Femmes en cages

American B-film companies found in the Philippines a cheap, plentiful supply of labour and locations for their tropical drive-in sleazefests. Admittedly these exploitation films are an acquired taste and a dubious form of entertainment; however they mark an important cultural milestone as the first features where a black actress, even playing a prison moll or topless revolutionary, is given a lead role of any substance. Director Jack Hill started the eightball rolling when he shot The Big Doll House in 1971, set in a nameless Latin American prison but filmed in the Filipino jungle. Unseen in Australia since the early 70s, the film featured a mixed cast of local and American exploitation regulars, but it's remembered as the first high-profile role for the later Queen of Blaxploitation, Pam Grier.

Legend has it that Sam Arkoff, head of American International Pictures saw a statuesque Grier at his company switchboard and cast her on the spot for her breakthrough hit Coffy. That, as they say, is bull shee-it. The former beauty queen made her film debut in 1970 as an extra in Russ Meyer's big breast bonanza Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls, and appeared in a number of B-pics shot in the Philippines the following year for AiP's rival company, Roger Corman's New World Pictures. Alongside her role as the tough-as-nails prostitute in Big Doll House were supports in the horror flick The Twilight People and as a topless hooker (again!) in Cool Breeze, then back behind bars for Women In Cages.

In Women In Cages, Grier plays the sadistic warden for once, a pot-smoking lesbian with a fully-equipped torture chamber (including a guillotine!). The 'New Fish' (a recent inmate, for you prison film novices), a ditzy blonde ex-stripper called Alabama, has taken the heroin possession rap for her pimp boyfriend. She knows too much, so the pimp blackmails her cellmates to execute her. A competent and well-shot entry in the tropical prison genre from Filipino director Gerry De Leon, it places the embittered ex-addict and prostitute Grier in the position of slave owner, watching her white charges toiling away in the plantation with obvious ironic glee.

"Women in Cages" reunites the three main cast members of "The Big Doll House" (Pam Grier, Roberta Collins, Judy Brown), but the results suffer from a massive downgrade in quality. Roberta once again steals the show, as she is three times the looker AND the actress that anyone else in the film is. Sometimes I had to pause the tape just to look at her amazing face. She has one great catfight here, but (sadly) she does no arm-twisting this time. Pam Grier is too young for her role and comes across as wooden, and the main lead is forgettable. The film has its moments, but it's mostly dreary and unpleasant. If it weren't for Roberta, I'd say just forget about it. (**)

Pam Grier is in this - and you may or may not be aware of her, but after watching this, you will have her on your radar. Really mesmerizing performance. And while the movie itself was not exactly good, the other actors give it their best shot too. Women in cages - it's almost taking the (sub)genre and put it into your title. It literally is if you think about it.

As with every good (and bad) of these female prison exploitation movies (I have not seen many, but they sort of write themselves to a degree), you have a lot of violence but also a lot of nudity. It just is inevitable. Sleaze and down and dirty as it goes. This is I would imagine not the worst of them, though if you are into that sort of thing, you'll find something to "enjoy" anyway

Afraid of being caught with a stash of heroin by the Filipino law enforcement, a drug dealer named "Rudy" (Charlie Davao) slips the package inside a purse belonging to his girlfriend, "Carol Jeffers" (Jennifer Gan). When she is apprehended, she remains silent in the naive belief that Rudy will pull some strings and get her released. Instead, she is sentenced to 10 years of hard labor in a remote prison deep inside the Philippine jungle. Even then she remains convinced that Rudy will make every effort to get her out. Instead, he tries to ensure her silence by having one of her cell mates named "Stoke" (Roberta Collins) kill her. If that wasn't bad enough, the main patron named "Alabama" (Pam Grier) takes sadistic pleasure in torturing the inmates and Carol is in her sights. At any rate, rather than spoil the film for those who haven't seen it, I will just say that this is essentially a B-grade exploitation film. The acting is second rate, and the fight scenes leave much to be desired. Likewise, as in most films of this type, one should be aware that there is some nudity and a couple of graphic scenes here and there. Even so, the story flows smoothly and there are some attractive women, most notably Judith Brown (as "Sandy") along with the aforementioned Roberta Collins and Pam Grier to keep things interesting. And while it's certainly not a great film by any stretch of the imagination, it's not necessarily a bad film considering the genre.

For those viewers who are accustomed to cheering on the antics of cult actress Pam Grier on screen, her character in 1972's "Women in Cages" may come as something of a surprise. Far from her bodacious, sympathetic action heroine, she here plays as nasty a personage as can be imagined: a pot-smoking, white race-hating, lesbian sadist from Harlem named Alabama, who is the matron in an exceptionally sleazy Filipino prison for women. Fans of this type of film--a subgenre that includes other New World films such as "The Big Doll House" ('71) and "The Big Bird Cage" ('72), both with Grier--know what to expect from such: nude shower scenes, sadistic but lovely prison guards, a handful of gorgeous inmates and over-the-top action sequences. While not as much fun as the other two films just named, "Women in Cages" does still provide the requisite goods, and Pam stakes her claim to be placed in the pantheon of such classic female jailers as Dyanne Thorne in the "Ilsa" films, Barbara Steele as the crippled warden in "Caged Heat" ('74), and my favorite, the grotesque matron that Hope Emerson plays in "Caged" ('50). In addition to Pam, the film boasts the presence of cult favorite Roberta Collins, as a smack-addicted rat fink; several catfights; vermin (of the snake, rat, leech and Filipino bounty hunter/rapist varieties); torture by fire, whip, rack, wheel and electricity; AND an oceangoing brothel. Though I still prefer the underrated Grier films "The Arena" ('73) and especially "Black Mama, White Mama" ('72) to this one, "Women in Cages" still proved an entertaining diversion.