REFORM SCHOOL GIRLS

(director/writer: Tom DeSimone; cinematographer: Howard Wexler; editor: Michael Spence; music: Tedra Gabriel; cast: Linda Carol (Jenny), Wendy O. Williams (Charlie Chambliss ) Pat Ast (Edna), Sherri Stoner), Pat Ast (Edna), Sybil Danning (Warden Sutter), Charlotte McGinnis (Dr. Norton), Sherri Stoner (Lisa); Runtime: 94; MPAA Rating: R; producer: Jack Cummins; New World; 1986)

“Good for a few laughs.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Tom DeSimone(“Hell Night”/”Concrete Jungle”/”Chatterbox”) directs and writes this trashy spoof women’s prison pic, that strives for cult status and to be as unreal as possible. A viewer can enjoy it for being so badass, gratuitously sexy, and its stupid dialogue. Whatever, it’s good for a few laughs. It shows one bosomy inmate Charlie Chambliss (Wendy O. Williams, lead singer for the Plasmatics) wearing black leather undies and into taking long showers with other female inmates.

The nice but disobedient teenage girl Jenny (Linda Caro) is caught helping her boyfriend rob a convenience store and ends up at Pridemore Juvenile Facilities. The unsympathetic woman warden (Sybil Dannings) is fond of quoting from the Bible and giving the inmates a rough time while toting a rifle. The leather-clad lesbian inmate Charlie greets all new prison arrivals with intimidation, and is intent on giving Jenny a hard time. Backed-up by her jailhouse gang, the Death Rockers, their abuse of the angel-faced Jenny, committed to blowing the whistle on prison corruption, doesn’t work. When the next new arrival, the weak parental abuse vic, Lisa (Sherri Stoner), is intimated by the gang, Jenny comes to her aid.

Pat Ast plays the fatty perverse head matron, and along with Williams the two make for amusing heavies. Charlotte McGinnis plays the sincere prison psychiatrist, who tries to help the vulnerable Lisa.

No original characters here, each is a caricature from other women-behind-bars pictures.

REVIEWED ON 2/6/2016 GRADE: B-