Year: 1986
Duration: 01:38:11
Directed by: Paul Nicolas
Actors: Shari Shattuck, Christina Whitaker, Angel Tompkins, Lucinda Crosby, Faith Minton
Language: English
Country: USA
Also known as: Wild Cage, The Cage, Uma Prisão Chamada Inferno, A gabbia nuda, La jaula desnuda
Description of Naked Cage movie: African-American prisoner, fallen asleep at night in the laundry room, rapes guard, after which she commits suicide – hung. And then the same guard in the dungeon trying to rape the heroine …
Review: Of all the subjects to center a film, particularly an action film, around, prison would seem quite a ways from the most obvious one. There is a banality that permeates all of real-world prison, what with the strictly maintained time and strictly enforced regulations. The seedy underworld and the homoerotic (especially lesbian) tensions that are often present in prisons can break the mold of boredom, but how many “99 women”, “Bare Behind Bars” or “Jailhouse Girls” can you make before the copious amounts of sex and nudity, coupled with phantom plots, make all the WIP movies appear to be one and the same?
“The Naked Cage”, much like the “Female Prisoner Scorpion” series and “Women in Cages” before it, almost finds the right balance between traditional exploitative elements and a narrative compelling enough to warrant a relatively unused fast-forward button. The film stars Shari Shattuck as Michelle, a small town girl who is in the process of finding her adult self by moving out of her parent’s ranch and finding a job as a bank teller. However, she cannot escape her past as her drug-addled former boyfriend, Willy, and his new criminal companion, the recent prison-escapee Rita, rob her bank. Somehow in the brouhaha, she gets fingered as an accomplice, and was sentenced to 3 years in a max-security prison.
On the inside, she quickly makes a friend with a prostitute and former-druggie, Amy, and gets on the good side of the resident tough dyke – Sheila. The prison is staffed by the usual nefarious and immoral individuals: the male guard who takes advantage of his position to rape and abuse the inmates (Smiley), and a warden, who is ambivalent to Randy’s dealings, perhaps because she also samples the females. In a noteworthy arrangement, the warden apparently practiced some sort of miniature segregation, keeping the whites from sleeping in the same quarter as the blacks, and making them wear different colored uniforms. This was most likely because of her predilection towards fairer skin with regards to her amorous dalliances.
After being stabbed in the hand and adjusting to prison life, Michelle is given a jolt as Rita is returned to prison after her escape, and she is hell-bent on exacting revenge on our innocent protagonist for the failed bank robbing. With Michelle repelling the warden’s sexual advances and rejecting her friendship, the warden decides to aid Rita in her attempts. Smiley also has it in for our heroine, as she indirectly hurts his pride. She somehow manages to prevent him from raping her in solitary confinement, and along the way makes an ally in Rhonda, a new prison guard who seems to be the only just one on the staff.
Amy, drug free until Rita forces some of the poison into her veins, is forced to turn against Michelle in exchange for her fix, and she traps Michelle in the basement against an armed Rita. At the last moment, she decides to aid her friend and releases her from the basement. Unfortunately, Rita was not too happy that her plans for revenge were foiled, and she gruesomely killed Amy be forcing her to swallow broken glass.
This sets in motion the climactic final events of the movie, where a desperate Michelle takes Rhonda hostage, who was simultaneously being stalked by Smiley, who was ordered by the warden to kill her because she threatened to undermine their criminal dealings. The black inmates somehow got their hands on the keys to their cells, and soon enough both the warden and Smiley met their ends at the hands of the inmates. Rita also is killed when she accidentally stumbled into a high-powered voltage capsule when Rhonda and Michelle had her cornered. With Rhonda at her side, Michelle was soon exonerated and reunited with her family.
Indeed, “The Naked Cage” avoided the banality of prison and the forced eroticism of “99 women”, “Bare Behind Bars” etc. by combining a twist-filled plot with gorgeous lead actresses and just enough breasts to make it titillating. The usual shower scenes and strip/cavity search are sorely missed, as the movie had the beautiful inmate/seedy guard/warden dynamic, but all in all, an excellent entry into the WIP genre.
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