Not a directorial effort from Ida Lupino, but an essential companion to some of her illustrious achievements from behind the camera, which often took noir to unusual locations, whilst confronting important moral and social issues.
In Women's Prison, she is the intractable, autocratic chief, who oversees a repressive regime. She talks a good rehabilitation game, but her heart is full of hate and retribution. As decent and vulnerable new girl, Phyllis Thaxter painfully discovers, Lupino gives no quarter and recognizes no distinction between the hardened criminal and the criminally negligent. Barry Kelly, warden of the adjoining men's prison is cut from the same abrasive cloth. Prison doctor, Howard Duff, provides the voice of enlightenment, reason and empathy, in attempting to take Thaxter under his wing, but finds himself swimming against the current. When he tries to psycho analyze Lupino, her hostility goes into orbit.
In stark contrast, there is an admirable loyalty, unity and camaraderie amongst the cell mates, who openly support each other in the face of the harsh conditions. Not so much a potboiler as a pot about to boil over. That moment arrives, when the heartless Lupino is responsible for an easily avoidable tragedy.
Intelligently written and conceived, to incorporate an interesting romantic subplot involving an inmate from the men's quarters, Women's Prison is not a classic, but a highly charged, emotive and often harrowing drama. Lupino is on top form as the domineering, deranged head honcho, receiving strong support from familiar noirites Jan Sterling and Audrey Totter. The joker in the pack is little known Vivian Marshall, doing splendid impressions of Bette Davis and Lupino's character, with her 'Look here Quackenbush,' routine, offering memorable comic relief in this frequently grim tale. Her sentence?....Probably for stealing Alphabetti Spaghetti!