THE BIG BUST-OUT (1973) ***

Convicts in a hellhole women’s prison (are there any other kind?) are subjected to abuse by horny, lecherous matrons who punish them, strip them bare, and give them body cavity searches.  The prisoners are given work release at a nearby convent where the nuns look over the “poor lost souls”.  The convent also has sheiks as armed guards (?) who the girls seduce and knock unconscious in order to perform their big bust-out.  Sister Maria (Monica Teuber) feels like they’ll need some guidance during their prison break, so she tags along with the prisoners who flee the convent disguised as nuns!  They shack up with a badass (Vonetta McGee) for a time, but her boyfriend sells the whole lot to a white slaver (Gordon Mitchell)!  When the boat captain (Tony Kendall) refuses to run girls on his boat, he blows up the dock and takes off with the convicts in tow.  

(All of this takes place in the first twenty minutes, by the way.)

This Italian-German co-production is a mix of Women in Prison, Nunsploitation, and drive-in action.  It opens up like your typical sleazy WIP movie before turning into a sort of ‘70s sexploitation version of Girls Town.  I guess you could say the plot is choppy, but it moves like lightning, so who cares, especially when it’s full of women taking showers, skinny-dipping, getting into fistfights and shootouts, and being stripped down and whipped by little people.  Because it’s all over the place, it often feels like a smorgasbord of exploitation cliches in search of a plot.  However, it never stays on one subgenre too long, which makes it perfect for late-night viewing.  

Director Ernst Ritter (Jungle Warriors) von Theumer doesn’t have much in the way of style, but he knows how to keep the movie going.  It certainly isn’t boring and von Theumer is never shy about pouring on the sleazy cliches.   In fact, it’s probably less successful once it settles down from all the genre-hopping and becomes a desert action movie in the third act.  Still, the scant seventy-minute running time coupled with the breakneck pace of the first forty-five minutes or so makes this well worth a watch for connoisseurs of Women in Prison flicks.

AKA:  Crucified Girls of San Ramon.  AKA:  3 Bastards and 7 Sins.