Sometimes you come across a movie title and you just know that you have to watch it. The name might not scream 'prestige' or even 'good' but dammit, it has a name you just cannot ignore. It could be something like The Big Gay Musical or (to use a TV example) Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills: a name so ridiculous that it demands your viewing. This is how I found myself watching Sharkansas Women's Prison Massacre.
Now look, I did not go into this movie expecting cinema. With a name like that, I expected something cheesy, moronic, exploitative, and funny. It's about sharks attacking people in Arkansas! And the people being attacked are inmates and guards at a women's prison! How could this not be entertaining?
Easily, it turns out.
Now, I won't say the movie is entirely terrible (even though it is), but that title is selling a certain type of movie that it does not deliver. All the more disappointing since it is directed by Jim Wynorski, whose previous credits include Slumber Party Massacre II, The Return of Swamp Thing, and The Bare Wench Wench Project 3: Nymphs of Mystery Mountain. Hell, the film advertises that Traci Lords is in it!
It feels like the movie goes wrong pretty early into it. After an opening that delivers exactly what I was expecting for this type of movie (two guys 'fracking' in a way that shows no one involved understood what fracking actually is), we get to the women's prison (that does not in any way look like a prison) and they leave it immediately. It's in the title that you are at a women's prison! And you leave it and never return!?
Despite that immediate flaw, the movie still shows promise: All of the inmates are incredibly hot women wearing white t-shirts and jean shorts (you know, your classic prison garb). They go into the woods for... reasons? to work (doing the worst shoveling I have ever seen in my life, and I was a lazy teenager who had to dig an insane amount) (Don't ask, it's way more boring than you'd think). There is an extended section of this part of all of the women pouring bottles of water on themselves. At this point, I think the movie, aside from a horrible location change, is back on track.
Except it quickly loses it again: The first inmate kill is incredibly basic (which, okay, don't blow your load early and whatnot) but despite ripped clothing and blood splattered everywhere, everyone agrees that she just ran off.
And guys, my expectations were low, but come the fuck on! I don't expect this to be anything other than ridiculous, but don't make the characters so stupid that this is the conclusion they come to! Again, the movie almost saves itself with one of the characters - still being stupid, she says a tree is bleeding - shows her 'blood' covered hand to the camera and it sits there just a bit too long before moving to the next part.
The remaining prisoners and guard (there was a 'prison break' involving the girlfriend of one of the inmates catching the guards off-guard and kidnapping them that leads to the second guard dying by shark) end up at a house where the guard and the Good Inmate team up to take back over the group (the movie being stupid in a good way again) and then they realize that sharks are around when another inmate gets killed by them. This is also when we learn that the sharks can swim out of the water and into the ground. Again, blessedly stupid according to expectations.
Two geologists stumble upon the group to drop exposition and provide a higher body count. The group tries to escape the sharks and periodically lose a member here and there until only two (or are there more?) remain, having escaped. I don't have to spoil who the survivors are, it's kinda obvious who it will be.
There are some fun moments scattered throughout, but why name the movie this and not lean into it? I'm gay, I don't need to see naked women, but how did this movie not have a single naked breast in it? There are 3 different types of exploitation movies being referenced in the title alone that would create the expectation of gratuitous nudity! Again, I am not the target audience but even I feel a bit cheated out of this expectation.
You might noticed that I never credited Traci Lords to a role despite mentioning her at the beginning. That is because her character, a police officer, does not interact with the main plot until the very end of the film. She (and her partner) could be completely removed from the film without affecting a single thing.
I wanted this movie to be a good time. And it occasionally was! But it just didn't use its premise well enough to be anything other than a way to pass time.
3 out of 10
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