usual Women in Prison clichés, such as prisoners being subjected to strip searches, delousing, and showers, all with the added allure of hardcore penetration.  However, many of the scenes of the guards and/or warden using the prisoners for their own sick desires aren’t depraved as they could’ve been (like when Thomas takes problem prisoners to “The Tower” to be fucked by the matron while he watches) as it sorely lacks the sleaze you’d hope to see in your typical (softcore) WIP movie.  Then again, it’s hardcore, so there’s that. 

Despite being a XXX picture, the scenes themselves vary in steaminess.  While the majority of the sex scenes are tepid, the sequence where Ginger and Raven partake in some saucy scissoring is a real scorcher.  The scene where Joey Silvera bangs Ginger on the bus on the way to prison is pretty decent too and Taija Rae makes a memorable impression in her all-too brief cheerleader themed scene.  

In the end, Jailhouse Girls stops short of being a great Women in Prison movie, mostly because of its unwillingness to push the envelope.  It’s almost as if Pachard thought having the hardcore was enough.  As a XXX flick, it probably has too much plot that gets in the way of the action.  Not to mention the fact that it probably needed one more scene equal to the Ginger/Raven sequence to make it a breakout success.