Dr. Gore’s Funhouse recently spoke to cult B-movie director Tom DeSimone about his 1986 women-in-prison classic Reform School Girls, which featured exploitation regulars Sybil Danning (Chained Heat) and and Tiffany Helm (Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning). Ostensibly a spoof of the genre, which DeSimone had previously explored with Prison Girls and The Concrete Jungle, Reform School Girls has since been hailed as a cult classic.
The movie told the story of Jenny (Linda Carol), whose part in a foiled robbery results in her being sent to a girl’s only prison which is run by the twisted Warden Sutter (Danning) and her deranged henchwoman Edna (Pat Ast). The movie also marked a rare acting turn from Wendy O. Williams, better known as the singer for punk band Plasmatics, who would later commit suicide in 1998 at the age of forty-eight. Exploitation veteran Linda Blair was initially offered the lead role, having previously worked with DeSimone on the 1981 slasher Hell Night, but would turn down the movie for fear of being typecast after appearing in other women-in-prison flicks like Born Innocent and Chained Heat.
“The film was strictly for entertainment. No axe to grind, no soap box to get on regarding the treatment of women or young girls. It was our intention to just poke some fun at a genre that was well-established and had always been done with serious overtones. We wanted to keep our tongue-in-cheek attitude and just have a good time with it,” said DeSimone when discussing the film with Dr. Gore’s Funhouse. “The only new approach was the humour we decided to go for. These are well-known characters, well-known situations and almost all the WIP films up till then featured similar situations and characters. My intent was to take them and make them broader, funnier and more entertaining if possible. Nothing seemed to be too over the top for us as we were putting some things together.”
All images courtesy of Tom DeSimone.
Read our exclusive interview with Tom DeSimone.
Childhood memories, I miss Wendy O. Williams…… RIP
The third woman in the photo is me……..