Caged Heat
Caged Heat is a
drama about institutionalization taking place in a women’s prison. Like other institutional dramas such as One
Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Shawshank Redemption, this film shows how people get
broken down slowly to the point where they grow to depend on places they once
thought of as prisons. However unlike
that old dude with the crow in The Shawshank
Redemption, the gals in Caged Heat don’t pull any passive aggressive
bullshit to get back into prison. They
break in the front door armed with shotguns.
And I would too, fuck, after the first naked shower fight in this movie
you start to wonder was so great about shitty old freedom anyway.
This film
mainly follows the exploits of Jackie, played by Erica Gavin who played the
title character in Russ Meyer’s Vixen.
Gavin proves that after playing a Canadian in Vixen, she can play
an American in this. Watch out Ben
Kingsley, there’s another nationalistically versatile actor on the block! Actually no, Gavin was a stripper who only
acted in four movies (two of them Russ Meyer films) and died a few years
ago. So Ben Kinglsey
can rest easy knowing nobody will be challenging him for his next role in an Uwe Boll film or a Species sequel/reboot/tribute.
This movie
depicts a pretty lax maximum security women’s prison where the inmates seem to
be allowed to dress however they please in fashionable outfits and
jewellery. They also seem to have access
to hair dye and styling curlers because for the most part their hair all looks
really well done and coloured. I’m not
sure how they dye their hair in the shower when they’re always fighting, but I
guess you just wait for somebody else to start fighting and then quietly rub
some dye into your locks for 30 minutes and rinse while the crowd gathers around
the rumble.
The prisoners
get to hang out all day and organize variety shows that they put on for each
other. They also disrespect the writing
which is literally on the wall articulating very specific rules. They throw food at a wall with the words ‘No
Throwing Food’ spray painted on it.
There’s another wall that says ‘No Loitering’, what those words mean in
prison I have no fucking clue. That’s
like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500 or charging somebody with
murder in war and whathaveyou. More on Coppola later.
However there
is a strict warden who is a sexy paraplegic.
And if you couldn’t tell she was repressed by the fact that she dressed
like The Church Lady from Saturday Night Live with horn rimmed glasses and her
hair pulled back uncomfortably tight, then you might get it from the way she
speaks in dry clinical terms and a perpetually even tone about rules and the
need for order. But just in case those
things didn’t clue you into the idea that she’s repressed you get a discotastic dream sequence.
After the warden abuses the prisoners for vulgar content in their
variety show, she rolls back to her office where she dreams of wearing a
Technicolor cocktail dress and dancing around a neon restroom singing a
Freudian analysis of the nature of crime.
Both Dostoyevsky and Barry Gibb would be impressed. Frankly, I was pretty impressed too. I figured such a reserved woman as she would
have a much more limited imagination and wouldn’t dream so big as to be a
Freudian showgirl. To look at her you’d
assume her wildest dream might be to just be able to stand or at most use a stairmaster.
I learned a lot
of things I probably already knew from this movie. Like if you’ve got a buddy stuck in solitaire
and you want to smuggle them stuff, you should probably go with stuff that
doesn’t leave evidence of smuggling. I
mean you’re a guard and you throw somebody naked into an empty concrete room
that clearly has nothing in it, and you later open the door and there’s all these snack food wrappings around, then you know
something’s up. I thought bags of snackies were pushing it, I saw what they did to Steve
McQueen in Papillion for receiving smuggled coconuts, but the pocket
book was going way too far. There’s no
way you can quickly stash 300 pages up your ass if you hear a guard coming down
the hall. At least I can’t. And also, if you’re smuggling food into a
concrete solitaire cell by dropping it through a vent in the ceiling high
above, don’t smuggle an egg, or at least hard boil it first.
There’s also
something to be learned from the following dialogue exchange:
“Hello, my
name’s Ker-ay-zee. What’s yours?”
“Bernice.”
Just in case
somebody ever points a shotgun at you and introduces herself that way, the
correct answer is not ‘Bernice’, even if that is your name. The answer is obviously ‘Crazier’. Glad I could help.
There’s also a
little portion of this movie that helped me appreciate how far our justice
system has come thanks to technological advancements. This movie features a mad scientist who
performs electroshock therapy on the prisoners in the basement. He has to drug them, tie them down, attach
all these jolters, and use a giant shock machine that takes up an entire room. These days our police officers carry small
devices capable a much more lethal charge and you don’t even have to waste the
taxpayer’s money in a lengthy trial to be convicted of anything in order to
receive the treatment. Our modern police
provide this service free to criminals, bystanders who look at them funny, and
even the odd flustered tourist.
Okay, here’s
the part of the article where I get nostalgic for an era I never lived
through. On the DVD they have an
interview conducted by noted film critic and facial hair enthusiast, Leonard
Maltin. Malty interviews the film’s
producer, Roger Corman. Corman reflects
warmly on Caged Heat and the developing of the project with the film’s
writer-director, Jonathan Demme. Corman talks about
how a number of directors worked in his schlockhouse
briefly before graduating on to direct big mainstream movies. He mentions guys like Martin Scorcese and Francis Ford Coppola. He says that those two made a quick jump, but
Demme was a bit of a slower climb to the glory he
would later achieve directing stuff like Manhunter-Red
Dragon 2: The Silence of the Lambs and Philedelphia.
Demme’s name is all over the packaging as a
selling point for this DVD, so I knew he directed it before I put it in. If I hadn’t known, I might’ve guessed it was
George Lucas because of the abundance of wipe transition effects. Fuck, Demme goes to
town with those in this movie.
The whole
interview got me kinda longing for those days when
these talented guys would be forced to prove themselves on pulpy b-movies
before going onto the big leagues. I
think these days the studios have better scouts and grab these guys right out
of film school or after a couple commercials or music videos and they never
have to slug it out in minor leagues. I
actually think it does directors good to be forced to work with less before
being given all the toys. And to be
forced to write a good movie around industry standard requirements for schlocky
violence and T&A, before moving on to Oscar bait.
The closest
thing I can think of in terms of a modern equivalent would be Luc Besson’s little pack of disciples. Besson churns out
pulpy scripts that he farms out to these youngsters who seem to prove
themselves and then move onto bigger budget fare, or not. I’m still waiting for that classy
motherfucker who did Kiss of the Dragon to get another break. But none of the guys out of Besson’s school have turned out to be this generation’s Scorcese. The
highest profile Besson graduate is a guy who got to
do an Incredible Hulk movie.
But man,
listening to Corman talk about this time in the 60s
and 70s when these future legends got to fuck around trying to make
exploitation movies that also showcased their artistic potential got me kinda misty. I guess
if I could’ve been a filmmaker, I would’ve liked to have worked for Corman during this period.
I would also
like a Roger Corman Grill to be available in my local
department store.
If you liked this, here’s some more jail bait:
This film is a pleasant
magazine in the waiting room for Transporter
3.
These streets are savage
and from 1984, although they are not streets of fire.
Here’s my take on a Straw Dogs type of movie.
The title was inspired by Bad News Bears.