Jail House Eros (1990)
Jail House Eros (1990)
Jail House Eros (1990) was an Amy Yip starring vehicle. She plays Chesty, an inmate inside a women's correctional facility. Unlike other jail houses, this one is haunted by a couple of ghosts (one's a good fairy and the other one is mean and nasty). The ghostly problem has gotten so bad that the female prisoners have banded together against the evil ghost. But the head guard has a plan. He'll bring in some professional tao Priest s who'll chase the spirits away. Stanley Fung stars as the head guard, Maria Cordero co-stars as a fellow inmate. If you love jail house movies or ghost films then you'll want to watch this movie. It has pretty ladies, low brow humor and ghostly fun.
Plot
Jane is being killed on a jailbreak, then she's released as a ghost 15 years later.
Meanwhile, Blackie is dreaming of escape, but wakes up the prison bully, who precipitates the first of many cat fights, which provides much ripping of clothes and gratuitous nude flashes (many of the jailbirds seem averse to underwear).
In the thick of the action is the loud-mouthed Chesty and Big Sister.
The riot is (too forcefully) put down by the cruel Madam, who then punishes the offenders with a water cannon.
The cruel Madam dies while having (very brief) sex in a sacred area, and becomes an evil ghost.
A women's jail complete with sexy, vivacious criminals and ghosts is the center of this adult action drama.
Review
Forget the title, this is not your ordinary Women in Prison exploitation movie.
Well, yes, there is some adolescent preoccupation with sex (principally as a spectator sport), and a collection of minor players whose sole function is to wear little underwear and have their prison uniforms ripped in fights, but it is more comic ghost story than soft-porn.
And it’s the ghosts that make it a little unusual.
Indeed, the film is also known as Haunted Jail House, which probably better reflects its storyline.
There are two ghosts.
One is that of a harsh female prison officer (Jane Ha) who dies unluckily during a quick sexual escapade in a sacred area when a statue of the War God is disturbed and falls on her head; her angry, vengeful ghost is predictably intent on creating terror and mayhem.
The other is a much more benign ghost of a young prisoner, Jane (Loletta Lee), who died while trying to escape fifteen years earlier.
It’s not all supernatural though; the film also features some standard prison scenarios.
There are two factions, one led by the well-endowed Chesty (Amy Yip), the other by a boyish prisoner (Chan Git Leng).
The two groups find much to fight about – in the dormitory, the mess room, the showers, even on their way to work.
And there is a big-hearted prisoner, wonderfully named in my translation as ‘Everyone’s Big Sister’ (Maria Cordero), who keeps finding herself in the punishment cells (again, the ‘rice water building’ in my version, which I guess may be the equivalent of bread-and-water) without doing anything to deserve it.
But the major plot-line involves Blackie (Joanna Chan), who is as intent on escaping as Jane was all those years before.
And because Jane is a good ghost, she is not averse to assisting Blackie achieve her goal.
Blackie’s actual attempts to escape unfortunately never match (for ingenuity) one of her dream-sequence escapes in which she uses a rope made of toilet paper.
Finally, for dubious comic relief, there are three inept and randy young tradesmen brought in by the Warden to renovate an old building adjacent to the cell block.
The three buffoons spend more time spying on the prisoners (almost all of whom are young and pretty), or chatting them up, or setting up the Warden with a virginal taoist mortician, Pei (Pauline Wong), or posing as exorcists themselves, than fixing the building.
It is their fake taoist priest incantations which release the vengeful ghost and create havoc in the prison.
Cast
Stanley Fung Sui-Fan as Inspector Feng
Pauline Wong Yuk-Wan as Pei
Chan Kit-Ling as Prison guard
Ha Chi-chun as Rough prison guard
Racheal Lee as Jane Chan
Maria Cordero as Big Sister
Amy Yip Ji-Mei as Chesty
Joanna Chan Pui-San as Blackie Chang
Wong Mei-Wa as Inmate
Ngai Suet as Inmate
Edith Au Ngoi-Ling as Inmate
Cheng Yuen-Man as Inmate
Yan Hiu-Yee as Inmate
Gwok Tin-Ngai as Inmate
Lawrence Lau Sek-Yin as Fatty
Cheung Kwok-Wah as Taoist priest
Chan Ging as Rough prison guard's lover
Fong Yue as Rough prison guard's aunt
Dickson Lee Ga-Sing as Shih Meng-Wei / Shih Ming I
Cheng Kwan-Chi as Meng-Wei's friend