I watched this back-to-back with Horror Hospital. It seems Brits in the '70s had a thing for movies in which young people are locked up and punished for the indulgent swinging hippie lifestyles the media loved to portray them all as having.
The movie begins with a tongue in cheek dedication to those who wish for the return of capital and corporal punishment. The movie then gives you a bunch of such people as the bad guys - a retired judge and his underlings who believe the law has become too lax and as such seek to deliver their own brand of ultra-right wing justice, along the lines of flogging and death by hanging for crimes as slight as a model being photographed in the nude.
For a Pete Walker-helmed exploitation shocker, there is actually a lack of nudity or full-on violence; most of the movie shows the plight of the young girl who is abducted and forced to live in the demented Judge's makeshift prison. We never really get to know or care about her or any of the other characters - this is an exploitation movie, after all. But then again, there's barely any exploitation either. The movie is therefore not entertaining and hard to sit through. The performances of the bad guys are certainly chillingly effective, but the same can't be said for those on the side of good. That doesn't leave us with much to work with. Perhaps those tired of the drivel in the '70s papers from moral crusaders like Mary Whitehouse (parodied in this movie as, who else? one of the bad guys) found their point of view nicely summed up in this simple tale, but modern viewers might wonder what the point is.
The movie begins with a tongue in cheek dedication to those who wish for the return of capital and corporal punishment. The movie then gives you a bunch of such people as the bad guys - a retired judge and his underlings who believe the law has become too lax and as such seek to deliver their own brand of ultra-right wing justice, along the lines of flogging and death by hanging for crimes as slight as a model being photographed in the nude.
For a Pete Walker-helmed exploitation shocker, there is actually a lack of nudity or full-on violence; most of the movie shows the plight of the young girl who is abducted and forced to live in the demented Judge's makeshift prison. We never really get to know or care about her or any of the other characters - this is an exploitation movie, after all. But then again, there's barely any exploitation either. The movie is therefore not entertaining and hard to sit through. The performances of the bad guys are certainly chillingly effective, but the same can't be said for those on the side of good. That doesn't leave us with much to work with. Perhaps those tired of the drivel in the '70s papers from moral crusaders like Mary Whitehouse (parodied in this movie as, who else? one of the bad guys) found their point of view nicely summed up in this simple tale, but modern viewers might wonder what the point is.