Available from Mondo Macabro | Buy at Amazon.com | Review by Crites
The camera motion and soundtrack are shaky right from the start on this one, as we drunkenly pan through an Indonesian gambling den. After a brief and very sloppy fight with one of the casino’s gangster customers, one of the house whores gives the signal and a horde of well-armed prostitutes on dirt bikes storms the casino, murdering the clientele and making off with the cash. (Quick side note here: I really couldn’t hazard a guess as to why the film is called VIRGINS FROM HELL – every single one of these chicks looks like a Philippino hooker working through the Eighties.)
The girl gang forms a victorious motorcade back to their hideout, where they argue over what amounts to a pathetically small sackful of cash. Gang leader She-Ra spins a yarn of family tragedy and forced prostitution at the hands of the “criminal syndicate” headed by the notorious Mr. Tiger, and promises that the girls’ newly-gotten gains will be funding the overthrow of the underworld dictator.
The very next day She-Ra’s band of loyal prostitutes rallies around the syndicate’s stronghold, even as a mascara-wearing Mr. Tiger and his butch assistant Dutch oversee the testing of their new super aphrodisiac. At nightfall the hookers storm the fortress, and after a number of sloppy gang fight scenes (including a motorcycle ‘trick’ in which a bike hanging from a highwire is blown up and left to burn in mid-air) the girls are done in by the old trap-door gag.
One of the girls is immediately taken away to be used as a guinea pig for Mr. Tiger’s test drug, then given to his business partners Sam and Willie for a test drive. She eludes Sam and makes a feeble escape attempt before being thrown back into “the dungeon” with the rest of the girls. Torture follows, one victim being strung up by her arms and battered about tetherball-style between posts strung with barbed wire. When She-Ra confesses that she is the leader, she’s tied up in a sack with some kind of vicious little jungle mammal. And then of course there are the rapes. And the catfighting. (The audience receives its fair share of torture as well, in the form of pompous speeches laden with bad dialogue.)
During one day of slavery on the coconut farm a group of the girls rebels, sparking a violent but ultimately futile gun battle. Most of the broads are killed or recaptured, with the exception of She-Ra who escapes into the river and is rescued by an elderly peasant after surviving a laugh-out-loud hilarious fight with a rubber alligator.
Back at the compound two of She-Ra’s mutinous underlings, Lisa and Julie, have joined Tiger’s forces and now take charge of torturing their sisters: they cook one girl alive immediately, then return to Tiger’s lair for a spastic little dance routine. Bored, and hypnotized by a painting of a horse (no shit!) Mr. Tiger kicks things up a notch by handcuffing his girls together and breaking out a bullwhip.
Meanwhile Larry, the hostage lab assistant to the sex drug doctor Tiger killed earlier for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, decides to get in on the action. As he prepares to administer a new serum on a baboon under the watchful eye of a pair of Tiger’s henchmen, Larry stabs one of them with the syringe and starts another poorly choreographed/dubbed fight with the other. This ends with Larry smashing a drum of gunpowder over the guard’s head, then shooting him in the face to set off an explosion that sends guts flying everywhere. (Actually one of the film’s more impressive scenes.) The guard who got injected suffers an equally gruesome fate, the drug causing his entire body to swell and bubble sickly.
An incredible (and I do mean incredible, not amazing) gun battle follows in which Larry blows away several guards, steals a horse and evades a squad of Tiger’s bikers to escape into the wilderness.
She’Ra’s sister Dena manages to escape as well: stomping a rat to death and using its blood to fake some severe injuries, she tricks a guard into opening the dungeon door. Overpowering him, and several other henchmen, she escapes with a machine gun to cross the same river that Larry and She-Ra did.
Soon enough Dena comes across Larry, wounded and unconscious, and shortly thereafter is caught sucking his face by She-Ra and the old peasant. The old man is something of a healer, and he decides the best way to deal with Larry’s ailment is to feed a live snake directly into the bullet wound. And what do you know, when pulled back out again the serpent has the bullet between his jaws. With a little spit, a few jungle leaves and some yellow smoke Larry’s as good as new and he sets out with the girls to finish Tiger for good.
But first, since it’s been about five minutes since the last violent gun battle, right on cue Tiger’s men show up on a raft for a messy shootout with the escapees. Victorious, Larry and She-Ra search the raft and find a haul of coconuts concealing Tiger’s super sex drug. They detonate the lot, then return to Tiger’s fortress for their comrades.
Managing to force their way past Tiger’s army of guards the trio makes its way inside the compound, releases the captive women and proceeds to kill everyone and destroy everything. Tiger’s reinforcements arrive for the grand finale, and with much comic violence the saga of Virgins from Hell comes to a close.
VIRGINS FROM HELL does have a certain violent pulp quality, however it’s one that would be more appreciated across the adolescent age range. As it is, it’s almost bad enough to be as funny as you are stoned… almost. The best you can say about this is that it is some truly crazy shit; take that as you will.
No bare breasts is a huge drawback in a film about a gang of wild biker sluts – they even keep their tops on in the bathtub! A lot of the firearms look plastic and gigantic, like portable vacuum cleaners fitted with battery packs, and the ‘special’ effects are somewhat lacking. And I think the lazy fight scenes and sound cueing have already been mentioned once or twice. Also, I don’t know if it’s the mastering of the DVD or a deliberate decision on the part of the filmmakers, but in some scenes the film speed is noticeably increased, imparting an even more cartoonish quality to the already outlandish action.
Extras to VIRGINS FROM HELL include a melodramatic trailer and an overview of the women in prison genre by Pete Tombs, however this Mondo Macabro release goes the extra distance and throws in an entire bonus disc of additional material. This comprises two mini-features, the first being “Destination Jakarta: 70 Minutes of Indonesian Exploitation Trailer Trash from Rapi Films.” These hyperbole-laden previews for laughable offerings include Eighties flicks such as THE SNAKE QUEEN, THE DEVIL'S SWORD, the WARRIOR series, ESCAPE FROM HELL HOLE and TIGER COMMANDOS, all containing scenes humorously bad enough to merit their own MST3K episode. There’s even the Indonesian take on the jungle cannibal movie, PRIMITIVES, complete with Wild Kingdom stock footage, the zombie movie PENGABDI SETAN (worth owning for the title alone), and the flying witch’s head movie MYSTICS IN BALI.
The second section of the bonus disc is a documentary, FANTASY FILMS FROM INDONESIA, which looks at the explosion of horror and violence in the Indonesian film industry during the Seventies and Eighties. Numerous Rapi Films luminaries are interviewed, and the audience is treated to many gaudy movie posters and film clips. The influence of Indonesian comic strips and the rise in the sophistication of special effects is discussed, as is the crackdown on smut films that fueled the horror film boom.
So, again, VIRGINS FROM HELL is just laughably batshit-nuts, but as a total package this one is worth a look.
