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Women in Prison is a Japanese spin on the traditional Hollywood "babes behind bars" opus. Filmed in semi-documentary fashion, the narrative focuses on several particularly troubled and troublesome female inmates. Tying the various plot strands together is a chief guard known as "The Angel," who does her best to rehabilitate one of the younger prisoners, a sad victim of circumstance. The frankness of the film's lesbian subplot was quite an eye-opener for American audiences of the mid-1950s. Women in Prison debuted in New York as part of a festival of Japanese films assembled by the Museum of Modern Art.