Jailhouse Rank

Jailhouse Rank

Then there were the prison movies that Yelavich wants locked up with no possibility of parole.

Reform School Girls (D: Tom DeSimone, 1986): "Gets a whole lot of talk, but I didn't like it. I wanted it to be better than it was. It could have been really funny, really campy, or really okay, but they just kind of stopped. It's the most famous title, but it doesn't deserve it. It doesn't deserve its longevity, but the title stuck."

Born Innocent (D: Donald Wrye, 1974): "That Linda Blair movie that was supposed to be so famous. Everybody told me that was the one that started it all. I hated it. It was just dumb."

Caged Heat (D: Jonathan Demme, 1974): "Just bad. There are like six sequels. I only watched the first one. I was not going to do that to myself."

Star Slammer: The Escape aka Prison Ship (D: Fred Olen Ray, 1988): "It probably took me four times of putting it in and going, 'Okay, I'll finish this.' Females in prison in space with no bars on the doors. I think it was female porn stars of the time thinking they were going legit and making a nonporno. And what it came out like was the dialogue parts of a porno. It was horrible. It didn't even have a camp factor. I would've loved it if it was so horrible it was funny, but it was just horrible. It was the back wall of one soundstage with no windows, scaffolding with only bars on the sides, so they could jump down the front or back. You had the big bull-dyke-lesbian space guard. Whole lotta spandex, whole lotta huge hair, but not in any sort of way that was funny. I don't know what these women were thinking."

  • More of the Story

  • Blake Behind Bars

    To write a parody of prison movies, Naughty Austin's Blake Yelavich sentenced himself to 27 films in the big house
  • Okey-Pokey

A note to readers: Bold and uncensored, The Austin Chronicle has been Austin’s independent news source for over 40 years, expressing the community’s political and environmental concerns and supporting its active cultural scene. Now more than ever, we need your support to continue supplying Austin with independent, free press. If real news is important to you, please consider making a donation of $5, $10 or whatever you can afford, to help keep our journalism on stands.

Support the Chronicle  

One click gets you all the newsletters listed below

Breaking news, arts coverage, and daily events

Keep up with happenings around town

Kevin Curtin's bimonthly cannabis musings

Austin's queerest news and events

Eric Goodman's Austin FC column, other soccer news

Information is power. Support the free press, so we can support Austin.   Support the Chronicle