5 femmes à abattre

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...

Erica Gavin stars as Jacqueline Wilson, who is sent to jail for between 10 and 40 years. Once inside, she finds herself at the mercy of strict warden Supt. McQueen (Euro horror star Barbara Steele) and perverted Dr. Randolph (Warren Miller), who quietens troublemakers with a spot of lobotomy. Together with some of her cellmates, Erica makes a desperate bid for freedom…

Trashy women-in-prison flick Caged Heat was directed by Jonathan Demme, the same man who, seventeen years later, would win an Oscar for Silence of the Lambs. This being a low-budget exploitation movie from the Roger Corman production stable, there isn't much to suggest the director's future success, his film delivering the expected genre ingredients—lots of nudity (inc. full frontal), (mild) torture, (mild) sexual abuse, a cat-fight etc.—all at a lively pace, but little else of note.

Nowhere near as sleazy as Jess Franco's WIP films, or as memorably fun as Jack Hill's, Demme's film is one for fans who have seen all of the essential titles, but still have a hankering for more babes behind bars action (without scraping the bottom of the genre barrel).

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.

Ahhh... 'Caged Heat'! I get a big grin on my face just typing the title! Look, you either dig Women In Prison movies or you don't, and if you do 'Caged Heat' is the second best one ever made, in a tie with Jack Hill's 'The Bird Bird Cage'. (The best for me is still 'Chained Heat' starring Linda Blair and Tamara Dobson, made a few years after this genre is generally regarded as being at its peak). I think the only thing stopping it from being number one is the absence of Pam Grier. If she had played the character of Pandora instead of Ella Reid, 'Chained Heat' would be IT. Funnily enough, three of the major cast members (Juanita Brown, Roberta Collins and Rainbeaux Smith) had co-starred in various Grier vehicles ('Foxy Brown', 'The Big Doll House', and 'Drum' respectively). This is Jonathan Demme's directorial debut after serving his apprenticeship with Roger Corman as a writer and producer, and he really came up trumps. Demme manages to make a tough and tense W.I.P. movie and a playful, tongue in cheek parody of one simultaneously. He has made more accomplished and successful movies since this, but arguably none more entertaining. The cast is an impressive one, not just Brown, Collins, Smith and Reid, but Russ Meyer bitch goddess Erica Gavin ('Vixen!') and horror legend Barbara Steele ('Black Sunday', 'Pit And The Pendulum', 'Night Of The Doomed', 'Shivers',etc.). I also liked the perverted Dr. Randolph played by Warren Miller. 'Caged Heat' is first class trash, and a perfect example of 1960s/70s exploitation movies exemplified by the energetic and fun output of American International and New World Pictures. We will never see their likes again! Enjoy!

As the director of such films as The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, and Rachel Getting Married, director Jonathan Demme has garnered a basket-load of nominations, and a few awards including an Oscar. Everyone has to start somewhere, and this is his directorial debut.

The film features Barbara Steele, the star of the Italian horror masterpiece, Black Sunday, as the prison superintendent. The rest of the cast were either novices, or veterans of B movie films like Vixen or Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.

Not the most exciting dialog, but plenty of boobage, and one really crazy doctor.