Thanks to TCM, I am acquainting myself with this little gem. I was actually stopped in my tracks while channel-hopping by the sight of what I thought was Olivia de Havilland having a very bad hair day. This was our main character and the resemblance with Olivia was only accidental. No self-respecting actress would have compromised herself in those monumental, gravity-defying hair-dos and with such a bad script. The story is convoluted, improbable and totally lacking in logic, as shocking, "daring" and exploitative as it strives to be. The acting is really, really bad with most of the actors lacking direction and not knowing what to do with their body parts except squaring their shoulders, leaning on things, scowling, acting gruff, walking in and walking out of "rooms" and lighting a cigarette or cigar that the editing can't seem to keep track of. The wall-to-wall stock music is especially turgid and repulsive and conspires to deprive every single scene of what little dignity it has left. It gives new meaning to the word "melodrama": a generic Spanish bolero accompanies the bitching of female inmates sitting around a prison parlour; a pointless bit of business in a laboratory is helped along with a depressing vaguely Hungarian "valse triste", and so on. Still, the film is ahead of its time in many ways, and one would have to wait nearly 12 years to see such wooden acting, narrative incompetence and low production values at the service of a pointless storyline again in the films of Ed Wood and Jean-Luc Godard. And with original scripts being what they are in Hollywood these days, this film is probably scheduled for a CGI-augmented remake starring Bruce Willis.
Review of Girls in Chains
