EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.

When you see Dick Randall’s name on a movie, you are going to get sleaze.

Directed by Conrad Brueghel, who is really Italian actor Giovanni Brusadori, who wrote the script with Bruno Fontana and George Eastman — speaking of sleazy — this starts with some young tennis players on their way to a meet when they come across four escaped female convicts — Marina (Lilli Carati, L’alcova), Betty (Artemia Terenziani), Diana (Marina Daunia) and Erica (Ada Pometti) — who have already shot their own bus driver, Pierre. As Marco (Francesco Ferracini), the bus driver for the tennis team, lets them on the bus, they soon discover that these are the escaped killers and a terrorist!

One of the girls, Terry (Ines Pellegrini, Giorni damore sul fil de una Lama), knows a place they can hide out, the home of a judge (Filippo De Gara). It’s a gigantic place and soon, the girls are assaulting each of the men — and women — as well as forcing the judge to wet himself. Anna (Zora Kerova, The New York Ripper) seems to be the only tennis player that doesn’t freak out — like Claudine (Dirce Funari) — or join the enemy, as Terry does. Terry even pistol whips her and nearly shoots her, but can’t bring herself to kill someone.

This movie goes through some wild changes, like the judge becoming one of the bad guys as he assaults Monica, the other three girls trying to shoot their way out instead of going to jail, case after case of J&B, tennis girls getting drunk while being abused and facing death by cop outside and no one really getting out of this alive because the cops somehow are even worse than everyone, even the Communist terrorist who finally gets to explain her point of view and mellows out, instead of being the final boss.

This isn’t really a women in prison movie, but a warden does get shot in the head, so it gets the end of the WIP story correct.

The end credits say, “In spite of the evident close correspondence with day reality, the facts, events and characters are completely fictitious. The director thanks co-workers, technicians, crew, actors and all those who cooperated with enthusiasm and dedicated themselves in the best tradition of cooperatives, making the production of this film possible.” That’s because this was based on a true story.

21st Century licensed this to Continental Video, where it lost ten minutes so it could be on a double feature tape with Sweet Sugar.

You can get this from Severin, who promise a “new 4k scan of a dupe negative seized from notorious NYC distributor 21st Century Film Corp.”