Rebel Highway: Girls in Prison

Rebel Highway (1994)
Episode 5: "Girls in Prison"
Originally aired 19th August, 1994

Jeff and Cheryl cruise down Rebel Highway with Episode #5, "Girls in Prison."

Written by Samuel Fuller and Christa Lang
Directed by John McNaughton

Starring: 
Missy Crider as Aggie O'Hanlon 
Anne Heche as Jennifer 
Nicolette Scorsese as Suzy 
Bahni Turpin as Melba Mason 
Jon Polito as “Boss” Ed Johnson 
Nestor Serrano as Benito Borcelino 
Miguel Sandoval as Papito 'Lucky' Alvarez 
Richmond Arquette as Detective Dan Campion 
Raymond O'Connor as Mickey Mave 
Tom Towles as Norman Stoneface 
William Boyett as Dr. Sahinmark 
Angie Ray McKinney as Miranda 
and Ione Skye as Carol Madison 

An Arkoff / Hill / Kutner Production 

View the Girls in Prison trailer here. 

You can rent Girls in Prison on Prime Video, Fandango at Home, or Apple TV+. 

Visit our website - https://aippod.com/ and follow the American International Podcast on Letterboxd, Instagram and Threads @aip_pod and on Facebook at facebook.com/AmericanInternationalPodcast  

Get your American International Podcast merchandise at our store. 

Our open and close includes clips from the following films/trailers: How to Make a Monster (1958), The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1962), I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957), High School Hellcats (1958), Beach Blanket Bingo (1965), The Wild Angels (1966), It Conquered the World (1956), The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), and Female Jungle (1955) 

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
In a ladies’ lock-up.

(00:01):
Welcome to Hell, Aggie.
Tender teens find tough times.
Hard bodies play hard ball.
And warm showers lead to cold steel.
This isn’t a prison.
This is an insane asylum.
From John McNaughton.
Director of Mad Dog and Glory.

(00:24):
Ione Skye.
Welcome to the country club.
Missy Crider.
We'll have to place you when isolation.
For how long?
‘Till I go insane too?
And Bahni Turpin.
I used to go out with boys.
But there aren’t any boys in here.
In a caged hell.
Some are not guilty.
If you don't help me,
they're gonna bury me in the prison graveyard.

(00:45):
I need some information.
But no one is innocent.
Girls in prison.
We're not talking about actors.
We mean a real monster.
I brought her back.
She'll live and I'll get her another body.
I know they’re gonna catch me
but don't let anyone see me like that, please Doctor! Help me!
Biologically speaking,

(01:07):
it's of primary importance that man should want to mate.
Hey, that’s right!
You don't get all your kicks from surfing, do you?
We want to be free to ride our machines
without being hassled by the man.
And we want to get loaded.
You think you're gonna make a slave of the world?
I'll see you in Helll first.

(01:28):
The American International Podcast.
Are you ready?
Welcome to the American International Podcast
where we're breaking out another episode
from the Showtime series Rebel Highway.
I'm Jeff Markin.
I'm Cheryl Lightfoot.
And this week we're talking Crime, Confirement, and Camp
with Girls in Prison,
which originally aired on August 19th, 1994.
Girls in Prison was written by Samuel Fuller and Krista Lang.

(01:51):
It was directed by John McNaughton
and produced by Lou Arkoff, Debra Hill,
and Willie Kutner for Showtime Networks,
Spelling Film International and American International Pictures.
Girls in Prison stars,
Missy Crider as Aggie O’Hanlon,
Ione Skye as Carol Madison,
Bahni Turpin as Melba Mason,
Anne Heche as Jennifer,
Nicolette Scorsese as Suzy,
Harvey Chao as Lum Fong.

(02:12):
Ralph Meyering Jr. as Jim Jeffrey,
Miguel Sandoval as ‘Lucky',
J. Patrick McCormack as Gordon Madison,
Jon Polito as “Boss” Ed Johnson,
Angie Ray McKinney as Miranda,
Richmond Arquette as Detective Dan Campion,
Tom Towles as Norman Stoneface,
the Prison Guard,
and Raymond O'Connor as Mickey Mave.
The movie opens with credits
over kind of an old-fashioned noir type opening.

(02:34):
Yeah, it really gives off that impression.
The music is dramatic.
There's just the silhouette of a prisoner
behind the silhouette of prison bars.
She's smoking a cigarette.
She's just sort of pacing back and forth.
I thought it was a really cool open.
I'm a big fan of films from the 40s and 50s of this genre.
So I thought it was a nice homage.
I thought the font on the title was pretty cool too.
Well, after the credits,

(02:55):
there was an even fancier font.
I don't know if it's better,
but it tells us that once upon a time
in Hollywood,
live three beautiful girls in their late teens.
And that's the first one.
We're at Lumpung's Radio and Television Shop,
where Melba works.
On an old-fashioned TV,
Melba and one of the customers
see the news from the Korean War.
And in an unfortunate coincidence,
the shot that they show is of her brother

(03:16):
who is recently deceased.
I don't think they would show a dead soldier
on TV in the 1950s.
I don't think they'd do it today.
Yeah, it's really tasteless.
But obviously we have to move the plot along.
So she screams and runs home
where she finds her mom dead
from an apparent heart attack.
Yeah, she was watching that same news report
and had a heart attack when she heard the news.
Oh, irresponsible journalism.

(03:37):
But Melba's going to plant her revenge.
The next scene has her bringing flowers to the news station.
She wants to give them to the news reader
who is a person that's responsible
for her brother's unfortunate outing as a dead person.
She gets waved in.
And though the announcer is happy to see her
with the flowers.
I think he's live on air at this point too.
Yeah, well, I think he's always on air.

(03:58):
This news is never ending.
He's happy to see her at first
and wants to give her a chance to talk.
But she talks with a hammer
that she pulls out from behind the base
and loves him to death on air.
Really no getting out of that one.
Nope, there were thousands of witnesses
over the airwaves.
She runs.
Please are shooting at her.
They corner her and tell her to drop the hammer.
She has five seconds to rebate a life.

(04:18):
We get a sense pretty early on
that this movie is going for maybe not camp
as much as a parody of film noir.
Maybe a little both.
Anyway, she surrenders.
And then the headline comes up
that Hammer Slayer has been captured.
And sentenced to life in prison
at the state penitentiary.
Next up, we're going to meet Carol Madison.
She's sitting by the pool with her father
who's an actor.

(04:39):
And she's helping him go over some lines.
Carol's a playwright and screenwriter.
And she wrote a play called The Witch Hunt
that her dad's going to star in.
It's about the current events of the time.
The House of American Committee
with Joseph McCarthy and the Red Scare.
Yeah, they're holding hearings on TV.
And we saw a little bit of that in the previous vignette.
I think the communism thing is woven through here
just a little bit just to give you a sense of what's going on.

(05:01):
And it must be a really good play
because at the premier performance,
when Joseph McCarthy starts yelling,
are you a communist?
Are you a communist to the character
that Gordon Madison is playing on stage?
The audience gets really into it.
I wouldn't say they got into it.
Unless you mean they hated it.
They start booing and then a fight breaks out.
I took it to mean that he was a communist
and they got into it.
They couldn't distinguish fiction from reality.

(05:23):
That's why I interpreted it.
Not me.
I interpreted it as they didn't like the implication
that Joseph McCarthy was doing anything wrong.
That's how I interpreted it.
But you could be right too.
They didn't think he was doing anything wrong.
So they're going to go after the other guy.
They attacked the Joseph McCarthy character.
They went after Carol's father
because he was a communist and denying it.
All right, you could be right.
Maybe it's open to interpretation.

(05:44):
That's what I thought.
Anyway, they do attack Carol's dad
and she tries to defend him.
Somehow the crowd has pulled off of him
and he's left lying there.
And he's just mumbling to himself.
Are you a communist?
Are you a communist?
It was the last line of the play
before the brawl broke out.
And he's still babbling that in the next scene.
Or he's in bed.
He's in a silent.
A doctor is tending to him
and Carol's at his bedside.
Carol's refusing to have him committed.

(06:05):
But the doctor tells her that she can't help him
but that her doctors who can.
Their experts in shock treatment.
And Carol gives in.
She really has no choice.
Then we find her in a bar.
She's watching the same Joseph McCarthy hearings on TV.
The Real McCarthy hearings.
She's watching a recreation for us
of the McCarthy hearings.
But it's the actual McCarthy hearings for her.
I love the old fashioned TVs in this.
This one looks like you're watching it through a porthole.

(06:27):
And it's just cool to see the old equipment.
I kind of have a fondness for that.
He starts watching the hearings too
and then starts mumbling off
about the county bitch testifying.
Carol snaps and breaks the bottle over his head
and kills him apparently
because she's sentenced to life in prison.
Next up, we're meeting Agio Hanlon.
She's riding a motorbike
with a guitar strap to her back.
And she rides up to a recording studio
Olympia Records and goes inside.

(06:50):
We go into the office of the head of Olympia Records.
Boss Ed Johnson.
And he's reading the riot act to his staff
for failing to find new talent.
One of those staff is Jennifer.
She's the talent scout.
And he's also having a temper tantrum
at Miranda, the receptionist.
And that's when Agio enters.
Yeah, she walks in at a very bad time.
So Boss Johnson continues to tie weight on her.
She puts her demo tape on his desk.

(07:10):
And he says he hates amateurs.
And then the two start physically fighting.
She picks up an asterion, starts beating him with it.
She says she wants her song back.
She's not going to leave it with this lunatic.
Miranda and Jennifer forced her out the door.
Well, luckily one of them grabs her guitar.
So she didn't have to leave that behind.
But she has to leave the tape behind.
And then Boss Johnson complains that he was hit
with his favorite asterion.
One of his kids made it for him.

(07:31):
Uh-huh.
And the next thing though, we find out
that he had a change of heart.
It's night and he calls Miranda at home,
apologizes and says that he listened to her demo
and would like her to come in.
She excitedly does and he starts getting her stats.
She's 17.
Her parents died in a car accident.
And she wrote the song.
And the sleep.
She's a daughter of jazz musicians.
And they died in a car accident.
He offers her a contract and asked her to come in tomorrow

(07:53):
at 11 a.m. to sign it.
And then he says Jennifer's the one that convinced him
to give her another chance.
I get goes home and sleeps well that night.
Ed sleeps well too.
He's at his desk with that tape in his hand
when someone in a black-overcoat and black love
stabs him in the back 16 times.
Someone with a lot of animus towards him.
The next day there was a murder investigation going on.
There's a cleaning woman in tears.

(08:14):
And the detective gives her a cup of coffee to try to help calm her down.
And Boss Johnson is still draped over his desk, soaked in blood.
Miranda and Jennifer are both brought in and questioned.
And in sync, each giving part of the story,
they go back and forth telling about how it must have been Aggie and why.
As for Aggie, she's at home playing a lover's concerto on the piano.

(08:35):
I suppose she wrote that one too.
You say that for a reason.
And the sleep was not written by anyone named Aggie O'Halland.
And it was written by Jody Reynolds who recorded the hit version back in 1957.
I wouldn't have known that if it weren't for you.
Well, I'm a music nerd.
I know.
The detective we saw in the office,
Knox on Aggie's door.
When she opens it, he explains that Boss Johnson was murdered last night

(08:55):
and Aggie feints.
He revives her and then interrogates her.
He starts with, "Why did you stab him to death?"
He says, "You had a motive.
And why did you go to his office if not to kill him?"
But she explains what happened and it says, "We saw it."
But the thing is, they didn't find the tape.
So they think it's odd that she says she left it there and they didn't find it.
Never considering that maybe the murderer took it.
Campion says she'll be tested to find out if she's insane.

(09:17):
And if the results are negative, she's going to be tried for murder.
The newspaper headline tells us that Aggie was found sane.
And we'll go to trial for stabbing a record producer 16 times.
I'm going to get the 16 times in there.
Now Jennifer Miranda and a guy named Borsalino are out celebrating.
They make a toast to Aggie.
And Jennifer makes out with Borsalino.
Another headline says that Aggie was found guilty.

(09:38):
And a further one says that she had sentenced to life in prison.
If we see her getting unloaded from the police wagon with a bunch of other girls
and going in for processing, which of course includes a group shower scene.
In the shower, she's watching a couple of girls make out.
We recognize them as Carol and Melba, the previous felons.
So now they're all together.
Aggie gets taken to her cell, passing by all the other inmates.

(09:58):
And Melba is her cell.
Melba welcomes her to hell and then explains her temporary lesbianism
and Carol's permanent lesbianism.
[MUSIC]
And now we're in Carol's cell.
And one of the other new arrivals is brought in to be her new roommate.
This is Susie.

(10:19):
Susie notices the autographed picture of Carol's dad that she has on her wall
with the formal inscription.
It's kind of funny.
Dear daughter, best wishes, dad.
Susie's hot for her dad.
She wants a picture for herself and maybe more.
So I think it's about time for a prison-jarring fight.
What do you think?
Yeah, we haven't been to the prison yard yet.
Let's go there.
Yeah, don't waste any time.
And of course, there is a brawl.
The guards at first leave them to their own devices,

(10:41):
but then they change their mind and they get poses.
They hold everybody down because you got to be wet, right?
You got to have wet women in tight dresses.
It's sort of the whole point of the prison exercise.
Well, the brawl was actually started for another reason.
Apparently, there's a hit on Aggie.
And Rita is the one who's going to try to perform this hit.
Somehow she's spelled in a knife.

(11:02):
She actually stabs Aggie, right?
It looks like she gets stabbed in the front of the shoulder,
but she's got her arm in the sling later.
Well, maybe they just did that so she doesn't move it around too much.
It doesn't matter.
She only wears that sling for like one scene.
And Rita, the perpetrator, got stomped to death in the yard.
The girls turn feral and turn on people on a dime.
And they're not above killing people.
And I guess they just get allowed to.

(11:23):
The guards will only stop certain things.
So in the next scene, Aggie is back in herself with her arm in that sling.
And I guess Moe has been doing a little reconnaissance
because she tells her that she found out
that Rita had a contract to kill Aggie.
And she was lucky this time.
But this time, it infers that there will be a next time.
The person who wants her dead still wants her dead.
Somehow Melba has booze.
How do people get the stuff knives, liquor, aren't there rules?

(11:45):
Rules are made to be broken.
And then Aggie tells her story.
And we've already seen it told twice.
But the important thing I think is that she never copyrighted her song.
So anybody could have published it under a different name.
Moe will formally ask the question.
And let's go back to Olympia Records.
I thought Jennifer was going to be the person in charge in the scene,
but we're Salino's there.
Jennifer's a woman.
She can't be in charge of anything.

(12:06):
It's the fifties.
Maybe she's the power behind the throne.
Well, she is.
She's sitting on his lap and making out with them, though.
And then some guy named Mickey comes in.
He's a DJ.
And he makes Jennifer go get him a drink.
So he's treating her not like the power behind the throne.
He's treating her like the office girl.
Could have been Miranda to do that.
Mickey says it's too bad what happened to Boss Johnson.
But nobody there is feeling that vibe.
No, they're happy that he's gone.

(12:28):
Obviously they killed him.
Anyway, Mickey's there to get some pay all the money.
Yeah, they had him a 45 of their new single.
They wouldn't have played with a bunch of bills hanging out of it as well.
And the song we see is "Endless Sleep" by Leslie Beatty.
And we'll tell you why they use the name Leslie Beatty later.
Jennifer has to be like to listen to it,
but he says, now that's not a requirement.
It's all about the money, baby.

(12:49):
And now we're in prison with Carol, Melba, Aggie and Susie.
And they're in the cafeteria.
They have to sit alone.
Nobody else wants to sit with them.
So they're outcast somehow.
Yeah, they sit in a corner table.
Or are they like a click that nobody else can join?
Maybe a little both.
Well, I think the point is right now,
they don't know who they can and can't trust because there's a hit out on Aggie.

(13:09):
And they've all vowed to protect her.
Melba says that they should be okay for a while
because it takes time to set up a hit.
But in the meantime, they need to figure out who can and can't be trusted.
Which is what I just said.
They don't really explain this very well.
I don't think.
But there's someone named Greta who's going to help them and they have to help her escape.
And they engineer some laundry room distraction.
They're a Greta in a laundry cart and take her to where she can get away.

(13:32):
I don't really remember the mechanics of this.
But the point is she escapes.
Did you see something I didn't know?
They just have a scene where Carol has her in the laundry basket
and is bringing her down the hall.
And they had some sort of a distraction
that everybody was running back to the laundry room for.
They drop her off with another woman and
yeah, I don't know how she got from the office that they drop her at to the fence

(13:53):
where she climbs over.
She says, "Corty by another prisoner."
Which is odd.
She gets over the fence really easy too.
I guess they hadn't invented barboi or yet.
The next scene we get to hear Aggie sing her song to herself and herself.
I thought she had a good voice.
Oh, she's fine.
That singer is fine.
She doesn't have a lot of power behind it.
She sounds a little like Jewel.
She looks a little like Jewel.
Yeah, that's true.
Now we're back in Carol and Susie's cell.

(14:14):
And Susie's telling her story to Carol.
She said she was caught making out with a 14-year-old boy.
She was 11 at the time.
So she was sent to a foreign school.
What?
Is that how that works?
Did it in this case?
It led to a life of pornography and she actually worked for Borsalino.
The reason she's in prison now is she shot a cop with his own gun
for a slapping Borsalino.
She shot his balls off.
She seems very gleeful at this.

(14:36):
She had to do it.
He slapped him.
And by your man.
Now we're back in the cell with Aggie and Melba.
And Aggie accuses Melba of not believing her story.
But Melba says she does.
Aggie seems overjoyed that Melba says that she believes her story.
Nobody ever has before now.
Melba got a letter from Greta who's on the outside.
She burns it and then tells Aggie that there really wasn't anything in it.

(14:57):
But she's still going to get to the bottom of this mystery.
Yeah, she wants to know why would a killer take her song?
And believes that they find it, that will prove her innocence.
I don't know how that works.
Well, it would lead to the person who did the murder if she didn't do it,
because the murder obviously took the tape.
Okay, but they're playing the song on the radio and all they have to do is look up
who published it.
And we know where it was left.
Well, we don't know who specifically.

(15:17):
I don't know how big Olympia records is, but there's at least three employees.
There could be only three employees because we don't see anymore.
Helping her will be Lumpfong, her boss at the radio and TV shop.
And Lumpf's friend Lucky.
He's a private detective.
He's an ex-cop and a friend of Moba's family.
And if you can't trust an ex-cop who's a friend of the family, who can you trust?
So I guess it's a visiting day at the prison because everybody has a visitor.

(15:39):
There's four different conversations.
Let's go through.
First, Carol is meeting with her father's doctor.
He gives an update and she's concerned that he's never going to speak again.
Yeah, he stopped babbling and then went mute.
But before he went mute, he said one thing.
Carol killed a cancer.
No idea what that means.
Oh, and one other thing that happened was the doctor asked if she needed anything.
And she said that she did an autographed picture for her cellmate.

(16:02):
Oh, right.
And he says, yeah, I can get you that, but you'll have to sign it yourself.
I'm sure somebody else always sign those.
Okay, now to Melba.
She's talking with Lumpfong who says the guy she killed was a bad dude, a Nazi type.
And they're going to try and use that to get Melba out.
So maybe Melba will also be free one day.
I don't think the movie ever lets us know one way or the other.
Though Aggie is meeting with Lucky that detective.

(16:24):
She's concerned about what this will cost, but he tells her that Lumpfong is paying
and Aggie can pay him back when she's released.
I think she has the money because she lives in her house alone.
The house that her parents must have left her.
She's only 17.
She's probably 18 by now because she did say she should be 18 next week.
Oh, okay.
But when we met her, she had her own house and she was 17.
So she must have some money because she doesn't know that she's going to have a hit single.

(16:45):
And last, Borsalino, Dared show his face in the prison.
He's talking to Susie his ex or current flame.
Yeah, he's trying to use her to put a hit on Aggie.
She's reluctant because Aggie is her friend.
And she's also sworn to be your bodyguard.
But Borsalino trumps everything.
Oh, plus he tucks at her heartstrings by staring to cry.
And says he doesn't want to die.

(17:06):
And she doesn't love him anymore.
Because if he gets implicated, he's going to the gas chamber.
He says he plays on her guilt.
And she actually questions this because he supposedly didn't commit the murder.
But he says he's an accomplice.
I think she did it just so he would stop having that embarrassing display in front of everybody.
No, whatever reason she says she'll do it.
And he says, "Good girl.
The tears are suddenly gone."
And the next scene we had a diner.

(17:35):
And this doesn't make a whole lot of sense?
No.
Some girl comes in, puts endless sleep on the jukebox and gives the guy who's behind the
counter some money.
Does Paola extend to jukeboxes and small diners?
With almost nobody in attendance?
He's like a waste of money.
It's a grassroots campaign, I guess.
Lucky detective comes in and starts rupping up the guy behind the counter.

(17:57):
Again, for no real reason.
He must know about the jukebox scheme and once information on who
instigated it.
That's got to be it.
But there isn't really anything to tell us that that's what it is.
No, just our own guess is.
This is followed by a research montage where the detective is trying to determine who's behind this.
He must be at the police station.

(18:17):
He's looking through a book of mug shots.
And when he sees Borcellino, he puts his finger right on it.
That's the guy.
He goes to Olympia Records in Questions Miranda.
She gives a story of what she knows, which was the first visit of Aggie to the record company.
Miranda's telling everything she knows, which was more than the police knew.
And then Jennifer comes in and she clamps up.
Yeah, we don't know how much Miranda knows.

(18:38):
I think she knows too much.
Next there's a brief scene in the prison laundry again.
We find out the grad after saying that message she couldn't find out anything.
Made it back to Cuba.
So she's free.
Yeah.
Let me see Susie layering at Aggie, meaningfully.
Aggies in her sights.
This next scene, what the heck's going on?
For some reason, the prisoners have all been gathered to see a strip show.

(19:00):
Yes, kind of burlesque like in that there's no boobs out.
It's all women and their dress is men.
Some of them must dashes painted on their faces.
And they do a slow strip tease.
Basically just take off their coats and show off their bras.
And everyone's really into it.
But as you'd expect, then a fight breaks out.
Yeah, and do they do this in prison?
It seems like a bad idea.
I know that you can have Elvis come in and sing Jail House Rod.

(19:22):
Elvis was a prisoner.
But he came back at the end.
But to have a strip show that seems like they would just
charge up the inmates way too much.
It's not good for keeping order.
Well, the guard seems to be enjoying it too,
but I don't think it's a good idea.
Obviously not.
Like I said, the inevitable brawl breaks out.
Stone face to guard is on the floor and everybody dog piles on top of him.
Melba Carroll and Susie are pressing a key against the wall to protect her.

(19:45):
Oh, are they?
But as we know, Susie's on a mission.
And she pulls out a knife.
Everyone starts screaming, "Hit girl."
[LAUGHS]
Listeners, the other prisoners, they don't like hit girls.
It's the equivalent of stoolies.
So Susie's cornering the wall and she's waiting the knife out at people
and realizes she has no other choice.
She chooses to stab herself.

(20:06):
In the heart, they do think they're going to say that she's lunched a screwdriver
into her own heart.
But it's not a screwdriver.
It's a knife.
It didn't look like a screwdriver to me.
No.
It's the same knife that Rita had at the first attempted hit scene.
Or at least from the same set.
[LAUGHS]
They have eight of those in the kitchen.
[LAUGHS]
And then the girls jump on and start pummeling her corpse.
There's a lot of unresolved anger in these women.

(20:27):
The next scene we see Jennifer on the phone with Borsalino.
She's informing him that all her prison contacts are dead
and they still haven't successfully performed this hit.
Then she tells him that she's going to go where no one can find her.
She's packing her bag.
As Borsalino hangs up, Lucky the detective comes in for a visit.
It's not a social call.
I think Lucky's put all the pieces together at this point.

(20:48):
Yep, he's ready to make his accusation.
[LAUGHS]
You stole her song.
And if they can prove it, they can tag you with murder.
Borsalino denies it.
And Borsalino attacks Lucky.
Who attacks back beats the crap out of him.
Well, he attacks him because he called in Pancho.
Oh, I didn't catch that.
Yeah, he goes, you got the run guy Pancho.
And then Lucky just starts beating him with his gun.
And this beating causes Borsalino to confess.

(21:10):
He cries, Jennifer did it.
[LAUGHS]
He's a weak, weak man.
But Lucky keeps going.
And then when he finishes, he says, names Lucky.
He throws the gun at Borsalino's body and leaves.
And now it's time for Jennifer to go on the lamb.
Or so we think.
But first, she's got to change her appearance.
She takes her long, brown locks and chops off most of it.
And then she gets out a bottle of peroxide.

(21:31):
She's going blonde.
At the same time, Lucky is visiting Aggie.
He's telling her what he knows.
Jennifer stole the song.
And she's using it as a front to sell dope.
Actually, that goes back to the scene where Mickey came in.
Aside from the money, they paid him in diet pills for his mother.
It's all speed.
They're giving out speed and money.
We also learned that Miranda was found dead with 16 stab wounds.

(21:51):
So she didn't know something.
He also mentions that Susie's name came up in conversation.
And Aggie should watch out for her.
And Aggie informs him that Susie's dead.
No, watching required.
He says he's got to find Jennifer to prove that she stole the song.
And promises all manner of torture to find out what he wants.
He says he won't kill her.
But he's not going to let Aggie die in there either.
And now we see that Jennifer is turning herself in for theft to detect a champion.

(22:13):
She stole some jewels and passes up.
She wants to go to prison to carry out the hit herself.
But why would you go to prison when your whole goal is to not go to prison?
She wants to do eight to 10 years instead of life.
I don't get it.
Because when you go to the state penitentiary, that's not petty theft.
That's big crime.
Well, these were diamonds.
So it's not petty theft either.
No.
So what's her game?

(22:33):
I just think she hasn't thought it all through.
Maybe she really wants to kill Aggie.
And now Jennifer gets her own shower scene.
She drops the soap so that Aggie has to retrieve it for her.
I couldn't believe she didn't recognize Jennifer when they meet face to face in the seat.
Well, she saw her once and her hair was different.
She wouldn't recognize her.
She wouldn't even recognize her later.
She does recognize her later.
I know she does, but she wouldn't.

(22:54):
Well, she didn't recognize her now.
She wouldn't recognize her later.
She saw Jennifer once and there was that brawl going on.
Jennifer, she wasn't paying attention to.
Well, we don't know what happened after they hustled her out of the office though.
Then Jennifer is brought to her cell.
She's going to be Carol's new roommate.
She gives her name as Gilda Grady.
And notices the picture of Gordon on the wall and ask Carol,

(23:14):
"Isn't your father in the Nothouse?"
I don't think Carol wants to talk about that.
I think naming herself Gilda was a nod to Rita Hayworth's character.
Famous film noir actress.
Jennifer also asked Carol about Suzy and what happened to her.
This is where she gives a story that it was a screwdriver instead of a knife.
Maybe in the scuffle, she didn't get a good look at it.
I read back in the laundry and Aggy and Gilda meet up again

(23:36):
and Aggy remembers her from the shower.
Gilda looks panicked for half a second there and then realizes that
her true identity is still safe.
Next, it's chow time and Gilda joins Carol Aggy and Melba at that corner table.
She's in the click.
Then the guard comes over and tells Carol that the warden wants to see her.
I knew it was going to happen in the scene before it happened.
I knew her dad was going to be dead.

(23:56):
And that's what she finds out when she visits the warden.
Yeah, it didn't come as a shock.
But it is a shock to Carol and she goes ape shit.
She starts screaming and throwing things and the guard takes her.
I guess the solitary.
She's lying alone and she's in a straight jacket.
That's what I thought at first, but it looked like she was in the infirmary.
Was there more than one bed around her?
Ah, okay.
I think she might eventually end up in something like solitary.

(24:20):
She doesn't go back to Gen Pop ever.
Gilda laughs as they drag her off and she now has that whole cell to herself.
And she says, one down.
Now, Aggie has a visitor.
It's Lucky again.
He reports that Jennifer is MIA.
They can't find her.
She asks, what about Worsley?
No, and he says that he ain't talking.
He's in a coma.
Right.
So he's out of commission.
Lucky tells Aggie that there are going to be four female cops

(24:42):
in plain clothes guarding her from now on.
Yeah, the warden told him that they suspect there's another
kid girl in the prison.
I find it hard to believe that the warden would be this cooperative
for one prisoner.
I would find it more believable that they think that she's making it up
or they don't care because she is a killer.
I don't know.
They did have any original girls in prison.
If you remember, the warden was going to look into having her

(25:02):
sent to another facility.
Right, but they didn't put bodyguards around her,
not police bodyguards.
That seems like an official act that would require
cooperation with the justice system that convicted her.
Well, technically, if you're in prison,
you're not supposed to die on their watch
of anything but natural causes.
Does it seem like they care too much,
though, because it's already happened or almost happened?
They don't necessarily do much to prevent it,

(25:24):
but technically, not supposed to happen.
Well, two people have died so far that we know of.
That's just this prison.
I'm just talking in real life.
That's not supposed to happen.
But it happens all the time.
We know that.
Just why do they care about Aggie as opposed to everyone else?
That's why I question.
Now we're at the prison's version of Force Family Fund.
An announcement is made to the prisoners
that there's going to be some sort of recreation day
and there's a mandatory potato sack race.

(25:46):
The next scene is Aggie in the warden's office.
They said they can put her in solitary for her protection.
But she instead chooses to participate
to try to bring the hit girl out in the open.
She'll be the bait.
So now we go outside to the race.
Not everybody's racing, though.
There's just a few people.
Gilda is one of them and Aggie is one of them.
And Melba's there too.
So as they hop on down to the finish line,

(26:08):
it seems like some other prisoners are taking out
anyone who might possibly help Aggie.
I don't know if they're all going for that motivation.
I think some of them just really want to win.
I don't know what the prize is.
Maybe they get released.
Right.
Because some of them are really desperate to win this race.
Maybe they get chocolate.
That'd be worth it.
And then Melba gets knocked down.
Gilda gets knocked down at 1.2.
And as all activities go in the prison, it ends in a brawl.

(26:30):
They're almost to the finish line,
but nobody actually crosses it.
But the bra starts because Gilda crawls over to Aggie
with a knife and tries to stab her.
We got to end this thing.
And this is when Aggie actually recognizes her as Jennifer.
They brawl a bit.
And somehow Aggie gets her up on her feet
and a bullhorn in front of her mouth
so that Jennifer can confess to everybody.

(26:50):
This was pretty ridiculous.
Yeah, and she does confess because all the other prisoners
have her surrounded.
Because they don't like hit girls as we know.
And she confesses to being the mastermind behind the whole thing.
Gorsalino works for her.
She stole the song and it was all a front for this drug operation.
And Aggie asks why she stole her song.
And Jennifer says it was great.
Yeah, she knew it would be a hit.

(27:11):
And then Jennifer's dragged off.
And Los Angeles Chronicle continues with its headlines.
Aggie leaves prison.
But we also get a headline from Variety.
Aggie's song a hit.
So Aggie's released to enjoy her newfound success.
But she goes back anyway.
She's been invited back to perform her hit song.
And let's sleep which she wrote.
[LAUGHS]
For the girls in prison.
Carol seems to be a bit better.

(27:32):
She's in a wheelchair.
But she seems to be responding to the music
and Melba's right behind her.
And for once, a brawl does not break out.
We get to hear the song in its entirety.
Well, we've fed to credits.
And we get to hear the song in its entirety again.
But this time performed by a concrete blonde.
And we notice in the--
Well, you know it's this in the credits.
The name of the art department coordinator
is Leslie M. Bady, which was the name on the record.

(27:54):
It was spelled differently, but we see you Leslie.
[LAUGHS]
Can't be a coincidence.
Anyway, that's the end.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
You're listening to the American International podcast
where we're discussing the girls in prison
episode of Rebel Highway from 1994.
Director John McNaughton also directed Henry Portrait

(28:16):
of the serial killer and Wild Things.
Sam Fuller, who wrote "Pick Up on South Street,"
Helen Highwater, and "Let's Get Harry"
wrote the script along with his wife, Christa Lang.
This was his last film before his death in 1997.
Variety's review of girls in prison
called it "A Kitchen Sync assemblage of 50s topics
but is fundamentally a genre piece,
complete with obligatory shower scene,

(28:36):
lesbian encounter, and catfights."
Rather clunky, it is not the serious finest baby two minutes.
McNaughton takes it rather straight
with actress slightly overplaying.
Bulldoorn Langscript could have used a few jokes,
or at least a knowing wink.
The AV club's Nathan Raven wrote, "Girls in prison
is clearly intended as a campy over the top romp,
but McNaughton never gets a grasp on his material.

(28:57):
Even the film's ostensible set pieces,
catfights, prison riots, and a last-minute confession broadcast
via a megaphone to the entire prison yard
feel static and lifeless.
Of the actors, only Haysh seems to grasp
the inherent absurdity of the proceedings.
She gives a funny, engaging performance
which is, unfortunately, about all girls in prison
has going for it."
In Jonathan Rosenbaum's blog, The Way We Weren't,

(29:19):
he wrote, "Fuller in Lang's energy is such that the movie never
really slows down or becomes any more reflective
over the 73 minutes that remain."
With a manic performance by John Polito as a record producer
and the extensive use of a pop song about death and a sleep
written by the third teenage heroine,
the movie manages to remain delirious
throughout its convoluted story.
It's much too goofy to take as a straight 50s story,

(29:41):
but as a fever dream about the 50s,
it beats any AI/P original I can think of.
Will Kalf, writing for his Silver Emulsion blog,
said, "McNoughten does a great job at making what could be a drab prison movie
burst at the seams with personality and color
to heightened reality even further.
The use of color lights are strong choices,
reminiscent of the 60s, where usually in the 90s
you'd see something much more subdued.

(30:03):
This had the effect of making girls in prison
seem like an older film, and coupled with this straight-up
film noir script by Sam Fuller and his wife,
Crystal Lang, I feel like this one could have easily
been made in the black and white era,
as a serious women in prison film."
So, Cheryl, this is the fifth episode of Rebel Highway
that we've looked at, which means we're about halfway
through this series.
What did you think of girls in prison?
I liked it.

(30:23):
I thought they did give knowing weeks to the material,
and I thought they did realize what the assignment was.
Make a movie based on the title,
not so much the original, although we did see a lot of things
that carried over from the original,
and make it fun, make it colorful,
and make it bright, make it a little 90s,
but keep that 50s vibe.
I think they succeeded in that.
Well, I don't think that the things that we saw

(30:43):
brought in from the original were necessarily because of that,
but more because there are tropes that are used in almost all of these
women in prison films.
That's true, but I haven't seen that many women in prison films,
to be honest.
So, I'm thinking of the ones that we watched for the podcast,
and seeing similarities that may or may not be there on purpose.
And I don't think it really matters if they're on purpose or not,
because you want to take this story on its own merit.

(31:04):
I think this movie is worth it.
In the order that we've watched these episodes of Rebel Highway,
every other one has been dark.
I would say that Road Racers, motorcycle gang, and this one
definitely had darker feel than Sordy Girl and Runaway Daughters.
I think Road Racers, yes, it was dark,
but is there a way to be dark in a light way?
Because it was funny, and they had fun with it.
Bad things happen, terrible things happen.

(31:26):
I mean, it's a Robert Rodriguez movie,
but I wasn't dragged down by the darkness,
and I wasn't in this movie either.
I'm not necessarily talking about darkness as a mood.
I'm talking the movie's dark,
whereas Sordy Girl and Runaway Daughters
were very brightly lit.
Why did the one reviewer refer to the color lights being used here?
I didn't really see that myself,
but they did add that burst of red whenever they could.

(31:47):
Red lipstick, red nail polish, red blood.
Well, yeah, they have to emphasize how much
Maybelline you can get in prison.
[laughs]
You can get that in booze and pictures of film stars.
I didn't notice any Easter eggs here,
except for the Leslie Beatty thing,
which was kind of amusing,
but that was only paid attention to the whole movie.
It wasn't a reference to another movie or AIP at all.

(32:07):
But I really did appreciate the camp in this one.
I did too.
I would hope that in every episode
that the directors would camp it up a bit to have fun with it.
I don't want to see a dreary crime movie.
I want something that's fun and light,
even if it is being dark.
And this was a dreary prison.
Everything's gray.
Their uniforms are denim.
That's why the pop of red really stands out.

(32:28):
And it seems that it didn't take place in the prison.
The opening sequences and the stuff
in Olympia Records Office
and the diner scene that doesn't make any sense.
All that kind of out of place
with the darkness of the prison footage.
Well, that's true, but maybe that's intentional
so that we can contrast how dark life is
inside the prison compared to normal life.
Well, I'm sure it is.
I don't know. The one thing it really bothered me

(32:50):
was that they used a real song
to move the flat-along that exists.
There's recordings that people wrote it
who aren't in this movie.
I thought she should have gone to jail for plagiarism.
Yes, but isn't that a white-collar crime?
If you have enough money,
you could probably get out of that one.
If they didn't do that,
they would have had to write their own pop song
and then perform that.

(33:10):
And it might not be as good.
It's a really nice song,
but yeah, you were really bugged by that.
You've never missed a chance to mention.
That's not her song.
The soundtrack album for the Rebel Highway Series
there's one song from each episode.
So I don't know if they were assigned a song
to put in the movie.
I wonder how that worked.
I think it would be up to the production team
to come up with something like that.
And this movie only uses one song.

(33:32):
Whereas the other ones we've watched
had several songs on them.
They weren't all on the soundtrack,
but each movie had several songs
that played in the background
to kind of set the 50s tone.
Let's see if that carries on for the rest of the episodes.
Music is such a cultural touchdown.
Even people like us who were in a live in the 50s
know what that means.
I don't know if all the hairstyles
really conveyed that in this one.
The word robe was so basic.

(33:53):
I mean, the women were interested in that tracks.
The guys were in suits,
but they didn't necessarily look like suits of the 50s.
Now that they've changed that much over the years,
the guys' fashion doesn't change.
Now that they give off the cheap suit vibe,
I thought I only skyse character.
Her whole look was the,
we can do it from the 40s women and more poster,

(34:14):
but it's the 50s.
It's the Korean War time now.
So I don't know if she just was really stuck on that style
or it was retro for her.
It looks good on her, but kind of odd.
When we first meet Aggie,
she's in jeans and riding that motorbike down the road
with the guitar extractor back in.
It looked more 90s than 50s.
It really did.
She looked like a 90s kid.
Her hair was shaggy and loose.

(34:35):
It should have been pulled back in a shinyal or something.
They had Melba in head scarfs,
which seemed very 50s.
Yeah, it's not like they avoided it,
but I don't think they put a lot of effort into making it seem
like the 1950s.
Susie looked like a pinup girl.
Her hair was kind of short and curly.
Big curls, big round curls,
and she had bright red lips.
And just her whole look was
probably too soon to be a Marilyn Monroe homage,

(34:57):
but it did seem kind of like that.
After Anhasha's character cuts her hair and has
Anhasha hair.
That definitely has 90s feel.
Yeah, she looks exactly like she looked
to then.
She took her wig off and well, now she's Anhasha,
but nobody knew Anhasha in the 1950s.
So she can get away with that.
Okay, so why don't she tell me what you think about Girls in Prison?

(35:18):
Using her AIP scale where A is awesome,
IIs intermediate and P is pathetic.
Well, we've watched now five of these.
And of the five, this is probably my least favorite,
but I still like it a lot.
I think because we have to compare it to her runaway daughters
and road racers, which were so good.
And I enjoy them so much.
And even sorority girl in motorcycle gang,
we're just a little bit of a notch above this.

(35:39):
And yet I want to give it an A because they knew
this whole idea was about.
And they carried through admirably.
The result was exactly what I thought it should be.
A little bit of a nod to film noir,
a little bit of a nod to the kinds of movies
that they're parody.
And yet something fresh and fun and new.
So I think it's definitely an A for me.
What do you think?
I enjoyed this one too, but I agree this is probably

(36:01):
the least of the five that we watched so far.
I would give it points over sorority girl
just for having an original story.
[LAUGHS]
That's true.
That was a direct ripoff.
This may have unintentionally creeps some elements,
but it may not have.
I think there was just some time in the past
where women in prison movies just stop playing it straight
and camp just became an important element.

(36:22):
I don't know if that was the case
for the original girls in prison.
No, I think those are still playing it straight back then.
And we covered 99 Women on this podcast.
And I don't think that was too campy.
No, I would say--
There might have been a touch of it.
I don't think Reform School girl was that campy either.
It was more of a mellow drama.
Oh, definitely.
And I'm glad they didn't go that route with this movie.
I have to just look at this as kind of being an alternate universe.

(36:44):
Where Aguio Hanlon actually did right endless sleep.
And then I'm okay with it.
I'm going to get this one today as well.
If you're watching the Rebel Highway series along with us,
or if you're not, we'd love to hear from you.
The way to get in touch with us is to go to our website,
aippod.com.
Even if you don't want to get in touch with us,
while you're there, you can look at posters,
lobby cards, watch trailers, find out more information
about the movies we've covered,

(37:05):
links to our other episodes.
We'd love to see you there, aippod.com.
We also have a list of movies that we're searching for.
So if you can help us find any of those,
we'd love to be able to cover them on future episodes of the podcast.
And we also have a store.
So check out our merch.
Anything that you purchase will help us keep the podcast going.
That's aippod.com.
Okay, it seems we've served our sentence.
And it's time to release this episode of American International Podcast.

(37:28):
I'm Jeff Markin.
I'm Cheryl Lightfoot.
And we'll meet you at the drive-in.
Follow the American International Podcast on Instagram and Letterbox
at aip_pod and on Facebook at facebook.com/AmericanInternationalPodcast.
The American International Podcast is produced and edited by Jeff Markin.

(37:49):
A man whose mind is distorted by hatred.
And Cheryl Lightfoot.
A girl hungry for too many things.
The American International Podcast is part of the Pop Culture Entertainment Network.

(38:10):
[Music]