Winona Ryder said at the time of her arrest that she was researching a future movie role. Here is RedEye’s list of the best women’s prison movies of all time:
Caged Heat (1974)
Directed by Jonathan Demme, who went on to direct “The Silence of the Lambs;” considered by many to be the “Citizen Kane” of women’s prison movies.
Reform School Girls (1986)
Not be confused with similarly named movies made before or since, this one featured the late Wendy O. Williams, the punk singer with the Plasmatics, as a tough prison inmate who befriends an innocent woman unfairly sent to a cruel prison.
Women’s Prison (1955)
Not as “good” as the many that followed, but considered a pioneer in the genre and featuring the famous actress Ida Lupino as a cruel prison warden, as her career was coming to a cruel close.
Red Heat (1985)
Linda Blair, all grown up after being inhabited by Satan, goes to the hell of a women’s prison, where she is brutalized by vicious guards and has to take a lot of showers.
The Big Doll House (1971)
Pam Grier leads a female prison revolt in a women’s prison in the Philippines, located there primarily because it was cheaper to film there.
Honorable Mention:
The “Angels in Chains” episode during the 1976 season of “Charlie’s Angels”
Farrah Fawcett, Jaclyn Smith and Kate Jackson go underground as prisoners in a women’s prison and then have to bust out in loosely buttoned work shirts.
