Strong and Moving!

Did you people see the same film I saw?

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

One would think that putting Linda Blair (from "Chained Heat") and Sylvia Kristol (from "Emmanuelle") together in a women-in-prison flick would equal a great movie, or at least an entertaining heap of rubbish. Alas, no such luck. Blair plays the wrongfully-accused innocent well enough, and Kristol puts in a convincing performance as the prison's top bully, but both performances lack the necessary nuances - the good girl has to have an inner reserve of strength to help her survive the harsh prison, while the bully must occasionally show a seductive side. Absent those elements, what you get is an hour or so in which Kristol snarls and glowers and Blair whines. Even the obligatory cat-fight is botched, thanks to extremely poor lighting and ridiculously incompetent editing - apparently, someone believed that the spectacle of Blair and Kristol beating the crap out of each other was the LAST thing that anyone wanted to see.Of course, "Red Heat" has a bigger problem than the under-exploitation of its two main attractions: it's dreary as hell. There's the obligatory shower scenes and the lesbianism, but far more attention is paid to the less exciting indignities of life in an East German prison. True, it's more realistic, but does anyone really go to a women-in-prison movie to see realism?

Linda Blair is behind bars again! This time in ultra-communistic, ultra-fascist East Germany (if you thought the Cold War had died down in the mid-80s, films like this and "Rambo II" make you re-think your position). She gives an earnest performance in this (plus she has one terrific topless scene), and Sylvia Kristel makes a convincing "top bi*ch". The film has moments of artistry (Blair's voice-over reading of her letter, which stops when the warden throws it away), and the feeling of grim hopelessness inside the prison is well-portrayed. But there are some pretty boring parts too, mostly in the first and last 20 minutes. The long-awaited fight between Blair and Kristel is also a disappointment, because it takes place in near-complete darkness and the director keeps interrupting it with less interesting action footage. Footnote: avoid the Region 2 DVD version, it is cut in several places. ** out of 4.

Women-in-prison flick involving an innocent American tourist in West Germany who is mistaken for a spy, grilled until exhaustion sets in, and sent to jail without a word to her soldier-fiancé. After publicly nixing her hit "Chained Heat" on just about every talk show of the 1980s, it's amazing that star Linda Blair would even think of doing another jailhouse underachiever. This one, filmed in chilly blues and grays, is just as seedy and depressing. The roster comes complete with a decadently lascivious guard (gaunt, kinky Sylvia Kristel), a terrified blonde, a friendly butch, and lots of malicious broads. Blair manages (somehow) to keep her dignity and has a few strong scenes, including being interrogated and collapsing under pressure or standing up to the review board with a firm "F*** you!" The direction is fairly tight, and the movie is engrossing almost in spite of itself. *1/2 from ****

Not quite, but close! Linda Blair has proved again and again that she shares a rare quality with Mark Hamill, the ability to attach herself to one cinematic landmark and follow it with an entire career of complete trash. I saw RED HEAT on TV when I was about 11. Perhaps I was too young to understand this film's more basic appeal at that time, what I did get from it was that women in prison do crazy things to each other. Was there a plot beyond that? I'm not sure. There's something about an escape attempt but it isn't very clear. RED HEAT can really be best described as crap. It doesn't even succeed at that fun/pathetic B-movie level. The picture is alternately boring and confusing. The ending is about as clear as a muddy ditch and a lot less satisfying. I'd comment on Blair's performance if she'd actually given one. RED HEAT is a forgettable, exploitive little thing that should have been made by someone who understood the genre. I give it no stars.