Lack of good storyline.

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Anyone who has waded through the infamous video nasty list will no doubt come to the conclusion that an alarming number of the films really have little to no shock content whatsoever. Human Experiments is a perfect example of this. It's really extremely difficult working out what exactly it was that the British censors objected to here. Maybe they just chucked every woman in prison flick onto the list irrespective of substance? Hard to say but there truly is no troubling content in this film. And that is a real shame because there isn't an awful lot in this film of any real interest. Its video nasty status is clearly its only real selling point so you may feel a little short changed with this one.Its story has a female country and western singer wrongly accused of slaughtering a family and sent to a correctional facility where she is subjected to experimental aversion therapy techniques.It starts quite well but once we reach the prison things start to become really quite uneventful. For a woman in prison flick there is a very low level of sexploitation content. The 'human experiments' of the title are somewhat underwhelming to say the least. The main shock scene is certainly the part where the heroine is covered in insects and spiders. I personally found that somewhat disturbing so fair enough on that score. This scene comes late in the movie and it does have to be said that in the latter 20 minutes or so things do pick up a bit. Better late than never I suppose. It ends with a strange and senseless ending. In the final analysis, this isn't very good but it's offbeat enough to bring it up to the level of mediocre.

Bar-room singer Rachel Foster (Linda Haynes) is wrongly convicted of murder and winds up in a correctional facility where mad Dr. Kline (Geoffrey Lewis) is conducting experiments on the prisoners.Considering its lurid title, promisingly perverse premise and 'video nasty' label, I was expecting (or should that be 'hoping for') Human Experiments to be a sleazy slice of 'women in prison' depravity in the vein of fellow 'nasties' Women Behind Bars or Love Camp 7; instead, it turned out to be an extremely tame addition to the WIP genre, offering very little in the way of true deviancy, but plenty of the dull kind of drama that typifies your average made for TV movie of the era (unsurprisingy, writer/director Gregory Goodell would go on to make plenty of these!).Apart from the typically indelicate induction routine suffered by all new prisoners in exploitation movie jails (stripped naked, showered and given the once over by a tough nurse), and a brief (non-explicit) masturbation scene, nothing particularly sexy or sordid happens in this prison, with a distinct lack of hot lesbian inmates, despicable male guards, or communal bathing. Dr. Kline's experiments also prove to be extremely disappointing: there's no electrodes on the nipples or surgery without anaesthetic, but rather a series of psychologically traumatising episodes designed to reduce the prisoner to a childlike state, after which they are to be rebuilt as model citizens.If you don't like creepy crawlies, then the scene where Haynes is covered in cockroaches, spiders and other assorted bugs might prove cringe-worthy, and trash fans should find the delightfully silly (and rather unlikely) ending to be amusing, but in all honesty, this is one of the least offensive 'video nasties' on the entire list and only worth watching if you're intent on seeing all of the films vilified by the BBFC during the 80s.3.5 out of 10, generously rounded up to 4 for a fun cameo from Aldo Ray as a lecherous bar-owner, and the brief full-frontal nudity from Ms. Haynes.

This movie is most famous for having been banned in Britain during the "video nasty" scare of the early 80's. I can only suppose the idiots mistook it for a Nazi death camp exploitation flick, like the similarly titled "S.S. Experiment Camp", because it's really not all that shocking or offensive. 70's actress Linda Haynes plays a country singer. Haynes was very cute and sexy, but she was a TERRIBLE singer, which might explain why her character only gets booked by horny hicks at honky-tonk bars out in the middle of nowhere. While driving back from one of these gigs, her car breaks down. She goes to a farmhouse to use the phone, only to discover that a pre-teen boy living there has slaughtered his entire family with a shotgun. She shoots the homicidal tyke in self-defense and ends up being blamed for all the murders.The movie for awhile turns into a rural WIP movie like "Jackson County Jail"--there is a "de-lousing" and shower scene, some aborted lesbianism, and a brief cat fight--but not as much as usual in a WIP film (gratefully, perhaps since all the other prisoners are generally unattractive). But this particular prison also has a bent psychiatric doctor played by Geoffrey Lewis (side-kick to Clint Eastwood and the father of Juliette Lewis). He has some crackpot therapy where he breaks the worst offenders down to the level of infants, where they're clutching teddy bears and sucking their thumbs, and then he tries to "rebuild" them as respectable citizens. So far, however, all his "experiments" have gone horribly awry.The scenes of the prison authorities breaking the Hayne's characters will are pretty effective--the crackpot shrink is also a frustrated entomologist, so at one point they pour disgusting insects all over her, and they do other stuff like stage mock executions and try to convince her she's going insane. None of this rises much above the level of a TV movie though, and it hardly justifies this movie's "nasty" status. The image of grown women reduced to infantilism is kind of disturbing, but if this were a Jess Franco or European WIP film, they probably would have tried to make this sexy somehow, which would have been far more disturbing.The ending is REALLY stupid, but I didn't find this movie boring generally speaking. And it certainly didn't deserve the "nasty" treatment it got from the British censors.

The things I sit through in the name of film reviewing so other people may not have to, Damn I'm a real masochist! This obscure piece of crap is a good case in point. It starts out with self employed singer Rachel Foster (Linda Hayes) driving along a desert road in the middle of nowhere, she drives past a sign that says 'Putnam County Elevation 4,250', she pulls up along side a bar and introduces herself to the owner Mat Tibbs (Aldo Ray). The next thing we see is Rachel singing (badly) and performing to a bunch of redneck looking guys in cowboy hats. After this less than thrilling opening, and after she gets ripped off by Tibbs, she's back on the road again. While distracted behind the wheel a girl (Theodora Tate) runs out in front of her car and Rachel hits her. She veers off the road and goes back to try and help her but Rachel can't see the girl as she has been thrown into some shrubbery by the roadside. Rachel notices a house and heads towards it in the hope of finding help. Rachel knocks the door but no one answers and since the door is open anyway she decides to just go in. Inside she discovers three members of the Lewis family, the Father (James O'Connell) his wife (Rebecca Bohanon) and their son (Timothy Coyle) brutally murdered by the fifth member Darell (Robert Porter). She fears for her life and arms herself with a shotgun from a nearby rack and proceeds to check the house. She finds Darell and in self defence shoots him which puts him in a coma from which his doctors say he will never regain consciousness. There goes her alibi. She runs from the house and is arrested by the local Sheriff (Jackie Coogan). In court Rachel doesn't have a leg to stand on and is found guilty of first degree murder. She is sentenced to life in the Gates Correctional Facility. The psychiatrist who works at the prison, Dr. Kline (Geoffery Lewis) takes an interest in Rachel and singles her out for some unusual forms of 'treatment'. Warden Webber (Mercedes Shirley) is a bit uneasy with Dr. Kline's methods but goes along with it and helps him cover any potential problems up from the outside authorities. Will I be able to stay awake to watch this crap to the end? Will Rachel be able to survive Dr. Kline's bizarre therapy? Personally speaking I didn't care in the slightest but someone out there might I suppose, does seem unlikely though. Co-produced and directed by Gregory Goodell I thought this film sucked. It has absolutely nothing to recommend it. It's exploitation elements are virtually non-existent, there's a brief masturbation scene, a very short shower scene and one or two extremely quick glimpses of female nudity but nowhere near enough for this type of film. The film also features a scene where a room fills up with live insects and bugs that crawl all over Rachel, there doesn't seem to be any reason for this but what the hell, to be fair it almost sparked my interest, hey I said almost! Maybe the filmmakers wanted to create a serious study of prison life from the perspective of a wrongly accused woman (Ha! right sure they did!), well if they did they failed miserably in this aspect of the film too. I'm not sure what the script by Richard Rothstein was aiming for, as I've already mentioned it works as neither exploitation or as a more serious thought provoking film. It just sucks all round. The ending doesn't make any sense either. The film appears to be shot in a real prison and for that reason it actually looks OK, acting isn't as bad as it perhaps could have been but it still ain't great. John Travoltas sister Ellen Travolta has a smallish role as an inmate Rachel befriends nicknamed 'Mover' so called because she gets things done, apparently anyway. The music is terrible as well, especially when Rachel 'sings' and there is another awful musical number when a band of talentless hacks perform at the prison to the inmates. I really don't know the type of film watching person who would get anything out of this lame excuse for a film, I certainly didn't. Recommended to insomniacs and masochists only, everyone else steer well clear!