In August, I attended HorrorHound Weekend in my hometown of Indianapolis, Indiana.  As a veteran of various comic conventions and previous HorrorHound shows, it’s an experience I love.  Do I spend too much money?  Oh, for sure.  Is it a lot of walking around and looking at the same thing over and over as if I’m driving an IndyCar around the famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway?  Kind of.  But what I enjoy can be summed up fairly easily by saying I enjoy the time with friends, buying stuff, and sometimes, sometimes, finding something new that I wouldn’t normally be aware of.

That brings me to a couple movies I’ll cover between now and the end of 2018 – Amazon Hot Box and Space Babes from Outer Space.  The former being this week’s featured film.

Amazon Hot Box comes to us from James Anthony Bickert, and while that title sounds like something that Jeff Bezos would send his enemies via drone after he’s had too many PBRs, it’s actually some good old fashioned women in prison exploitation goodness.  And that’s what we do around these parts – talk about hot boxes and boobs.

From the back of the box, the pitch is this: “An American college student is apprehended during a rebel round-up in the banana republic of Rattica.  She is incarcerated into the island penal system overseen by Wardress Von Krupp who is constructing the world’s greatest information extractor.  Crocodiles, religious zealots, psycho inmates, and voodoo-based experiments block her every escape.  Life is cheap and the jungle explodes in Amazon Hot Box.”

I mean… right?  Let’s dive in!

(As is the case with all of the featured movies on B-Movie Enema, I basically live blog the viewing experience so it is important for me to issue this warning for a movie that has only been released in the last few months that this article will contain a TON OF SPOILERS.  If you’re here for the first time curious about what this movie is all about, welcome!  Just keep in mind, you may want to watch the film first.)

We start with a pretty blonde running through a jungle.  She approaches a barb wire fence, and, oh no, there’s a crocodile thrashing about.  I bet you anything that she’s gonna run afoul of that croc…

She’s shot in the head.

The movie wastes no time in introducing us to this film’s version of a Dyanne Thorne/Ilsa style warden, Wardress Von Krupp.  It actually reminds me a bit of Ilsa, The Tigress of Siberia with a beginning of an inmate running away only to get killed by our lead villainess.  Bravo.

As the credits run, three new girls are brought to the jungle prison – Penny, our American student (the lovely Kelsey Carlisle – who I just so happened to meet at a drive-in screening of this movie), Ebony, and Jade.  Penny begs to be let loose citing a mix up.  See, she’s just a college student.  She’s not a rebel and isn’t involved in any rebellious shenanigans.  Unfortunately for her, the guard doesn’t really care.

Back in the States, we meet Agent Sixx, a badass, and saucy number being sent to Rattica to overthrow the dictator in charge there.  Her boss gives the lowdown that El Presidente is an American named Jett (played by Jett Bryant and he has been in a bunch of Bickert’s movies as a guy named, well… Jett) who got wrapped up in a coup and placed in charge by a drug cartel.  She also explains who is aiding the cartel in keeping prisoners in line and locked up – Inga Von Krupp, who we already saw at the very beginning.  Some nice tip of the cap in dialog form really drives home the Ilsa comparison by calling her a sadist, a harem keeper, fascist, etc.  Sixx is tasked with assassinating Jett and retrieve Agent Five who was inserted, but has gone radio silent.

As Agent Sixx is on her way to Rattica, our new prisoners are admitted.  Von Krupp, and a weirdo doctor partner of hers, who is totally a fucking stand in for former Indiana Governor and now second-in-command weirdo, Mike Pence, issues their ultimatum to the de facto president.  He is basically going to be a pawn in Von Krupp’s covert war against the United States.  He’s not so hot on the idea of being their puppet.  He just wants the massive amounts of dope they have on the island…  And a taco (it’s a recurring joke about how much he just wants some tacos and beer).

Penny has a tough time getting acclimated to prison life.  I mean, go figure, right?  Val, a seductive, and cruel, purple haired tough bitch decides she wants to break Penny.  She first threatens to burn Penny with her cigarette.  Val then sits on Penny’s face and makes her clean her ass with her tongue or she’ll kill the other two girls she came in with.  This is a moment directly taken from Ilsa, The Wicked Warden with #10 forcing our main heroine to clean her butt after taking a hot dump.

Again, bravo, movie.  It’s like you’re a movie after my own heart.

Admittedly…  I was all in for this purple haired Val chick sitting on Penny’s face.  Call me a pervert, but I have my likes.  Then I realized that Val’s sexy purple hair had made me forget that she was just on the crapper.  I put two and two together just about when Val was telling Penny to clean her ass.  I was then about 25% less into it than I was before.

Which was about 234%, so…  Who’s a weirdo now?

Elsewhere, Agent Sixx has made landfall.  The first person she sees is a fisherman on the beach.  He sees her in her bikini, and, naturally, digs what he’s seeing – until she tosses a shuriken in his fucking forehead.  She gets into her sexy spy outfit and goes to a beachside bar where she starts asking locals whether they’ve seen Americans.  When they don’t give a satisfactory answer, guess what…  She threatens them with a shuriken to the fucking face.  They come at her with pool cues and hammers, but she kicks their asses.  Oh, and kills them Jason Voorhees style with a machete for one and ripping the heart out of the chest of the other.

But fuck that…  Val is finger banging a couple of her bitches!

Val, sweetie, you’re winning me back over to your side.  Like, before with the making the sweet, innocent girl clean your dirty asshole with her tongue?  That was kinda mean.  But I do enjoy your vicious desire for pleasure.  We do learn, though, that Val has been at the prison longer than anyone else (again, directly paralleling #10 from Wicked Warden).  Jade and Ebony explain that she may be the only person who truly belongs in there.

Jett discovers that the president he overthrew is still actually “alive”.  Well, alive in the sense that Von Krupp made him witness himself being buried alive, so now he thinks he is the walking dead or a zombie or something.  There’s some voodoo being done here and some strange science experiments happening.  That’s all we need to know.

In a wonderfully gratuitous shower scene, it’s time to see everybody’s boobs!  Penny is fighting one of Val’s bitches.  Val “punishes” her other bitch by making her go down on her because she didn’t want to fight Penny and then two other chicks come in and start making out with Val!  Holy shit, this is a masterpiece.

Also… Ummm, Val?  Ma’am, I would not like to fight Penny either.  Can I be punished?

Um, yes.  Erm.  So this movie’s, um, plot?  Before all this naked fighting and kissing of Val’s boobs and licking of her lady bits, Penny was kind of freaking out, and I think she was either just standing there while Ebony and Jade made some plan to break out and have Penny’s family fund a revolution or she was imagining it all.  Anyway, I think she was coming up with her own plan.  So, Penny snaps and nearly kills Val’s bitch until a guard comes in and breaks it up.

Von Krupp and her weirdo doctor, Vice President Pen… um, Dr. Greeley, have lunch to discuss… things.  I’m not sure it’s all that important compared to the Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS reference happening on the table between them.  A girl is barb wired about the face, and she’s standing on a block of ice.  As we’ve seen previously… That ice melts, that girl is fuuuuuucked.  You can probably see why I actually categorized this with the “Ilsa She-Wolf of SSeptember” movies, right?

What they actually talk about during this lunch is each of their current projects for gathering information and fucking with people in general.  Von Krupp wants to create a torture device that will basically force people to tell her whatever she wants.  Dr. Greeley is working on a serum that will turn the victim’s greatest sexual pleasures into their deepest fears, basically turning them into born again Christians to which Von Krupp responds, “What’s the point of that?”

Amen, sister.

The fight between Penny and Val’s bitch, as well as Val being fondled by pretty much everyone else, causes Von Krupp to have a discussion with her prisoners, and make an example out of one of them to restore order.  Val rats out Penny for being the instigator, but Ebony steps in and insults Von Krupp.  She takes Ebony instead to test out her brand new torture device.  Dr. Greeley asks for a couple girls for his demonstration of his serum and Val tells him to take everyone else.

Von Krupp explains her “incredible torture machine” as she begins to show it off with Ebony as her test subject.  Basically, it’s a fucking nightmare device.  It is equipped with adrenaline shots to keep the prisoner cognizant.  It can cauterize wounds to keep from bleed out.  It is basically designed to keep the prisoner alive from 12 minutes to 12 months.  She explains to Ebony that it’s up to her how disfigured she wishes to be before she tells Von Krupp what she wants to know.

Unfortunately, the machine malfunctions and kills Ebony pretty much instantly.  Oopsies!

Dr. Greeley takes his turn.  He pours gas into the cell where Penny, Jade, Val’s two bitches, and some other prisoners are.  They begin to writhe in pleasure and some begin making out with each other.  Greeley enters and disrobes.  He starts proselytizes to them.  What starts as sexy making out and various other business turns into another fucking nightmare as a couple of girls kill themselves before Von Krupp stops it all.

Agent Sixx locates Jett and she plans to go forward with her mission to kill him, but she’s dropped into a bottomless pit under his room.  Von Krupp and Greeley are angry that the agent was killed because she could be used in interrogations to find the missing Agent Five and who it is inside the prison itself.  When Greeley tried to convince everyone to join him in becoming gods with his serum and methods, he gets thrown into the bottomless pit.  Meanwhile, Val’s bitches help Jade and Penny escape.  Unfortunately, Jade is killed by the zombie president guy.

And so we come to the thrilling final act of Amazon Hot Box.  Penny is on the run from Von Krupp.  She is nearing the beach when she is shot.  Von Krupp was going to finish her off, but she’s told by her dwarf lieutenant, Gordo, that her torture machine is fixed.  Before being washed away, Penny finds a phone on the beach and reveals she is, in fact, Agent Five.  She tells her superiors that all is lost and they can destroy the site completely.

As the prison is destroyed, Von Krupp gets into her torture machine, naked, of course, and asks Gordo to turn it up to the highest setting.  As she lets it do its magic, there’s a song playing that is almost like the Cannibal Holocaust theme.  Like, she’s getting injected with shit, a super dildo starts fucking her, and her nipples are being burned off, but goddamn if there isn’t some pretty music playing.

Von Krupp is getting all fucked up.  Val’s bitches come back for my purple-haired goddess and pay her back for all the shit she’s done to them.  Agent Five and Sixx’s boss is blowing everything up.  Zombies are running wild.  It’s horrifically vicious, but it’s… It’s actually beautiful.  Goddammit…  I’m actually loving this orgy of death and destruction.  It’s cruel, it’s gory, but man…  Kudos all around for everyone involved with this movie.

This is a marvelous little love letter to exploitation flicks – particularly the women in prison subgenre.  That said, there are little nuances that are wonderfully sprinkled about.  There are too many plots for the movie to really support, but a lot of the movies it is aping did too.  Remember Ilsa, The Tigress of Siberia?  Remember how it started as this prison flick in the 50s, then went to the 70s and had all these weird other things about crime bosses and mind control techniques and shit?  Amazon Hot Box does wonders to copy that batshit insane clusterfuck of extra plots that really do nothing for the main story – which is pretty razor thin to begin with anyway (to its benefit).

Kudos to everyone involved.  I can’t say that enough.  Ellie Church is spectacular as Von Krupp.  Kelsey Carlisle is the perfect “good” girl for this movie’s protagonist.  And Val…  Ooh Ms. Tristan Risk…  My golly I do love you and your kinky purple hair.  I mean…  I am probably revealing a lot of my own damage that I go to the cruel bitch of the movie for my jollies, but holy shit what can I say?  I like what I like.

As for writer/director James Bickert, I’ll be revisiting his stuff as soon as I can.  His production company, Work In Progress, LLC, on their About Us page on their site, mentions their main drive is to entertain.  They clearly have a love for these cheesy exploitation films of yesteryear and they mirror that fun and gore and sexiness brilliantly.  Check their stuff out.

I know I will.

Speaking of other films related to some of the actresses in Amazon Hot Box, as well as Bickert himself, I will be looking at Brian K. Williams’ Space Babes from Outer Space before the end of the year, but for the next three weeks, I plan on bringing to you a little Christmas angel of vengeance.  I have the Angel Collection box set that needs to be cracked open before I meet up with those Space Babes.  So, next week, come back here for the first of that trilogy, 1984’s Angel!