9. Scrubbers (1983)
Two young women - Carol and Annetta - escape from an open borstal for girls. Carol wants to be sent to a closed borstal to be with her lover Doreen. Annetta wants to visit her baby daughter who is being raised in an orphanage. Carol ends up in prison but Doreen has a new lover. Annetta is arrested at the convent and blames Carol when she is brought to the same borstal. She is hellbent on revenge but an inmate called Eddie, who is a pretty tough woman, falls for Carol and they become girlfriends with Eddie protecting Carol. But eventually Eddie leaves borstal and also leaves Carol to an uncertain fate with Annetta on her tail. Directed by Mai Zetterling, Scrubbers is the female answer to Scum which was made a few years before Scrubbers. It is a very absorbing film but it isn't in the same class as Scum. Nevertheless, it is a gritty look at what goes on in Women's prison with lots of same sex relationships - however, it must be said that the film doesn't exploit this theme to reel in viewers. The central story of Annetta's revenge on Carol drives the narrative forward. It is tragic because Annetta is driven by fierce maternal love - we can see this in the scenes where she has to be sedated and she hallucinates that her child is in the cell with her. Carol is merely a scapegoat into which Annetta pours her frustration. Kathy Bates turns up in an early role as a borstal girl and Pat Butcher out of Eastenders plays a warden. I watched the film the other day and you could spend 90 minutes watching something a lot worse.