Women in prison film

Women in prison film (or WiP) is a subgenre of exploitation film that began in the early 1900s and continues to the present day.

Their stories feature imprisoned women who are subjected to sexual and physical abuse, typically by sadistic male or female prison wardens, guards and other inmates. The genre also features many films in which imprisoned women engage in lesbian sex.

WiP films are works of fiction intended as pornography. The films of this genre include a mixture of erotic adventures of the women in prison. The flexible format, and the loosening of film censorship laws in the 1960s, allowed filmmakers to depict more extreme fetishes, such as voyeurism (strip searches, group shower scenes, catfights), sexual fantasies (lesbianism, rape, sexual slavery), fetishism (bondage, whipping, degradation), and sadism (beatings, torture, cruelty).

Prior to these films, the only expression of pornographic women in prison was found in "true adventure" men's magazines such as Argosy in the 1950s and 1960s, although it is possible that Denis Diderot's novel The Nun anticipated the genre. Nazis tormenting damsels in distress were particularly common in these magazines.

Most women-in-prison films employ the same stock characters and formulaic situations. Characters that are fellow inmates may include a sarcastic prostitute, a manipulative snitch, or an aggressive lesbian. The female criminals are usually hypersexualized and fetishize homosexual relationships. The authority figure of the prison is usually a cruel woman who herself is a variation of the traditional prison lesbian. Common scenes in women in prison films may include:

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