Caged Fury ★★★
DON’T confuse 1989’s Caged Fury with the 1983 film of the same name or 1974’s Caged Heat or Chained Heat, also from 1983.
They’re all examples of ‘women-in-prison’ dramas but Caged Fury aka 1989 is one of the weakest.
This sub-genre of low-budget exploitation cinema was effectively started in the early 1970s by legendary producer/ director Roger Corman who has been responsible for more than 500 films.
Corman’s legacy includes helping give a start to a range of directors and actors who would go on to bigger and better things including the likes of Martin Scorcese and Jack Nicholson.
In the 60s, 70s and 80s Corman’s companies churned out the product, a few of which were very good, most entertaining at least but some were forgettable stinkers.
Possibly the run of soft-porn women in chains action dramas started with Corman’s Women in Chains from 1971.
A couple of the most well-known examples are Caged Heat, produced by Corman and directed by Jonathan Demme who would eventually make Silence of the Lambs, and Chained Heat which starred Linda Blair (Regan in The Exorcist), exploitation cinema queen Sybil Danning and John Vernon.
If you’re going to watch any of this type of film go with Chained Heat, definitely over the 1989 version of Caged Fury which is poorly put together in almost every way.
Caged Fury was written and directed by Bill Milling who ended up making about 20 of this type of film.
Roxanne Michaels plays naive country girl Kathie who goes to LA with dreams of being an actress.
On her first night away a bunch of bikies try to rape her and she is saved by two strangers, one played by Erik Estrada and the other by Richie Barathy.
Barathy’s character is a high-pants wearing, motorbike riding, mostly shirtless Vietnam vet, karate expert and ‘mystic’ named Dirk who does most of the fighting.
The pair seem to spend most of their days riding around the city looking for women to rescue from would-be rapists.
They provide most of the film’s best unintentional laughs.
Anyway, the next day Kathie and another woman she befriends are ‘tricked’ into acting in a porn movie which results in an altercation during which they are again saved by you-know-you.
Inexplicably, but in keeping with the film’s refusal to display even basic continuity, the women appear in court by themselves and land up in the Honeywell State Prison for Women courtesy of a corrupt judge.
At the prison all the inmates live either in lingerie or prison-issue shorts and unbuttoned tops.
The guards are all lecherous rapists and murderers while the female warden is a lesbian dominatrix.
The only half-decent performance in the entire film is provided by Gregory Scott Cummins as one of the guards while another is played by Paul L.Smith who is best known for playing the head Turkish jailer in 1978’s Midnight Express.
Veteran porn star Ron Jeremy has a cameo as another guard and several female porn stars of the time play semi-clothed inmates.
It’s all incredibly leery but humorous. Even the nurse in an ambulance spills out of her uniform top.
Here’s just one small example of the inexorably bad dialogue:
Female prisoner one: “This place is real different. I don’t get it.”
Female prisoner two: “Sluts like you never do.”
One for the archives.