I watched “Chained Heat 3” a week or so before I sat down to write this review. I had something to celebrate that day, I don’t remember what but I decided to celebrate with a bottle of Jim Beam, and a big can of some kind of beer while I watched the movie. All I remember is asking my roomate if I could have a slice of his pizza then waking up in my own drool the next day. When I sat down to write the review I thought “thank god I keep notes when I review a movie.” When I dug them out a week later this is what I had written down:
Titties: 7 – Rapes: 1 – Lesbian Sex: 2 – Voice over -→ Dave Chapelle, weighing scene longest ever & gay guy…
O.K. so I would have to just take the cheap way out! The cheap way being “borrowing” IMDB.com synopsis, posting a bunch of dumb stuff like the movies tagline and director and hopefully coming up with a few things I remember from the movie. Walla! Instant movie review and part 2 of our “The Lost Art of Women in Prison Filmmaking.” However, IMDB does not list a synopsis,but the tagline is this: “Fear Is Their Way Of Life… Survival Their Obsession,” and I am fucked because even I won’t steal someone else’s review. So thefore I give you HorrorYearbook.com’s “Chained Heat 3: Hell Mountain” the drunk review!
This was actually written by the same writer of “Chained Heat 2,” Chris Hyde, with first time director Mike Rohl, who is still directing TV today. Why and how Chris Hyde decided to make the Chained Heat series jump from post communist Prague to the post apocalyptic future is something I would like to find out, because it’s a really big jump. It’s actually probably just one of those boring producer things where Chris wrote a script for something else, and they just decided to change the name so it would sell better. Which you can kind of figure out since it was orginally titled just “Hell Mountain,” and produced by Lloyd A. Simandl the director of “Chained Heat 2.” It was a good idea for Lloyd to get out of the director chair because “Chained Heat 2″ (Read Review Here) was a complete bore and this one was not. The only problem is that I just gave you too much useless information on both these films, and you probably just got a little dumber for reading all that!
Like I said “Chained Heat” takes place in the future, but it’s one of those futures where everything has reverted back to, as my white trash sister would say; “Little House on the Prairie Days”. No computers, no electricity for anyone other than the evil dicatator of Hell Mountain, Stryker. Of course they have all that stuff including the mandatory motorcycles, however, because it is written somewhere that the only thing that will survive the end of the world are roaches and motorcycles.
Hell Mountain is kind of like Thunderdome, where Stryker rules it but he is reliant on a cripple to run it’s computers. He is the last known “teacher” and the only person who can do so. Stryker trades flour to poor villages for their young girls so they can be whisked off to the mountain to move rocks for some unkown reason. During one of the longest scenes in cinematic history, Stryker and his henchmen weigh each girl and pay the mayor of the villiage according to their weight. When they discover one is packing some bricks to add weight, Stryker has his butch assistant molest each one.
Even though in “Chained Heat” every girl in the jail is really innocent this time, the main story revolves around Shira (I think) who’s mother sells her to Stryker for some booze (crack would have been cooler but I guess they can’t make crack anymore in this future). Shira’s boyfriend finds out and must go on a journey to find the last “teacher” to teach him to use some computer disk to shut down Hell Mountain.
“Chained Heat 3″ is a fun twist on the women in prison film. It has all the must WIP moments; a very long shower scene where the guards just spray down the prisoners as they wash each other, hot lesbian sex scenes and so on, plus it adds that fantasy journey type element like S.H.E. or Conan, with Shira’s boyfriend’s journey through the forest of the “teachers.” I also love the whole post-apocalyptic, medieval weapons vs old technology, as Shira’s boyfriend has to fight Stryker’s men, who carry guns, with a bow and arrow. If you’re bored with the old formula of women in prison films then I suggest you give “Chained Heat 3″ a try.
Read Our Intro to “The Lost Art of Women in Prison Filmmaking”
