Celas em Chamas

Director Jonathan Demme's CAGED HEAT is a great example of the Women In Prison movie. All of the prerequisites are here:

#1- Women in snazzy street clothes behind bars!

#2- Multiple, full-on shower scenes!

#3- Cat fights!

#4- Thuggish / hillbilly guards!

#5- A sadistic, insane female Warden (played by the one and only Barbara Steele)!

#6- Gun fights!

#7- Hard core inmates!

#8- Breakouts!

#9- Torture!

Yes, this is a masterwork of its subgenre, and one of the gems in Producer Roger Corman's crown. Erica Gavin plays the woman who gets caught at the beginning, winding up in the pen. It's rough going, especially when she crosses paths with the tough-talking, no-nonsense Maggie (Juanita Brown). Ms. Steele's character isn't in it as much as you might think, but she makes the best of her crackpot role. Also, watch for Rainbeaux Smith as the very lovely Lavelle.

Highly recommended for the true WIP connoisseur...

We have a bunch of chicks that looks pretty good and they have balls too. They are not some amazing actresses but they are OK: Juanita Brown, from "Foxy Brown"(1974), directed by Jack Hill, Erica Gavin, from "Vixen!"(1968) and "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls"(1970), both directed by Russ Meyer, Roberta Collins, from "The Big Doll House"(1971), directed by Jack Hill, "Women in Cages"(1971), "Death Race 2000"(1975), Ella Reid and Cheryl Smith are "the good girls". Barbara Steele is the "bad girl", the crazy Supt. McQueen, the prison boss. And Warren Miller is the "bad boy", the crazy Dr. Randolph, the prison doctor. They are all doing their best in this debut of Mr. Jonathan Demme, it's not so bad like somebody wrote right here, watch it, without high hopes, and judge for yourself! At least, you'll see some naked women...

Arguably the finest women in prison (WIP) film ever made, CAGED HEAT proves that even a trash exploitation film can aspire to decent artistic values. Jackie (Erica Gavin), an accomplice in a drug related crime, is sent to a southern penitentiary run by an oppressive, wheelchair-bound warden (Barbara Steele). Jackie's cell mate Lavelle (Cheryl Rainbeuax Smith) suffers from suicidal nightmares while another prisoner, Pandora (Ella Reid), is reprimanded for entertaining her fellow inmates with a mildly lewd vaudeville act and placed in solitary confinement. Her loyal friend Belle (Roberta Collins) begins sneaking through the ventilation ducts to bring her food from the kitchen until she's caught when she surprises an elderly staff member who abruptly dies of a heart attack. Meanwhile, the prison bully Maggie (Juanita Brown) picks a fight with Jackie and gets them both in hot water. Though the warden is a bit stern, the real threat turns out to be the demented prison doctor (Warren Miller). He subjects Jackie and Maggie to illegal electric shock therapy and prescribes a more permanent `cure' for Belle: corrective brain surgery, which he intends to perform with a Black and Decker power drill (!). Jackie and Maggie finally work out their differences and manage to escape in a highjacked prison truck. But Jackie can't bring herself to abandon Lavelle, Pandora, and especially the doomed Belle. With Maggie's help, she plans a daring prison break to rescue her friends.

Jonathan Demme's script provides believable characters and several imaginative dream sequences, and his direction is filled with impressive camera angles and novel wipes and dissolves. He even commissioned an appropriately down and dirty soundtrack from blues legend John Cale. Because of these frequent artistic flourishes, CAGED HEAT is one of the few WIP movies to win the respect of critics. In spite of the abundant exploitation and nudity, the film unexpectedly also won the approval of some feminist groups who praised its positive depiction of `Woman Power.'

A hugely appealing cast helps the movie immeasurably. Ms. Steele earned a reputation as the original `Scream Queen' with her edgy performances in horror classics like Mario Bava's BLACK SUNDAY and Roger Corman's THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM (both 1961). She's cast largely against type here as the prudish warden, but a dream sequence in which she performs a raucous Vegas style dance number wearing glittering tights and sheer stockings reveals her character's repressed eroticism, a quality Steele projected in all her roles. Leading lady Ms. Gavin made her screen debut several years earlier in one of the first hardcore adult features, Russ Meyer's VIXEN! (1968), which was a gutsy career move in an era when many actors were arrested for performing sex acts on film, then still a punishable crime. The petite Ms. Smith enjoyed a busy career in exploitation films during the '70s and early '80s; she tragically died of hepatitis in 2002. But beautiful blue-eyed Ms. Collins, who had already appeared in two previous WIP movies (THE BIG DOLL HOUSE and WOMEN IN CAGES, both made in 1971), steals the show as the endearingly faithful Belle. The character takes considerable personal risk to help her friend Pandora and ultimately suffers for her effort. When we see her molested by the perverted doctor and learn that she's scheduled to become his next lobotomy victim, the news is genuinely shocking and upsetting, which nicely sets up Jackie and Maggie's race against the clock to save her. In other words, Belle ultimately becomes the emotional focus of the entire plot, and Ms. Collins handles the pivotal role with winning charisma and grace. She went on to appear in countless more cult B movies, including a fourth WIP film, VENDETTA (1986).

Demme of course went on to even bigger and better things, becoming one of the most successful directors of his generation. He won a Best Director Academy Award in 1991 for THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, which also won the Best Picture Oscar.

There's lots of naked showering in this movie about women in prison. It's all young woman, ranging in age from 19 to 30, except for elderly, wheelchair-bound Barbara Steele (who's 37) as the warden, who wears glasses. There's also Warren Miller as the doctor who likes to experiment with his unconscious subjects and take pictures.

It's Jonathan Demme's first movie as director, and it's exploitation all the way, baby. It's never clear for most of the movie why they're in prison; it's thirty minutes in before one of the inmates talks about how she wound up in the joint, and like every convict, it's a bad rap. Yet when they get a chance to escape, they all seem competent with stealing cars, handling weapons and so forth.

It may be hard to reconcile the director of films like SWIMMING TO CAMBODIA and PHILADELPHIA with trash like this. Yet that was the entree to directing in that period. Earlier, fledgling directors might come out of the vast landscape of B westerns or short comedies. In the 1950s, directors started out in television and moved to the big screen. In the 1960s and 1970s, they worked for AIP and Roger Corman. Yet despite some prestige pictures in the 1990s, Demme returned to trash, with remakes of THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE and weird stuff like RICKI AND THE FLASH, like John Ford returning to westerns. Some people never forget where they come from.

Unbelievable that a director like Jonathan Demme, responsible for clean and sober Hollywood stuff à la "Silence of the Lambs" or "Philadelphia", started his career in the sleazy world of the B-movies..! But next to his colleagues Brian de Palma and Martin Scorcese producer legend Roger Corman gave him the right kickstart! The film itself has all ingredients a good B-movie´s got to have, because "Caged Heat" is dirty, suspense-packed and happily far beyond the political correctness of Demme´s later films! Nudity, soft sex, violence... there´s nothing left out a decent exploitation movie should contain! Two appearances are absolutely shiny: the one comes from Erica Gavin, the unforgotten boob queen in Russ Meyer´s hilarious sleaze classic "Supervixen"! However, the even greater performance is given by the grand dame of horrors, Barbara Steele! Her part as a paralysed and prudish prison director is the main attraction in this rough WIP-flick! Director Jonathan Demme should have made more films like "Caged Heat"! Unfortunately Oscars became more important to him than honest movies...