The inner Babydoll meets the only good male in the film appearing as an old man. (Scott Glenn apparently taking a David Carradine-ish slot) he informs her of the things she will need to steal to complete her escape. As the story progresses Babydoll will draft Vanessa Hudgens as Blondie, Jamie Chung as Amber, and Jena Malone as Rocket, and her reluctant big sister Abbie Cornish as Sweet Pea to aid in not only her escape, but theirs as well.

Okay, if you do not think too hard and enjoy watching hot chicks shooting things while wearing lingerie, you will say ‘okay not a bad flick’. However if you look a little deeper you will see a thesis paper on the mental health, the female psyche and feminism.

First off, you have the dark side of the 50’s and psychiatric care laid out here. Read ‘One Flew over the Cuckoo’s nest.' In the 50’s if, you were a bit recalcitrant and hostile, it was a good way to be drugged with Thorazine or – as the movie depicts, lobotomized. In fact most Lobotomies were done on women and many on children.( Ogren K, Sandlund M (2005) Psychosurgery in Sweden 1944–1964. J Hist Neurosci. Dec; 14(4):353-67 PMID 16338693)

So you have a young woman who is nearly raped by her stepfather, accidently kills her sister and then is being locked up in a lunatic asylum. If her psyche was not shattered before she goes in, then it most certainly would be once she saw what was going on. Mental intuitions were a nightmare, just shy of the outer levels of hell.(http://www.mnddc.org/parallels2/prologue/6a-bedlam/bedlam-life1946.pdf)

So what is the young woman to do? The second Wave of feminism had not hit with Betty Friedan's 1963 book The Feminine Mystique, nor was it likely that Babydoll would have been thought much about the concept of feminism. This leaves her with the tragic standard course of action for any oppressed woman, to fight or to use her feminine wiles. Babydoll does both.

Continued Below...



The fruit of knowledge to her freedom comes in an almost biblical form of the temptor Madam Gorski. The most famous Gorsky of this time was Anatoly Gorsky, a Russian spy, so obviously she is not to be trusted.

Now we have the asylum switch to a bordello and back and Blue go from orderly to mustachioed pimp, and back and forth. We are tossed to and fro, as Babydoll dreads the arrival of the ‘High Roller’.