LET’S GET PHYSICAL: WOMEN IN CAGES (1971) ** ½

FORMAT:  DVD

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on July 14th, 2011)

Women in Cages is pretty much like The Big Doll House and The Big Bird Cage, except its missing director Jack Hill’s trademark black humor.  Because another director, Gerald (The Mad Doctor of Blood Island) de Leon was at the helm, it plays more or less like a straightforward Made in the Philippines Women in Prison Movie.  Another difference is that Pam Grier plays a lesbian GUARD and not a lesbian inmate.  Big difference.

 

And Grier runs the place with an iron fist.  She plays favorites and gives the prisoners privileges in exchange for some kinky bedroom antics.  Whenever they cross her, she puts them in “The Playpen” where they are tortured.  Jennifer Gan is the latest hunk of meat to get thrown in the prison and it doesn’t take long for her to scheme up an escape plan.

 

Women in Cages was filmed on the same sets as The Big Doll House and features many of the same actresses (in addition to Grier, Judy Brown and Roberta Collins are also on hand to bare some skin).  It’s not as much fun as that flick but it does deliver on the Women in Prison goods.  There are strip searches, shower scenes, and catfights to keep you entertained.  For the first hour, Women in Cages is pretty sweet, but the flick goes right into the shitter once the girls escape the prison.  The ending pretty much sucks too, which further detracts from the overall Fun Factor.

 

Grier delivers a down and dirty performance and it’s cool seeing her playing a villain for a change.  Gan on the other hand is pretty annoying and makes for a shitty heroine.  To make matters worse, she resembles Gwyneth Paltrow after a six day drunk.  She and Grier do get the best dialogue exchange in the movie though:

 

Gan:  “What Hell did you crawl out of?”

 

Grier:  “It was called Harlem, baby!”

 

AKA:  The Bamboo Doll House.  AKA:  Women’s Penitentiary 3.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: SWAMP WOMEN (1956) **

FORMAT:  DVD

ORIGINAL REVIEW:  

(As posted on July 17th, 2007 under the title Swamp Diamonds)

This was one of director Roger Corman’s first films. While it’s not one of his best, this female filled crime melodrama is worth a look if only for a great hateful performance by Beverly Garland. A policewoman (Carol Matthews) infiltrates an all-girl gang serving time in prison. She gains their trust and organizes an escape in exchange for a cut on some diamonds that are stashed in a swamp. Mike “Touch” Connors plays a hapless guy that gets kidnapped by the gang and provides the meager sexual tension. The beginning is hopelessly filled with stock footage of Mardi Gras to pad the already brisk running time, and the ending is wrapped up way too conveniently, but Garland is a hoot at chewing up the scenery. She starred the next year in Corman’s The Gunslinger. Marie (Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy) Windsor and Jonathan (The Little Shop of Horrors) Haze co-star.

AKA: Cruel Swamp.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: THE HOT BOX (1972) ** ½

FORMAT:  DVD

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on June 19th, 2012)

Before taking the directorial reigns for the first time with Caged Heat, Jonathan Demme co-wrote and produced this somewhere-a-bit-up-the-road-from-middle-of-the-road exploitation picture for Roger Corman. It sorta plays like an amalgamation of a Corman Nurse movie and a Cirio H. Santiago Jungle Action flick. The results are admittedly mixed, yet mostly entertaining.

A bunch of nurses go deep into the jungle to do some relief work in a third world nation. They get kidnapped by some revolutionaries who force them to teach the guerillas first aid. (Yes, there is a mouth to mouth scene.) Whenever the girls get out of line they’re sent to the titular box where they’re locked in a cage and scalded with steam. Despite that, the girls still manage to sympathize with their captors and even wind up fighting for the cause!

The Hot Box is not a good movie really, but it has all the elements you’d want from a good movie. That is to say there’s lots of action and lots of T &A and… well… not much else. Because of that, I can give The Hot Box a more than passable recommendation.

BUT… everything else about the picture is lacking. The pacing is lethargic, and the flick feels a lot longer than it is due to the indifferent story structure. Plus, The Hot Box itself doesn’t even come into play until the movie’s about 2/3 of the way over! What’s up with that? And I would’ve liked a bit more nursing scenes at the start of the flick too before the action switched over to the jungle. That just might be a matter of preference though. Then again, what movie couldn’t benefit from a bunch of hot nurses getting in and out of uniform?

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: THE BIG BUST-OUT (1973) ***

FORMAT:  DVD

ORIGINAL REVIEW:  

(As posted on November 9th, 2021)

Convicts in a hellhole women’s prison (are there any other kind?) are subjected to abuse by horny, lecherous matrons who punish them, strip them bare, and give them body cavity searches.  The prisoners are given work release at a nearby convent where the nuns look over the “poor lost souls”.  The convent also has sheiks as armed guards (?) who the girls seduce and knock unconscious in order to perform their big bust-out.  Sister Maria (Monica Teuber) feels like they’ll need some guidance during their prison break, so she tags along with the prisoners who flee the convent disguised as nuns!  They shack up with a badass (Vonetta McGee) for a time, but her boyfriend sells the whole lot to a white slaver (Gordon Mitchell)!  When the boat captain (Tony Kendall) refuses to run girls on his boat, he blows up the dock and takes off with the convicts in tow.  

(All of this takes place in the first twenty minutes, by the way.)

This Italian-German co-production is a mix of Women in Prison, Nunsploitation, and drive-in action.  It opens up like your typical sleazy WIP movie before turning into a sort of ‘70s sexploitation version of Girls Town.  I guess you could say the plot is choppy, but it moves like lightning, so who cares, especially when it’s full of women taking showers, skinny-dipping, getting into fistfights and shootouts, and being stripped down and whipped by little people.  Because it’s all over the place, it often feels like a smorgasbord of exploitation cliches in search of a plot.  However, it never stays on one subgenre too long, which makes it perfect for late-night viewing.  

Director Ernst Ritter (Jungle Warriors) von Theumer doesn’t have much in the way of style, but he knows how to keep the movie going.  It certainly isn’t boring and von Theumer is never shy about pouring on the sleazy cliches.   In fact, it’s probably less successful once it settles down from all the genre-hopping and becomes a desert action movie in the third act.  Still, the scant seventy-minute running time coupled with the breakneck pace of the first forty-five minutes or so makes this well worth a watch for connoisseurs of Women in Prison flicks.

AKA:  Crucified Girls of San Ramon.  AKA:  3 Bastards and 7 Sins.  

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: THE SCREAMING DEAD (2003) ** ½

FORMAT:  DVD

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on April 18th, 2023)

A kinky photographer (Joseph Farrell) makes his sexy subjects pose for controversial pictures.  He brings his latest batch of models to a supposedly haunted mansion/former insane asylum for his next shoot.  Once on the grounds, the frantic photog sets about playing mind games with the models to mentally torture them so he can capture them in the appropriately frightened state of mind he wishes them to convey.  Unfortunately, the models’ fear awakens the malevolent spirit of the sadistic former owner of the house who sets out to torture and kill everyone unlucky enough to be trespassing on his property.  

Written and directed by Brett (A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell) Piper, The Screaming Dead boasts a solid set-up, and the haunted sanitarium makes for an atmospheric location.  The inclusion of Seduction Cinema starlets like Misty Mundae and A.J. Khan help add to the fun.  However, once the models begin being subjected to the photographer’s mental degradation, things sort of stall.  It also takes an inordinate amount of time before the supernatural elements start falling into place.  The scenes of the beefy security guard (Rob Monkiewicz) butting heads with the freaky photographer have a tendency to get repetitive too.  While there are still a number of neat moments (like when a face gets pushed through a wall), and some of the torture sequences are reminiscent of the old Corman/Poe movies from the ‘60s, the finale ultimately feels rushed and a little unsatisfying.  

Monkiewicz makes for a good upstanding square jaw hero.  Rachel Robbins is also quite strong as the secretary who puts up with Farrell’s increasingly cruel demands and manipulations.  Farrell is a bit grating as the human villain, although I guess that’s kind of the point.  Still, a little of his performance goes a long way.  Misty is the reason to watch it (of course) as she delivers yet another solid performance and looks great during her various nude scenes.

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: THE CORPSE VANISHES (1942) *** ½

FORMAT:  DVD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on July 17th, 2007)

Of Bela Lugosi’s many cheap B and C grade movies he made in the early ‘40s after being fired by Universal, this is one of the best.  He’s a mad doctor who sends poisoned orchids to brides on their wedding day.  They die at the altar and Lugosi swipes the bodies en route to the morgue.  He uses the bodies to help his wife live forever.  A fast-talking journalist goes undercover as a bride to get the scoop and stop Lugosi.  Lugosi is as fun to watch as ever and is very cool while sleeping in his and her coffins with his wife.  Angelo (Freaks, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome) Rossito plays his assistant, and also co-starred with Bela in 1947’s Scared to Death (which is the only color Lugosi movie).

LET’S GET PHYSICAL: VOODOO MAN (1944) *** ½

FORMAT:  DVD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As published in by book, Bloody Book of Horror)

Whenever a hot dame stops into creepy George Zucco’s gas station, he calls ahead to simpleton John Carradine to put up a fake detour sign further on down the road.  When she stops, Carradine kidnaps her and takes her to his boss, Bela Lugosi.  You see, Bela has been keeping his dead wife hanging around the house for twenty years and uses the hot women he kidnaps to bring her back to life through voodoo rituals.  A Hollywood screenwriter comes looking for the latest kidnap victim and winds up getting plenty of ideas for his latest picture.

Bela, sporting a serious goatee, is a lot of fun to watch.  Even though the budget was obviously low, he is totally invested here.  Like his role in Dracula, he keeps a harem full of women in flimsy negligees and looks deep into their eyes in scary close-ups.  Carradine and Zucco are a hoot too.  The scenes of Zucco wearing a hilarious tribal headdress while Carradine plays the bongos are priceless. 

Voodoo Man was a Monogram cheapie produced by Sam Katzman.  Since it features a hero that’s a Hollywood screenwriter, we get some pretty funny in-jokes along the way.  (He calls his boss “SK”.)  In the end, he turns his experiences into a screenplay.  When the producer asks him who should star in the film, he quips, “Why don’t you get Bela Lugosi?  It’s right up his alley!”

Brilliant.

The film is only an hour long, so it moves along at a snappy pace.  Directed by William “One Shot” Beaudine, Voodoo Man is much more atmospheric than the typical Monogram horror flick.  Although it's not as nutty as The Devil Bat or as fun as The Corpse Vanishes, it is an enormously entertaining Lugosi romp.  If you’re as big of a Lugosi fan as I am, you never under any circumstance pass up a chance to see Bela in a goatee hypnotizing women and fiddling around with mad scientist lab equipment. 

One interesting thing about Voodoo Man is that it almost feels like the inspiration for Manos:  The Hands of Fate.  There is a scene where Carradine tries to hit on one of “The Master’s” brides, just like Torgo.  Lugosi even wears a cloak that has a hand pattern sewed onto it!