Are you into women in prison exploitation films?
Do you want to see someone take this genre and poke fun at it, while still delivering
the expected goods in terms of violence and nudity?
Well, stick around for the next few minutes while i discuss quite the little gem of a
b-movie that is not to be confused with the Filippino exploitation film Caged Fury from
1983.
Or the lion tamer one from 1948.
I am Torstein from Cinema Terror and this is the 1990 women in prison film Caged Fury.
The uh, story in Caged Fury is not anything unique or anything you even need to pay attention
to.
It throws you right into it by introducing a woman in despair, being abused by some prison
guards, there's nudity, violence, murder, everything is thrown at you right away before
the movie has even gotten the time to start.
After that quick introduction of what we can expect in Caged Fury, we are introduced to
our leading heroine.
She is Kathie Collins, a young aspiring actor from Ohio who are going to the big city of
Los Angeles to make it big, to much dismay of her father.
When she gets to LA, she quickly comes across some oddballs, including Erik Estrada and
an awesome martial arts guy named Dirk Ramsey, played by the late Richard Barathy, another
aspiring actress and kind of a borderline crazy person named Rhonda and a sleazy photographer
named Buck who just happens to know of a film company that are looking for young, beautiful
new actresses.
Kathie and Rhonda go along and tries out for the part, but shit goes wrong as the sleazy
producer starts to physically abuse Kathie.
The cops are called and the blame is actually put on the girls, who are then brought quickly
before a judge, given their sentence and thrown in a jail called Honeywell Prison.
That's the setup, and while it's cliche and done before, this one is handled nearly like
a parody spoof of its own genre.
I kept thinking of the 1991 action film Stone Cold while I was watching this, as Stone Cold
did pretty much the same thing by having fun with the macho bad ass action films of the
80's.
I think that a lot of other reviewers didn't look at Caged Fury that way and unfairly dismissed
it as just another cheap b-movie made to show off as much nudity as possible and make a
quick paycheck.
Which by all means was probably a reason for why the movie got financing in the first place,
but I just feel like the final product has more to offer than beautiful babes in skimpy
outfits.
I can also point out that the movie gives throwback and references to other important
movies of the genre, like Chained Heat.
And they gave the evil warden the name Sybill Thorn, a play on both Dyanne Thorne from the
Ilsa movies and Sybil Danning from the already mentioned Chained Heat.
James Hong and Erik Estrada are in the film for no apparant reason, and both also got
an associate producer credit, probably as part of the payment.
They are simply there because why not have Hong and Estrada in it?
Hell, let's put in Ron Jeremy as a prison guard while we're at it.
And that Bill Gazzarri guy, who's forever famous due to his participation on the must-see
1988 documentary Decline of Western Civilization 2.
Let's give him a quick cameo in it as himself as well.
No associate producer credit for good old Jeremy or Gazzarri though.
Since I mentioned Erik Estrada.
He plays a street tought good guy, but he is not the one that goes all the way to try
to save the girls.
That job is given to the awesome force that is Richard Barathy.
This dude deserved to be in way more movies than what he got the chance to before he passed
away.
The cast is also filled with lots of lovely beautiful women.
Roxanna Michaels plays Kathie and she has a natural aura about her that makes her instantly
charming and easy to feel sympathy for.
Kathie's sister Tracy is played by first-timer Elena Sahagun who also ended up in movies
such as Uncaged and Teenage Exorcist.
The previously mentioned evil warden is played by Mindi Miller from the 1985 film Amazons,
you have Melissa Moore who you might recongize from other b-movies such as Sorority House
Massacre 2 and the awful Vampire Cop.
She would also end up in the cult classic Samurai Cop and its sequel Samurai Cop 2:
Deadly Vengeance in 2015.
And there are also others, the film is filled with women that you will know from other b-movies
or even adult features.
Caged Fury comes from the brain of director and screenwriter Bill Milling.
He started out doing interesting adult features with titles like Virgin Snow and The Vixens
of Kung Fu before he made a few non-adult films in the late 80's and early 90's, mostly
teen sex comedies but also a weird film that I should probably check out called Wolfpac
from 1988, which apparantly is about a nazi high school football team(?).
He sure is an interesting filmmaker and it seemed to me like he had a blast creating
this film, at least by judging the final product.
I didn't find any interviews with the guy online, but I would really want to hear him
talk about his work and his intent for each of his projects, so if anyone knows of any
magazines or anything where he is being interviewed, then please do let me know about it.
Looking past all the praise I've given to Caged Fury, I also must mention that even
if it is done very self-aware and not to be taken too seriously, there are still some
parts of the story that felt confusing.
And I am not talking about the ridiculousness of it, but rather some of the structural choices
was weird to me.
Another interesting participant of Caged Fury is its director of photography Kenneth H.
Wiatrak.
While he also started out doing cheap b-movies in the 80's, he would actually end up doing
visual effects work for big blockbusters such as Captain America: The First Avenger and
the first Thor movie.
That's quite the transition from something like Caged Fury or his other earlier work
like Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity and Stormswept.
While I've already basically been listing the filmography of plenty of people on this
film to show the talent involved, I also gotta mention the music by Joe Delia.
He has worked with Abel Ferrara several times and his work on Caged Fury is much more enjoyable
than what you should expect for a film like this.
As you can probably tell already, I really enjoyed Caged Fury.
I think it's one of the more enjoyable later entries of exploitation films and for once,
the self-aware humour worked for me.
The great guys at Scream Factory, although not always so great when it comes to copyright
claims on Youtube, released this on BluRay last year and I recommend everyone to pick
up a copy, mine is on its way now as my collection definitely needs to have the best version
of this film possible.
Sadly it looks like their release is low on the extras factor, in fact it seems like it
only has the trailer for the film on it, which is a shame as I'd love to see some interviews
or something more about this little gem.
Then again, some mysteries are not meant to be solved, and with that I am going to give
Caged Fury 1990 a strong recommendation to fans of fun exploitation films.
For the 98% rest of the world, this is probably not something you would enjoy and rather find
stupid, but take it for what it is and what its intent was and try it out.
It's only 90 minutes of your life and if you've sat through my poor English for all of these
minutes, then I think you might be ready to venture into the exploitation genre with this
film.
Caged Fury gets the surprisingly high score of 4 out of 5.
Are there other Caged Fury fans out there?
If you are out there, how did you first find this film and did you instantly love it like
I did?
And what about the rest of you, am I completely off in praising this film?
Was it just another run of the mill exploitation film in your eyes?
Let me know in the comment section below.
I recently did another women in prison film that had the potential to be self-aware and
have fun with itself, but opted not to in Time Served, so if this is the genre for you
then check out that review as well.
I hope you enjoyed this video about Caged Fury.
Please also do check out my other stuff as my channel could always use more views and
subscribers, and with that I hope you have a nice day and thanks alot for watching Cinema
Terror.
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