'CHAINED HEAT' LIKELY TO LEAVE FILMGOER COLD

'CHAINED HEAT' LIKELY TO LEAVE FILMGOER COLD
Miami Herald, The (FL)
May 30, 1983
Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic
Estimated printed pages: 2

Chained Heat is your basic visit to the snakepit, with a few twists. One is the presence of Linda Blair, as the innocent (she's in for vehicular homicide, "an accident," which makes her cell-hardened fellow inmates snicker with anticipation). Another is that rarely in the history of either movies or the?penal system have prison officials and guards been seen to be quite this despicable.
In Chained Heat, one of the problems the gals have is with Ernie, the warden (played by John Vernon, once wonderful as Dean Wormer in National Lampoon's Animal House). Ernie has an office, but he also keeps a big-house sin pad, where he has hidden video cameras and a jacuzzi. He likes to have the inmates in for the night, get 'em in the bath and tape the whole deal. He saves the tapes and tells everybody about them. He's not very smart.

But he has problems of his own, because someone is muscling in on his illegal-drug racket; someone else is selling cocaine to the prisoners. The rival pusher is Ernie's gal Friday, Capt. Taylor (Stella Stevens), but Ernie doesn't know this, and he's pumping his informants for the truth. All the guards take sides, including one of the men, who is a rapist, and for whom the female guards act as pimps, and...

And so it goes. Chained Heat is pretty slimy all around, but it does have three moments of marvelous dialogue:

* In the midst of a wave of knifings, garrottings and bashings, most directed at squealers among the inmate population, Blair's character has just squealed. Confessing this to another inmate, she weeps softly and says, "Val, please don't hate me."

* Rioting prisoners are trapped inside the prison when a police helicopter arrives, and a voice comes over the bullhorn: "We've got the place surrounded."

* Ernie, while taping an inmate in the jacuzzi: "Don't call me Warden, call me Fellini."

Movie Review

Chained Heat (R) *

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CAST

Linda Blair, John Vernon, Sybil Danning, Tamara Dobson, Stella Stevens, Sharon Hughes, Henry Silva, Edy Williams

CREDITS

Director: Paul Nicolas

Producer: Billy Fine

Screenwriters: Vincent Mongol, Paul Nicolas

Cinematographer: Mac Ahlberg

Music: Joseph Conlan

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A Jensen Farley Pictures release

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Vulgar language, nudity, sexual situations, violence, adult themes

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