Black Emanuelle goes to prison for Bruno Mattei to experience VIOLENCE IN A WOMEN'S PRISON, on Blu-ray from Severin Films.

Among the prisoners being transported to the Santa Catarina Women's Prison for prostitutes, drug pushers, and murderesses is ballsy returning offender Kitty (Maria Romano, THOR THE CONQUEROR), fearful Consuelo (Ursula Flores), and last minute additional Laura (Laura Gemser, EMANUELLE IN AMERICA), a prostitute who murdered her pimp. While Kitty renews her rivalry with butch Hertha (Françoise Perrot, EROTIC FLASH) who has a new bitch in Malone (Antonella Giacomini, LADY OF THE NIGHT), Laura's cellmate is old lifer Pilar (Leila Durante, CALLING ALL POLICE CARS) who warns her to mind her own business and that breaking the rules is not worth the cost. Since Laura is actually reporter Emanuelle doing a private exposé of prison corruption, she does break the rules and winds up in solitary where she is attacked by rats. Emanuelle can only trust Pilar and Moran (Gabriele Tinti, LISA AND THE DEVIL), the prison's doctor who is an inmate himself for the mercy killing of his sick wife, who submits himself to the perverted desires of the Head Warden (Lorraine de Selle, CANNIBAL FEROX) for Emanuelle's safety. When the warden and the Chief Inspector (Jacques Stany, OASIS OF FEAR) of the men's side of the prison receive word that Amnesty International is trying to expose corruption and inhumane treatment in the prisons, they torture Emanuelle into revealing her identity and then decide they must silence her before the truth of their own dealings comes out.

Also known as CAGED WOMEN and EMANUELLE IN PRISON, VIOLENCE IN A WOMEN'S PRISON was filmed back-to-back with BLADE VIOLENT – released stateside as WOMEN'S PRISON MASSACRE – by the great Bruno Mattei (HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD) with the collaboration of Claudio Fragasso (TROLL 2) after their previous success dividing directorial duties with the back-to-back productions of THE TRUE STORY OF THE NUN OF MONZA and THE OTHER HELL. Neither as erotic as the Black Emanuelle films or as truly sleazy as the likes of Mattei's EMANUELLE'S REVENGE, VIOLENCE IN A WOMEN'S PRISON hits the notes of its overly-familiar narrative efficiently with leads Gemser, Tinti, de Selle, and Stany all rather bland compared to the more entertaining supporting characters: from Perrot's lesbian and Franco Caracciolo (THE KILLER NUN) as an ill-fated gay inmate to Franca Stoppi (BEYOND THE DARKNESS) as the perverted head guard and Durante's wise old-timer who keeps a pet cockroach which she prefers to the human inmates. The workmanlike cinematography of Luigi Ciccarese is thankfully free of the heavy cheesecloth diffusion that marred his later work for Lucio Fulci like AENIGMA and DEMONIA while the synth score of Luigi Ceccarelli (RATS: NIGHT OF TERROR) starts off with a bluesy theme before going in more aggressive directions that ping pong between John Carpenter-esque pulsing and more bombastic Casio keyboard pounding. The end result entertains but is probably best enjoyed as part of a double-bill, more so with BLADE VIOLENT or the German RED HEAT than Severin's concurrent release of EMANUELLE AND THE LAST CANNIBALS.

Released theatrically by Motion Picture Marketing and on video by Vestron as CAGED WOMEN, VIOLENCE IN A WOMEN'S PRISON actually got its legitimate release on DVD by Media Blasters in 2003 with an anamorphic transfer before its unauthorized 2012 DVD from Full Moon utilizing the old video master. Transferred from a 2K scan of the uncut interpositive, Severin's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.78:1 widescreen transfer looks quite good for a film in which such things as style and gloss were a secondary concern, with some scenes looking low-key rather than underlit, and some nicely saturated colors from red blood to the stained glass through which the warden spies on various perversities. The quarry scene at first appears softer than the rest of the film but the jitter of the frame suggests that it is an effect of shooting the sequence with a telephoto lens. Some scratches and dirt are apparent but the image is largely clean, with only the end credits seemingly clipped by a missing frame or two. The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track nicely conveys the dubbed dialogue, bad foley work, and the synth score nicely while optional SDH subtitles are also available for the dialogue and the end title song "Crazy Eyes".