Women in 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.

American women prisoners in a foreign country. Sex and action.

From producer Roger Corman, and starring Pam Grier as Alabama, we have a story of various women who are locked up in a foreign country (I believe the Philippines). Yes, there are the "women in prison" motifs, such as the showers -- and you might see plenty of nudity. But the film is hardly sexual, as it is so raw and gritty. This is the type of nudity you get from National Geographic.

Pretty much the best thing about this film is seeing Pam Grier kick a little butt, get her butt kicked, and then kick a little more butt. She is one of the early modern strong females in film, and there is no denying her power on screen.

In the dark underworld of Filipino crime, women are mere playthings, discarded when broken. They wind up in prison, and not just any prison. They find themselves in HER prison. Holy mother of all things exploitation, Pam Grier is Alabama, and you'd better not tick her off!

Mind your manners, or you could find yourself in Alabama's "play pen" and be strapped into "the boots"! She might even give you a spin on her "wheel of death"!

She's vicious! She's sadistic! She's single!

Enter Carol "Jeff" Jeffries (Jennifer Gan), who was framed by her drug lord boyfriend. Now, she's just another inmate in Alabama's chamber of horrors!

As in most of the Women In Prison epics, it's good to see that haircare is a top priority in the slammer. Even during torture the women's hair remains soft and manageable!

WOMEN IN CAGES is one of the best WIP movies ever made. Ms. Grier takes it over the moon! Her performance is unforgettable! Watch and be converted!...

"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. (**)

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.