As one performs one's walkabout through the landscape
of crap films, one cannot help but eventually encounter the steamy
jungle of the Women in Prison movie. Incredibly lucrative, the Women
in Prison (or WiP) movies easily encompass the Three B's of Drive-In
Filmmaking, as laid out by Joe Bob Briggs: Breasts, Blood, and Beasts.
Or, perhaps, even more to the point, the Three S's: Showers, Sex,
and Sadism. This is a pattern we will encounter more than once in
this realm.
Since
even WiP films must have a plot of some sort, we meet our heroine,
Terry (Anitra Ford, also a model for The New Price is Right!),
as she is brought, via limousine, to a gambling establishment in
some generic banana republic country. Gossiping extras inform us
that Terry is some sort of actress who has been sleeping her way
up the ladder of the country's government; currently she is sleeping
with the Prime Minister. The more exploitation- savvy in the audience
will also notice that the entertainment in the club is being provided
by Pam Grier and Sid Haig.
Well, Grier and Haig are actually playing dime-store
revolutionaries named Blossom and Django (and I have all their albums).
They whip out weapons, as do several accomplices in the crowd, and
proceed to rob the patrons to finance la revolucion. Django
has the brilliant idea of snatching Terry, too, for ransom, because
she has "class". The escape goes sour, with Django diving
into a river to escape the cops, who immediately blame the robbery
on the one person they manage to catch: Terry.
Ah, yes, Terry's wanton
actress lifestyle*
has gotten her into deep trouble: the local government has been
wondering what to do about her (discreetly, of course), and she
has proven such an embarrassment that the American consul won't
even see her. So she is packed off to a women's prison farm, with
a specious promise that she will be released in a few days "when
things cool off".
Thus Terry finds herself in a nameless prison in a
nameless land, a prison where, oddly enough, all the inmates are
in the age range of 17 - 25, the dress code includes cut-offs and
tank tops (but not bras), and although lacking many luxuries, there
is apparently no shortage of blow dryers. The prison is overseen
by Warden Zappa (?!?!) (Andy Centenera), a villain so evil, the
first act we see him commit is the kicking of a puppy.
Zappa is also the architect of the Big Bird Cage itself,
a three-story sugar mill in the center of the compound, around and
in which most of the women work. The Cage itself is so unsafe that
actually working inside it, near the enormous crushing gears, is
used as punishment; it's also where "accidents" are arranged
for informers.
As
an added kicker, the chief guards, Rocco (Vic Diaz) and Moreno (Subas
Herrero) are gay - we are led to believe that the other guards are
also, but we cannot be sure, as they are not given any lines. As
this is 1972, this means the women are all sexually frustrated (as
Carla, played by Candice Roman, wails, "If only I could get
laid by a real man...I could stand all this!") and are constantly
hitting on Rocco. When Rocco isn't hitting them, that is.
The sole Lesbian inmate, Karen, is chained to her cot every night
"for her own good".
A group of junketing politicos visit the farm, as
Zappa extols the virtues of his work program. Terry manages to get
herself assigned to Party Girl duty so she can tell someone in power
how bad things actually are in the prison; unfortunately, two of
the politicos recognize her and she is quickly whisked back to the
dormitory, where she can do no harm. This also means that the fragile
Rina (Marisa Delgado), whom Terry has taken under her protective
wing, is left alone with lecherous pigs, and she freaks out, destroying
furniture and driving everybody out into the dark, dark night; Zappa,
furious, increases everybody's work load.
Meanwhile, Django's revolutionaries, while watching
Blossom and Django's cabin shake rhythmically during one of their
Shag Sessions, have an idea: the revolution needs an army. The revolutionaries
need women. Let's break everybody out of the prison farm! Trouble
is, that means they need someone on the inside: and the only possible
candidate is Blossom. So Blossom gets herself arrested by tossing
a dud hand grenade at a minor official. Not that she knew it was
a dud...
While
Blossom is standing in the middle of Town Square hissing, "Sh*t!",
Terry has determined which way the wind is blowing and escapes the
farm, unfortunately landing right in midst of a situation primed
for a gang rape. She is only rescued from even worse by the arrival
of Rocco and his guard dogs. Rocco looks around the shack at the
men, then back to Terry. "Why doesn't anything like that ever
happen to me?" he asks her.
Terry's troubles, of course, are far from over; as
punishment for her attempted escape, Zappa has her (literally) hung
by her hair. Then he doubles everyone's work load. Arriving at this
cheery scene is Blossom, who immediately sets to taking the prison
population over. This is accomplished via a mud wrestling match
in the farm's rice paddies, Blossom versus Bull Jones (Teda Bracci)
the former Boss. Concurrent with that, Django shaves off his Castro
beard so he can pass himself off as "Sam S. Smith" ("the
S stands for Thavage!"), homosexual world traveler,
so he can play up to Rocco and get a job as a guard.
Called into Zappa's office over the mud wrestling
incident, Blossom is recognized as Django's 
consort,
and the sadistic Moreno sets to torturing her to reveal the revolutionaries
whereabouts. Django is shocked when his first duty is to take Blossom
to the infirmary so she can recover; but his sudden appearance gives
Blossom strength. She also, coincidentally enough, winds up on the
cot next to the recuperating Terry, so they can plot the big getaway.
The Big Bird Cage breaks down, and Zappa forces one
of the girls to crawl underneath to repair it; when the structure
further collapses, she is crushed. The distraught Karen grabs a
machete and charges Zappa, 
whacking
off a guard's arm in the process. For her trouble, she is machine-gunned
repeatedly. This almost sparks off the riot that Django and Blossom
need, but the timing is wrong; Blossom manages to stop the angry
girls by force of will alone.
Zappa, worried, summons
Army reinforcements, but they're a day away; that night, Django
takes Rocco hostage and drags him to Terry's old dorm, distributing
some molotov cocktails and leaving Rocco to the women's tender mercies.
Of course, Carla, the really sex-starved one, gets the idea that
they should rape Rocco. Fairly ironic, considering his previous
statement to Terry.
(Pornmeisters, start your engines: Although we see
absolutely nothing, the scene is fairly explicit in intent
and execution.While Rocco is tied on the floor, one woman opines
that's he'll never get hard. "I'll get him hard!" snaps
Carla, immediately going down on him. After a moment, the women
smile approvingly. Carla claims him first, since she did the work,
and mounts him. As Rocco begins shrieking in horror, Bull Jones
silences him by sitting on his face. To quote Rocco here, "Why
doesn't anything like that happen to me?"
But now I've said too much, and we should really get on with
the movie.)
In Blossom's dorm, the women have been making spears
under her direction. Django arrives with her favorite machine gun.
Zappa gets wise at about the time a bomb goes off in the 
watchtower
- the signal for the women to make their move. Mayhem ensues, especially
when the Army arrives early and starts shooting everything with
mammaries - especially the group that stayed around to torch the
Big Bird Cage. Zappa, distraught at the fiery demise of his creation,
hangs around a bit too long groaning "No! No No!" like
a distressed Ricky Ricardo. As the structure begins to collapse,
the dying Bull prevents Zappa from escaping, and they are buried
under the flaming debris.
In
fact, almost nobody gets out alive; only Terry and Rina. Even Django
is shot, and Blossom hangs around to avenge his death long enough
to fall prey to a hand grenade. Found by Django's revolutionaries,
Terry and Rina get on a boat to civilization, but Terry swears she'll
be back: "I can can twist those comic opera politicians around
my little finger," she says.
It's a pattern that dates back to Corman's Youth pictures
of the late 60's... well, probably back further, to the exploitation
movies of the 30's that masqueraded as cautionary tales, like Marihuana:
Weed with Roots in Hell and Sex Madness. You can do practically
anything in such films as long as the participants meet a sticky
end. Easy Rider, Psych-Out, The Trip, even Wild in the
Streets... all have downbeat endings, that allowed more conservative
filmgoers to say "There. You see? That's what you get!"
while still giving the hormone-soaked youngsters what they wanted.
The Big Bird Cage has a reputation as one of
the better WiP films, with reason. Written and 
directed
by Jack Hill, already a veteran of low-budget films like The
Terror and Spider Baby (and, yes, The Big Doll House),
directs with a sure hand, keeping things moving along briskly. There
are some shortcomings with the structure of the script, however.
The parallel storylines of Terry and Blossom are handled too blockily;
it seems to take days for Blossom to reach the prison compound,
and similarly, Terry seemingly hangs by her hair for days while
Blossom takes over the prison. And we never find out what
anybody else did to deserve their prison sentences.
One
of the more bizarre subplots in the movie is the antagonistic relationship
between the 7 foot tall (or so it seems) lesbian Karen and the diminutive
black woman Mickie (Carol Speed), which is terminated by the crushing
scene at the Bird Cage. Each of these incidents begins with Mickie
baiting Karen, and ends with the resident dyke lunging for her and
Mickie running away, screaming like a little girl. The strangest
this gets is when Karen strips down and coats herself with chicken
fat so she can slip through the grip of anyone trying to stop
her from reaching Mickie. Why is this utterly strange scene even
there? Well, we hadn't seen a naked woman for several minutes at
this point....
The movie also endeavors to Have Its Cake And Eat
It Too, by injecting humor in and amongst the violence and gratuitous
nudity - it's a tribute to Hill's ability that it actually manages
to succeed most of the time. The banter betwixt Rocco and the inmates
during lighter moments is often genuinely funny. The scene where
Django first makes the acquaintance of Rocco as the swishy Steve
would be offensive if it weren't so damned silly, and if Vic Diaz
didn't convey a bit of actual vulnerability in the scene.
However, the stereotyped gay scenes that follow quickly become tiresome.
And wonder of wonders, the acting is uniformly good.
Sid Haig is a better actor than anybody wants to admit (and so is
the late Vic Diaz, dammit. Character actors never get any respect).
Pam Grier (who was apparently in every WiP movie ever made) plays
her tough, independent black woman role, which she can probably
do in 
her
sleep (and let me just say it is so good to see her back
in the public eye again). Although each and every woman is some
flavor of cliche, they play their roles well and at the last, are
likable - it's important that we root for the characters trapped
in the WiP, after all. Speed and Bracci, in particular, went on
to have relatively long careers in this business - Speed was the
title character in Abby and Bracci was most recently seen
as Calamity Jane in Hocus Pocus (if one can believe the IMDb)
.
Not that these things were ever meant as metaphors
for female empowerment, or anything - scenes of women with automatic
weapons notwithstanding, these films appealed mainly to the young
men in the crowd - women took off their clothes, things went boom,
and blood flowed. The fact that Mr. Testosterone's date could possibly
enjoy The Big Bird Cage - as long as she possessed a fair
sense of the absurd and some self-awareness - is possibly it's best
recommendation.
