We meet Bobby Joe, our southern Belle; Jennifer, our Pam Grier Mama, Suds and Bubbles, twin nymphomaniacs, Rosie, the Hispanic tough guy, Gladys the cannibal prom queen, the sadistic but maternal Matron, and the evil Warden Schpiel. When fellow "bitches" start to disappear, Penny realizes it falls on her to prevent Warden Schpiel from carrying out her devious plan for world domination.
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When Penny - like the coin - a know it all virgin from Ann Arbor, Michigan, finds herself kidnapped in a helicopter hurtling across the ocean and locked away in an island prison with a rainbow of violent and sexualized female stereotypes, we start to hope there's more going on than meets the eye. B!tch Island takes tropes from sexploitation films and reverses the gender of the actor playing them. 
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In the '70s and '80s, a bunch of men thought they could make a bunch of money by making a bunch of films featuring female prisoners engaged in sexual and violent exploits. Wow were they right. These films became known as Women in Prison (WIP) films and became a cult phenomenon, inviting as much social criticism as titilation from all gender and sexual identities.
WIPs have stock plots akin to porn, with rape being a common occurence. The stories vary from film to film (i.e. sometimes it's an island prison, sometimes it's a prison camp) but they usually include a riot, shower scenes, and somehow, impressively, mud wrestling.
The characters are also stock, built not just on gender but racial stereotypes: this was also the era of the Blaxploitation film and Pam Grier is perhaps the most famous actress to come out of all this, best known for "Foxy Brown."
Classics of the genre include Caged Heat, Chained Heat (directed by Jonathan Demme!), The Big Doll House, The Big Bird Cage, Women in Cages, Reform School Girls, films as ridiculous and exploitative as their titles were super uninventive. Today, at first, these films silly and quaint, but they remain jawdroppingly offensive, mostly when we notice that the representations of women in Hollywood has not changed all that much since these films were made.
WIPs have stock plots akin to porn, with rape being a common occurence. The stories vary from film to film (i.e. sometimes it's an island prison, sometimes it's a prison camp) but they usually include a riot, shower scenes, and somehow, impressively, mud wrestling.
The characters are also stock, built not just on gender but racial stereotypes: this was also the era of the Blaxploitation film and Pam Grier is perhaps the most famous actress to come out of all this, best known for "Foxy Brown."
Classics of the genre include Caged Heat, Chained Heat (directed by Jonathan Demme!), The Big Doll House, The Big Bird Cage, Women in Cages, Reform School Girls, films as ridiculous and exploitative as their titles were super uninventive. Today, at first, these films silly and quaint, but they remain jawdroppingly offensive, mostly when we notice that the representations of women in Hollywood has not changed all that much since these films were made.
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