Lady in a Cage

Thriller has some contrivances but also enough touches of reality to make it unsettling and disturbing. Olivia is effective as she works up to different levels of hysteria at a believable pace rather than going full bore from the beginning. Ann Sothern is a sad blowzy mess managing to engender sympathy for her character even though she does some disreputable things. James Caan is full of menace and an uncomfortable sexuality in his feature film debut, his simpleton comrades are frightening in their careless disregard for humanity. This is economically directed with a minimum of wasted scenes and a talented cast but the theme of home invasion is to real to provide much in the way of escapist entertainment.

Olivia de Havilland is a "Lady in a Cage" in this 1964 film also starring Ann Sothern, James Caan (in his debut), Jennifer Billingsley, Rafael Campos, and Scatman Crothers. de Havilland is an elegant, wealthy poetess who is recovering from a broken hip and is dependent on an elevator in the house - one of those European types that looks like a birdcage. After her son Malcolm has left for the weekend, an accident outside knocks out the power as she is going upstairs in the elevator. Though she hits an outside alarm, no one who can help hears it. The only ones that hear it? Any thief within a 5-mile radius. A homeless alcoholic (Jeff Corey) is first on the scene; he steals a toaster and alerts a cheap hustler, Sade (Ann Sothern, who resembles Suzanne Pleshette in this film). However, they're no match for the next bunch, played by James Caan, Jennifer Billingsley, and Rafael Campos, who seem like early Mansonites and decide everything is theirs. (Later a third group shows up, and they're the toughest yet.) All the while, the lady of the house sits in the elevator, powerless to do anything about the destruction around her.

This is a harrowing movie, very '60s in its music and the messages are familiar: the urban jungle, druggies, man's inhumanity to man, people not stopping to help, putting themselves and their own agendas first. The de Havilland character is driven to drastic measures - the movie will glue you to your TV set.

The beautiful de Havilland is excellent - as she always is - as the trapped woman who not only has to deal with enemies at the gate but the fact that one of the crooks finds an accusatory note from her son which ends with a suicide threat - and she has no idea there was a problem. "He sounds gay," one of them (Campos) says. James Caan is appropriately frightening, and so hairy it looks as if hair was taped onto his body. Jennifer Billingsley is good as his whacked out, drug-laden girlfriend. Sothern's story has a big continuity hole; it's never resolved. It's always a treat to see her in anything, and she plays this down and out loser very well.

Without de Havilland, this would have been a fairly lousy movie; with her, I think it's a cut above the horror films of other aging, classic film actresses like Crawford and Davis. If there is one thing de Havilland can always bring to a role besides great acting - and I write in the present tense because she's still alive - it's refinement, beauty, and class. Let's hope there's still a role she will agree to play.

This a great film - Olivia de Havilland is perfectly cast in the role as well-to-do old lady with perfect hair, recovering from a hip operation, and (s)mothering her vaguely effeminate son who refers to her as "Darling". Her gradual descent into insanity as she is trapped in her "cage" is chilling to watch. She goes from being an uptight fakey Joan Crawford, through to neurotic terrified Shelly Winters (her scene where she rolls her eyes around in horror is CLASSIC), until ultimately she is a crazed Bette Davis...

I loved the shot of the dead dog, and the cars whizzing by, not noticing the alarm bell ringing endlessly. The fact that the whole thing happens in daylight was a good touch. What made this film good is that I didn't know how it was going to end - it seemed just nasty enough to go all out with an amoral ending if it felt like it. No wonder if was banned in the UK when it first came out.

The inevitable comparisons to Whatever Happened to Baby Jane should be made. In some ways this is a superior film - Baby Jane always appeared a little slow and plodding, and should have been cut by about 30 minutes. Lady in A Cage is just long enough, and it kept me gripped throughout.

Forget whether or not this film is philosophy 101. It's a camp classic - and Olivia's naff poetry and observations about cities being jungles are all part of the fun. Just sit back and enjoy it.

As for James Caan - he makes a wonderful debut, which owes a LOT to Brando and Dean. He appears shirtless for a good deal of the movie, and I don't think I've ever seen a pair of tighter jeans on anyone, before or since. He's the icing that makes this movie a very fine cake.

The presence of big-name Hollywood stars does not guise the fact that this is one of the most flagrant mainstream movies of the 1960s. Surprisingly professional treatment is applied to the very sordid thrills at hand, most notably in the leads' performances which range from entirely believable to wonderfully unrestrained. Exceptional, also, is the film's score which erupts occasionally into a semi-experimental, wild beat-jazz type of noise(particularly effective in punctuating the cool opening credits, an interesting Saul Bass-inspired merging of film and frozen shots with linear animation). I can only imagine how some viewers must have reacted to this at the time it was released...a grimy urban nightmare with implied taboo sex, doped-up punks, and some highly disconcerting graphic violence and cruelty for the time.

Many of the most cherished leading ladies of Old Hollywood's glory days turned up in very lurid lo-budge vehicles during the 60s, and LIAC would be exemplary of that trend for its inclusion of DeHavilland and Sothern. Both actresses are in top-form here, and their professionalism veils somewhat the meretricious nature of the material(DeHavilland an urbane, mollycoddling mother sidelined by an injury who becomes trapped between floors in her home elevator, and Sothern a wearied but soft-hearted cyprian/burglar taking sheepish advantage of DeHavilland's perdition). Making a memorably heady debut is James Caan(channeling Brando), in his joyously immoderate portrayal of a sociopathic and frighteningly cunning young criminal who strikes terror into the heart of helpless DeHavilland. As he gradually comes to understand this woman's patrician, maternal nature, a very personal and pitiable hostility ignites within him. She is the embodiment of all the love and nurture he's been denied throughout his tragic life, and this becomes his chance to settle the score.

Classic must-see stuff for fans of singular 1960s B films within a vague realm which might include WHO KILLED TEDDY BEAR, WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE, THE NAKED KISS, and BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING.

8/10

Released back in the mid-'60's, this sadly overlooked thriller was way ahead of its time and foreshadows the senseless violence that exists in our society today. Olivia de Havilland gives a stunning performance as a partially crippled woman who becomes trapped in her private elevator during a power failure. Meanwhile, three vicious thugs(led by James Caan in his film debut) ransack her house and contemplate murdering a hustler(Ann Sothern) and a wino(Jeff Corey) who are unwittingly along for the ride. It's a gripping, chillingly realistic tale, with first-rate performances by the superb cast. Not only did James Caan make his debut with this film, but LADY IN A CAGE also marked the return of the great Ann Sothern who had been absent from the big screen for ten years to star in the popular TV shows "Private Secretary" and "The Ann Sothern Show".