Grindhouse Weekly vol. 1 – ‘Women in Cages’

In this inaugural edition of Grindhouse Weekly, I thought it would be prudent to start with two big names in exploitation cinema by talking about a film aptly titled Women in Cages.  This film is produced by the legendary Roger Corman, and co-stars a young miss Pamela Grier.  Released in 1971, this is one of the best, and most famous prison themed sexploitation flicks to come out during the time.  While that may seem like a small feat, the women in prison film was actually considered to be a sub-genre of the 70s with tons of these things rolling out.

The concept of the film was simple.  Like most of the films we’ll be discussing in this feature, there’s not a lot of plot going on here.  A young, naive American girl (Judith Brown) gets framed for drug possession by her douchy drug dealing pimp boyfriend and ends up in a Filipino prison. She gets thrown into a cell with three other women, two of whom are also American, and quickly finds out this place is not very nice.  Pam Grier plays the evil lesbian head guard of the prison.

So what can you expect from a film like this?  Exactly what you think you would expect- nonstop nudity with some violence mixed in for good measure.  While the content of this movie won’t shock and offend you to the core like some films of this era, there is certainly enough here to advise against watching it with your grandma.

The film takes place nearly entirely in a run-down, dilapidated prison in the middle of the jungles of the Philippines. Many B movies took place in this area during the 70s due to the cheap labor, exotic locale, and lack of labor laws.  Sets were used and reused the next day for a different film, and everything was done very quick and dirty.

Quick and dirty is probably also an accurate way to describe this film. As a bit of advice to American women, don’t do anything remotely bad in the Philippines or you’ll have a very bad time.  On the plus side, women operated the entire prison, so there wasn’t any funny business from male guards.  The down side was that Pam Grier used the women as her personal sex slaves and would torture those that got out of line.

The film was a mess on a technical level, with massive audio problems throughout the dvd version I saw. The levels were way off in some parts, and some of the actors were dubbed badly. Sometimes the dialogue would simply cut the end of a sentence off when someone was speaking.  The camera work was sloppy, and very little was done in the cinematography department to make this boring location look any better.

The acting was bad as well.  Judith Brown had the best performance of the movie, in that she at least seemed to be making an effort. Pam Grier has since become a very good actress, however in this role she was horrible.  We can all be thankful that she stuck with it but wow was she bad.

Women in Cages is exploitation at it’s finest. Although the acting is poor, and the plot is nearly non-existent, this is actually an entertaining film. It’s the final scene that really drives it home.  While it never had the feel of a fun romp, it’s that last close-up that really makes the viewer feel kind of awful.