Orinoco: Prigioniere del sesso (1980)

... aka: Blood for Liberty
... aka: Hotel Paradis
... aka: Hotel Paradiso
... aka: I'm Coming Your Way
... aka: Orinoco: Paraiso del sexo
... aka: Orinoco: Prison of Sex

Directed by:
"Tony Moore" (Edoardo Mulargia)

Filmed back-to-back with ESCAPE FROM HELL (1980) by the same director, producers and crew on the same sets and featuring most of the same stars, this women-in-a-jungle-prison sleaze-fest features more of the same only with the accent placed more on sex and action than sadistic torture, though there's no shortage of that here either. This one doesn't waste any time getting right down to business as there's a group shower scene a whole three seconds after the opening credits conclude and then a sex scene a few minutes after that. At this particular South American prison camp, the ladies are all volunteer prisoners who don't know how bad it really is there until it's too late. They're used for slave labor and the people who own it are having the government foot the bill as they force the girls to work from dawn to dusk digging around for emeralds. Warden Jordan (Luciano Rossi), who's not quite right in the head, is stressing out because he's been unable to locate many jewels as of yet and his crop of girls are becoming weak, fatigued and unproductive from how hard they're constantly worked. After blowing off some steam with his female guard Margo ("Agota Gobertina" / Gota Gobert), he sends for a new crop of ladies to be sent in to help out.

Meanwhile, a group of revolutionaries led by Moreno (Attilo Dottesio) are plotting to overthrow Jordan's prison camp to “free our country from all tyrants.” Moreno sends his main man Laredo (Anthony Steffen) and some others in his group on foot through the dangerous jungle. All but five get gunned down by guards during an ambush but they continue on regardless. At the same time, a few other guards and four shady hired guides led by Orinoco (Stelio Candelli) are escorting a handful of new prisoners, including slutty murderess Maria (Cristina Lay), who was arrested for “strangling an old bastard,” level-headed former nurse Lorna (Maristella Greco), shy and innocent Maise (Maite Nicote) and tough girl Frieda (Adelaide Cendra) to the camp. The two groups eventually cross paths and Laredo and his men kill the guards and get the upper hand. Now their numbers have suddenly increased as both the guides and the ladies decide to work for the revolution's cause.

Back at camp, the prisoners (all decked out in super short skirts so they're always exposing something) are shown slogging away in the mud pits looking for stones as guards whip them, berate them, push them, kick or slap them and occasionally rape or kill them. There's a cat fight (“You must have been brought up by the virgins of the Salvation Army, you dyke!” [lol, wtf?!]), one “fatso” keels over dead from heat exhaustion and another attempts to hide emeralds inside her cooch but has them ripped out and is then tied up and left outside overnight. Prisoner Muriel (Ajita Wilson), who's black so she knows all about voodoo, talks to the “good spirits” who haunt her cell and foresees “lots of blood” in their future, but also freedom. Once the revolutionaries arrive, they easily ingratiate themselves into the camp. Maria is put in a cell with Muriel and the two almost immediately start lezzing out. Lorna, with her nursing background, is put to work improving the infirmary. Orinoco, Laredo (now posing as a guard) and the rest of the guys are invited to stick around for awhile to rest up until they're ready to transport a bag of jewels back to the city.

While we're waiting for the good guys to get their shit together and finally do something we're treated to a bunch of sex and torture scenes. Three of the girls attempt to break out on their own, which ends with two of them shot dead and third strung up by her wrists. When Masie and Frieda reject the sexual advances of Jordan and bisexual Margo, one of the girls is held down and raped with an iron bar. They're then forced to spend the night in “the hole” and are taken out, tied to two bamboo poles and viciously whipped. Crazy Jordan even has his main guard Cesare (Franco Daddi) gun down one of his own men after he threatens to quit. Once the breakout finally does occur, we get lots of gunfire, explosions, chicks lurking around with gardening tools and Marie running around topless lighting sticks of dynamite with a cigar and tossing them at guards. Dead bodies are hilariously lying all over the place by the end. This is pretty much the epitome of good, dumb trashy fun.

There are many different cuts of this movie circulating around. Seems like Britain got it worst of all, where it was cut by over 30 minutes (!!) for an early home video release. It also played theaters there as I'm Coming Your Way on a double bill with some Mary Millington “blue” movie. Though I'm not aware of ANY U.S. release for this one aside from the butcher job that was SAVAGE ISLAND (1985), which uses some footage from this, some footage from Escape and then added new footage featuring Linda Blair, the videos issued in most other countries ran between 80 to 85 minutes.

The most complete cut to my knowledge is the 94 minute version (currently distributed by Njutafilms out of Sweden), which is also the XXX version featuring a handful of ugly, dark and pointless hardcore inserts that do nothing for the film as a whole. Unlike many other films that had bits of hardcore added later on by others so they could play as adult features, the scenes here were obviously shot on location by the same director to prepare for such a release. Several scenes clearly use doubles, but there are a few where the original actors apparently agreed to do them. Wilson is involved in both an explicit lesbian scene and an explicit masturbation scene with a joint (?), though that's not so out of character for her. Biggest shocker of all is that the otherwise mainstream Luciano Rossi (a veteran of many spaghetti westerns) is involved in not one but two explicit scenes and it's very clearly him performing in at least one of them as his face is visible while it's going on. The cast includes Zaira Zoccheddu and Serafino Profumo, who were both also in Escape from Hell.

★★1/2