-Grindhouse Fest spotlights the cult gems, sleaze classics, and deranged wonders that defined exploitation cinema’s golden run. Proceed with delight and caution-
Directed by Don Jones
Written by Don Jones
Starring:
- Gary Kent as Frank Barrows
- John Parker as John Barrows (credited as John Stoglin)
- Stafford Morgan as Robert Matthews (credited as Robert Mathews)
- Suzanne Lund as Ginger
- Cheryl Waters as Bonnie (credited as Leah Tate)
Rating: 
Few pieces of regional sleaze roll around in their own filth quite as enthusiastically as Schoolgirls in Chains, Don Jones’ bug-eyed backwoods nightmare where Psycho-style maternal madness gets dragged kicking and screaming through the mud of drive-in exploitation. This thing is pure grindhouse scum: two demented brothers, one acting like a drooling lab rat with a fetish for “doctoring” kidnapped women, the other a sadistic maniac who treats abuse like performance art, all operating under the diseased shadow of mommy dearest. Jones directs the whole circus with a weirdly cold, almost documentary bluntness, refusing to glamorize any of the ugliness. There’s no flashy style here, no artful suspense — just sweaty depravity and cheap motel-room psychosis smeared across the screen with unnerving sincerity. The fractured pacing and awkward sound design often feel less like deliberate experimentation and more like technical incompetence accidentally mutating into atmosphere, giving the movie this broken, schizoid rhythm that weirdly works in its favor. And the Psycho influence isn’t subtle; it practically screams in your face. Controlling matriarchs, sexual dysfunction, warped mommy-fixation — Jones takes Hitchcock’s themes and hurls them into exploitation quicksand. Unlike Psycho, though, this one trades implication for full-blown grubby explicitness. It’s ugly, mean-spirited trash, but there’s something oddly prophetic buried beneath all the sleaze. You can practically see future echoes of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Mother’s Day festering inside its rotten little heart. Messy as hell, but when the full force of its deranged mama’s-boy nastiness kicks in, it becomes one deeply unpleasant exploitation wallow worth remembering.
