Blaxploitation Education Extra: The Big Doll House
Definitely more exploitation than Blaxploitation
The Big Doll House
Written by Don Spencer
Directed by Jack Hill
1971
In my Blaxploitation journey, I expect I’ll take a few detours as I check out some other notable films that don’t quite fit into the genre. This is one of those, being a “women in prison” exploitation movie that doesn’t have much to do with urban settings, the concerns of the Black community, or Black heroes who get to prevail when standing up to The Man. However, I wanted to check it out, since it’s one of Pam Grier’s first roles, and it’s directed by Jack Hill, who would helm some notable entries in the genre.
This is one of a series of chicks-in-chains movies produced by Roger Corman’s New World Pictures and shot in the Philippines. As such, it shows its cheap, quick, and dirty nature, with a rudimentary plot, acting that ranges from passable to kind of ridiculous, and lots of opportunities for titillation. There’s not much in the way of setup, with various, mostly white women being thrown into a Filipino prison, having to survive hard labor, torture, and infighting and eventually plotting an escape.
It’s probably not worthwhile to describe the plot, which is often just an excuse to put the prisoners in sexy situations. There are shower scenes, a fight between two prisoners in a rice paddy that turns into an impromptu mud wrestling match, a food fight that turns into a riot that is quelled by spraying all the prisoners with a fire hose, questioning and torture scenes that involve bondage, and a bit where a prisoner holds a guy at knifepoint in order to get some of the dick she’s been craving. It’s all rather ridiculous, with the women in this squalid, dirty environment somehow managing to have makeup and hairstyles that still let them seem kind of glamorous. Plus they all get to wear short minidresses and other impractical outfits that are targeted directly at the male gaze.
There’s at least some attempt to flesh out the characters and give them personalities and motives. Bodine (Pat Woodell) is the girlfriend of a revolutionary leader, so she’s always being targeted for questioning by the authorities as they try to get information they could use to suppress dissent. Harrad (Brooke Mills) is a junkie who turns desperate and violent when she can’t get the heroin fix she needs. And Pam Grier, whose character is given the imaginative name of Grear, is a hard-assed lesbian who is constantly intimidating the other prisoners, but who is also working as an informant in order to procure drugs for Harrad. It’s clear that at this point, she hadn’t quite developed the acting chops that would make her one of the top Blaxploitation stars, but you can definitely see the spark of charisma that she would later use to such great effect.
Various supporting characters liven things up, including Sid Haig as a guy who delivers fresh fruit and other supplies to the prison while constantly making horny comments (in his first scene, he sees the smoke from the cremation of a prisoner who had died, and he says, “Another perfectly good piece of ass going to waste.”). There’s a sadistic prison guard played by Kathryn Loder, who looks like she could have been the inspiration for the villainous Mrs. Tweedy in Chicken Run. And a surprisingly well-trained cat also gets involved in the prisoners’ escape attempt.
While most everything that happens in the movie is an excuse for near-constant nudity and other sexy shenanigans, the characters and their desires are taken seriously. The women do their best to take control of their situation, using what resources they have (mostly involving the initials T and A) to get what they want. Pam Grier is definitely the standout, and even with her rudimentary acting skills at this point of her career, she fleshes out her character and delivers some of the best moments of the movie. Early on, she lets Sid Haig feel her up as payment for goods smuggled in to the prison, but when she learns he’s cheated her, she angrily declares that she’s never going to let another man touch her. But later, she gets aggressive with him, using her body to reduce him to a trembling mess in order to convince him to help out with their escape attempt. It’s a pretty forceful performance, and you can begin to see her develop into the powerhouse she would become.
This movie is mostly a curiosity, but it’s worth watching if you enjoy the goofy old exploitation movies produced by Roger Corman and his ilk. It’s neat to see where Pam Grier got her start, and Jack Hill throws in plenty of unique details to always keep things interesting, but it’s a B movie through and through. I suppose it was worth taking a little side trip on my greater Blaxploitation journey, but I’m ready to get back to the primary pursuit.