Women in Cages (Gerardo De Leon, 1971)

After she is set up by her boyfriend Rudy (Charlie Davao), Jeff (Jennifer Gan) is sent to prison. Fearing that she will reveal his criminal activities (drug and sex trafficking), Rudy decides to have her killed. 

Will Jeff survive her ordeal?

Directed by Gerardo De Leon, Women In Cages is a very different beast than The Big Doll House. It is also better directed - the photography is more striking, with a better sense of composition, chiaroscuro and use of depth of field.

De Leon was one of the luminaries of Filipino cinema, and he brings a noir-ish, almost gothic sense of style to the picture. The difference in production value is obvious, but more so is the tone - this is a much darker movie than The Big Doll House. 

Take a hint from the movie’s title - there is no innuendo to Women In Cages. This is a bleak drama, a cynical movie about men in power and the way that women are exploited both by the state and the underworld.

All the familiar character types and conventions are present, but they are filtered through the same lens. 

Take Pam Grier. She returns as another LGBT character, Alabama, but this time she fulfills the familiar role of the evil prison matron. 

Whereas the villainesses of The Big Doll House were purely evil sadists, Women in Cages uses Grier’s casting to make a point. Alabama’s brutality is rooted in her experiences living in the United States. Now in a position of power, she replicates the horrors she faced upon the women of the prison.

And rather than the petty grievances of the previous movie, here the other prisoners are pitted against Jeff because they have to - Stokes (Roberta Collins) is a drug addict who tries to murder the newbie in exchange for another fix; Sandy (Judy Brown) wants to reduce her sentence. The acting might lack nuance, but there is an essentialism and focus to the performances that aligns with the film's brutal ethos. Jeff is naive, ignorant of her boyfriend's dealings and completely unprepared for both his betrayal and the realities of her new situation. This world is dog eat dog, and the movie puts each of its characters through the meat grinder. 

It is hard to see how this movie could be marketed as entertainment - while Jack Hill’s movies leaven their harsher qualities with humour, Women In Cages strips away any niceties that could make the film’s brutality entertaining. There is no pretence of a ‘social message’ here - this is a drama about women in prison in a dictatorship.

This is an incredibly cynical movie about the evils of the world - while Hill’s movies are designed to entertain, Leon’s approach is more concerned with tackling the effects of oppression. Was this the filmmaker’s way of sneaking out a message about the Marcos regime (which declared martial law in the Philippines the year after this movie came out)? 

There is no resolution to the brutality - Alabama is murdered by her own people, women are enslaved by gangsters, and while one of the prisoners escapes, the movie ends with the equivalent of a shrug. So one escaped? Nothing will change.

Women In Cages may fail as an exploitation movie, but succeeds at stripping the genre of its gratification, giving those elements a context that forces the viewer to confront the subject matter. In that sense, Women In Cages feels like a refutation of its genre.

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The Big Doll House (Jack Hill, 1971)

After killing her husband, Collier (Judy Brown) is sent to prison. 

She joins a group of prisoners ( Pam Grier, Roberta Collins, and Brooke Mills) who are planning to escape the clutches of the sadistic warden Miss Dietrich (Christiane Schmidtmer).

One of the earliest ‘women in prison’ movies from the genre’s boom years of the 70s, The Big Doll House is also the introduction of Pam Grier as a genre icon. The Big Doll House’s writer-director Jack Hill would go onto cast her in Coffy and Foxy Brown, the movies that cemented her status.

The movie is fairly slow-moving but it lays out the key elements of the genre: Lesbians, mud-wrestling, weird non-consensual sexual situations, an action-packed prison break and a downbeat ending.

And just to balance things out, we get a dollop of social commentary. Here it is also a vague anti-authoritarian message - the film was shot in the Philippines but set in some undefined tropical dictatorship.

The acting is pretty bad - Pam Grier is technically rough but this movie is a prime example of star power overcoming performance. 

The one person delivering a real performance is Sid Haig. He makes an impression as the sleazy American who sells trinkets to prisoners and staff alike.

 

While it includes a lot of familiar pieces, the whole movie feels like a first draft. It also has major pacing problems. 

The torture sequence is unique - a jar slowly fills with water, which acts as a weight on a rube goldberg contraption that lowers a deadly cobra toward a writhing prisoner.

The production values are rough, which lend the movie a certain verisimilitude. And the film’s anti-authoritarianism does not feel wedged in (being set in a prison has that effect). 

The finale is great and filled with action, but it takes a long time to get there.

The Big Doll House is an important text if you are interested in the history of the genre, and the rise of Pam Grier. However if you really want to watch one of these flicks, there are better examples out there.  

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The International (Tom Tykwer, 2009)

Louis Salinger, an Interpol agent, and Eleanor Whitman, a US Assistant District Attorney, are on the trail of the International Bank of Business and Credit (IBBC). 

Already involved in a variety of illlicit activities, the bank is on the verge of a massive play that will give it massive power and influence over global geopolitics.

And it is willing to kill to achieve its goals.

Something in me wants to admire The International. 

A movie about the skullduggery of a bank, released in the midst of the financial crisis, The International was perfectly timed.

And yet…

The International is caught between two poles - on the one hand it wants to be a conspiracy thriller wrapped around the power of international financial institutions; on the other, it wants to be an action movie ala Jason Bourne and the other fella with the initials JB.

The movie has a great conceit, and the ideas it raises about the power of bankers remain sadly on-point. But the movie is not smart enough to convey those ideas. 

Clive Owen is a humorless sleuth regurgitating exposition with a frown. Naomi Watts is the earnest US attorney reacting to and adding to said exposition. Both are fine performers, but this script could have been played by sims.

Owen was tied to the role of James Bond for years. The International is one of the movies that feels like his audition piece. Ironically, it was released the same year as a more lighthearted spy vehicle he starred in - the con artist movie Duplicity, in which he appeared opposite Julia Roberts.

Because of that connection, I started making others: the primary one is the villains - a bank working behind the scenes to gain power and influence in the developing world (shades of Quantum of Solace). Future Q Ben Winshaw pops up in a small role. And a key foot chase takes place on the roofs of Istanbul (this location would serve as the backdrop to Skyfall’s opening motorbike chase).

Directed by Tom Tykwer, the film has a chilly look and boasts some great urban locations. But that look only highlights how inorganic the characters feel.

This is a conspiracy movie that wants to evoke the paranoia of classic seventies thrillers. But the film spends so little time getting into Owen and Watts’ mind space that we never get that loss of control. 

The International is too much of an action movie to succeed. The genres are at cross purposes - an action movie requires catharsis - and the filmmakers never thread the needle between them.

It is a pity because the movie’s action credentials are pretty solid. The shootout at the Guggenheim is a bolt of energy and excitement in an otherwise dour film. 

The International is another case of a great idea trapped in a flawed story.

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

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Running Scared (Peter Hyams, 1986)

 Ray Hughes (Gregory Hines) and Danny Costanzo (Billy Crystal) are cops, partners and best friends. Tired of their jobs, they decide to escape Chicago and retire to the Florida Keys.

Before they can, they have to stop a drug kingpin (Jimmy Smits) with designs on taking over the city’s underworld.

I decided to watch this movie because of a song. And that song might be the best part of the movie.

This movie works as an action film and as a showcase for Chicago as a location for said action. The car chase on the train tracks and the finale at the State building are genuinely tense and exciting. 

Where it falters is as a comedy - partially, I put this down to the fact that Billy Crystal is not my kind of humour. He is genuinely unfunny in this movie, and I found myself staring past the screen during all of his bits.

But I also think the filmmakers do not know how to balance the tone.

What works about the movie is its strong sense of geography and the chemistry between Hines and Crystal - I do not like most of their banter, but they gel together so they almost get away with it. 

This is where I should insert that I love the Michael McDonald song ‘Sweet Freedom’. I discovered it years ago and it always makes me happy. More than the song, the music video for the song sold me on the movie. It features McDonald, Crystal and Hines fooling around in Key West, and it is pure joy. The moment where Hines and Crystal dance together while laughing feels so much more spontaneous and  exuberant  than anything in the movie. I wish they had the opportunity to make another movie together, with written jokes. 

It is such a strange experience watching them together. You can feel the chemistry, but all of their repartee and the characters dynamic never works.

There is a darker subtext to the movie - our heroes repeatedly use their status as cops to exert control over other people. The most ridiculous examples is Hines’ campaign to win his love interest, which involves threatening her with charges and getting her current boyfriend arrested. It is like a light-hearted fore-runner to Unlawful Entry. They also spend a ridiculous amount of time screwing with people trying to play basketball - like your typical schoolyard bullies. These guys are just assholes.

So the characters are not funny and are almost completely unsympathetic. What is left?

Honestly, if this movie threw away its attempts at humour, it probably would work as a generic but good-looking cop thriller. It definitely reads like the filmmakers were trying to replicate Beverly Hills Cop where Eddie Murphy improvised all the jokes that stil worked within a well-written action movie. This movie completely fails at replicating that magic.

It makes for an interesting experience in watching something not work but it screws up the movie. 

It is worth checking out for the set pieces, but you are probably better off watching the music video for ‘Sweet Freedom’. It is the best thing to come out of Running Scared.

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

You can subscribe on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.

THE JAMES BOND COCKTAIL HOUR: Season 3

The third season of the James Bond Cocktail Hour has come to an end. We will be back in the new year to talk No Time To Die, and a bunch of other James Bond media.

The episodes are all below:

No Time To Die Trailer 2 review

Nobody Lives For Ever (by John Gardner)

How to introduce James Bond

Casino Royale '06 Part One & Two

McClory v Fleming

Thunderball (novel)

Remembering Sean Connery

Thunderball (Terence Young, 1965)

A look at Kevin McClory's Warhead (1976)

Never Say Never Again (Irvin Kershner, 1983)

Remixing Thunderball

The Hunt for Red October

The Man with the Golden Gun

Bond Tropes Discussion

Ranking the James Bond ski chases

Die Another Day (2 hour cut)

Patriot Games

Clear and Present Danger

The Man Who Almost Killed James Bond

A View To A Kill

Sum of All Fears

Jack Ryan - Shadow Recruit

Executive Decision

VARGR

State of the Franchise

Skyfall (Part One)

Happy & Glorious - Bond at the Olympics

Skyfall (Part Two)

We saw Casino Royale on the big screen!

(Final) Trailer Talk

The Liquidator (John Gardner book)

The Liquidator (film)

Devil May Care

Being James Bond: The Daniel Craig Story

You can listen to these and future episodes wherever you listen to podcasts!

Follow the podcast on IG @jbchpod and on Twitter @jbchpod007. 

The podcast will return in 2022!

Blacula (William Crain, 1972)

Cursed with bloodlust by Dracula, Prince Mamuwalde (William Marshall) returns from the dead in seventies LA.

Enraptured by a young woman who bears an uncanny resemblance to his wife (Vonetta McGee), Mamuwalde sees an opportunity to end his immortal loneliness…

Blaxploitation is a genre I have not really dived in before. I’ve watched a couple of movies like Coffy, but most of my knowledge comes from reading about the genre.

Since Halloween was coming up, I decided to check out Blacula, one of the more famous titles I have never seen before.

The prologue is great - Mamuwalde has visited Europe to stop the slave trade, and has met with Count Dracula as part of his mission. The count has other designs and attacks Mamuwalde, cursing him with vampirism.

It is a great opening sequence (Charles Macaulay is pretty good as Dracula), but it is also the best scene in the movie. 

I wonder why that is, and I think it might be a combination of the production value of the castle setting and the juxtaposition with the modern-day sequence which follows. The setting of the prologue is fairly modest in scope - it is three people around a table - but it creates a mise-en-scene that reminded me of Hammer films. The scope of the Christopher Lee-Terence Fisher era of Dracula films is probably not much bigger than Blacula, but I think this film’s prologue creates a similar atmosphere.

The period setting separates it from the rest of the movie, and the following sequence is such a sinkhole that it feels separate from the film which follows.

The portrayal of the gay couple who unknowningly buy Mamuwalde’s casket is so over-the-top and meanspirited it took awhile for me to get back into the movie. It feels like the movie is trying to externalise and eject the queer subtext associated with vampire fiction - this vampire is a one-woman vampire! 

Once Mamuwalde awakens and starts to wander, the movie does lose a little momentum and focus.

The movie ultimately wants the audience to be invested in the tragedy of Mamuwalde, but once he is a vampire, the movie aligns more with the perspective of his victims and pursuers. 

While it flirts with a degree of moral ambiguity - Mamuwalde never comes across as an out-and-out villain - the story mechanics are standard: vampire attacks interspersed with vampire hunters slowly realising what is going on.

What makes the film compelling are the cast, starting with William Marshall’s towering performance as the undead prince.

More of a tragic figure than Dracula, he is driven by his love for his dead wife, who bares a striking resemblance to a woman he meets in contemporary times (both played by Vonetta McGee, who spaghetti western genre fans will know from the super-bleak The Great Silence). 

 

Apparently Marshall was responsible for re-working the main character’s backstory, and he gives a tragic pathos to the character that overcomes the ropey elements of the production. There is the whiff of the stage about his performance, but that layer of unreality adds to the character’s detachment from the seventies milieu. It is also well-documented that threats of vengeance are more impressive when bellowed in a Shakespearean baritone.

I was also impressed by our heroes, Doctor Thomas (Thalmus Rasulala) and his girlfriend Michelle (Donna Denise Nicholas). 

With exploitation and low-budget genre movies, the acting can be variable. But Blacula benefits from putting Marshall against a performer who holds his own. Rasulala commands the scenes he is in, and I was frustrated that the film did not give him more to do. The role is pretty generic, but Rasulala gives Dr. Thomas an intelligence and weight that is not on the page. 

While Marshall and Rasulala provide the movie with a centre, Donna Denise Nicholas delivers the most naturalistic performance in the movie - she reacts to all the supernatural goings-on like a real person, and her interactions with Rasulala give a sense of intimacy and history that is not present in their dialogue.

The weak link is McGee, but I put that down to the script - she has a threadbare character to work with - she is an object and motivation for Mamuwalde, but the character does not have any life outside of that function.

While the script is fairly cookie-cutter, the biggest issue with the movie is the direction. The coverage of the action is closer to television, with the focus on individual close-ups and mid-shots. This means that the movie feels a little cramped and small-scale. Aside from the prologue,  the locations are not that eye-catching or well-photographed. 

A few sequences work - Mamuwalde’s attack on the nightclub photographer (Emily Yancy from Sharp Objects) is claustrophobic, and her later attack on a cop is also good (her head is shielded from view until she turns and lunges into his neck, played in a well-timed cut to a close-up of her snarling face). I also liked the first vampire attack in the morgue - the slow-motion shot of a vampire running down a hallway toward the morgue attendant (Elisha Cooke Jr.) is creepy.

The vampire makeup is not bad but there are a few scenes where its limitations are accentuated by lingering close-ups that dissipate the effect. 

Overall, Blacula reminded me a lot of the first time I watched the 1931 version of Dracula - an exciting prologue is followed by stagey scenes of characters talking in enclosed spaces. 

Rather like that movie, Blacula was a disappointment. The cast are the strongest element of the production, but otherwise I found the movie slow and the central romance underwhelming - whatever emotion the movie stirs is mostly down to William Marshall.

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

You can subscribe on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Slumber Party Massacre II (Deborah Brock, 1987)

Traumatised from the events of the previous movie, Courtney (Crystal Lynn Bernard) tries to move on by focusing on practising with her band (Kimberly McArthur, Juliette Cummins, and Heidi Kozak). 

The group have decided to go away for a weekend and work on the music. Plus the boy she likes (Patrick Lowe) is going to join them.

Everything is perfect, except for the man of her dreams - a killer musician (Atanas Ilitch) who cannot wait to take Courtney out...

I reviewed this movie’s predecessor a few years ago. It has always been a favourite of mine. I was aware that there were sequels but I had no real interest in watching them (the poster does not help). Recently I have seen Slumber Party Massacre II pop up on lists of underrated horror flicks, and so I sought it out.

While it is technically a sequel to The Slumber Party Massacre, Slumber Party Massacre II works as its own entity. While the original charmed with its handmade quality, this sequel feels more polished. The photography is good and there are some striking images - the killer perched atop the house, shredding on his guitar while his victims scramble away in the foreground.

While written as a satire of the genre, The Slumber Party Massacre feels conservative next to its sequel. 

While it does feature a killer, a group of victims and some gore-y kills, Slumber Party Massacre II remixes the ingredients into a surreal nightmare of pastels, plastic rockabilly and sexual repression.

While most of the story takes place in a single  house, the main location - an eerily quiet suburban development - is the first sign that this movie takes place in a completely different world. The neighbourhood is so uniform and bland in appearance, it feels like it might be down the road from Edward Scissorhands’ hometown.

The main character, Courtney, was a minor character from the original, but she is played by a different actress. The key carryover is the emotional scars she carries from the original movie. The film’s supernatural antagonist is a melding of her past trauma, her passion for music and her burgeoning sexuality (and her fear of said sexuality).

Even though we get flashes of footage from the original, this connection is tenuous - you do not need knowledge of the original in order for this movie to work.

The movie is fairly simple - a group of friends go to an isolated location and are swiftly eliminated - but that simplicity gives the filmmakers the space to twist and bend the rules of the story world’s reality. 

Most of the story’s tension comes from Courtney’s hallucinations of the Driller Killer (Atanas Ilitch). 

The back half of the movie is fairly traditional slash-and-stalk, but it is made far more interesting (and surreal) by the Killer’s musical antics. While all the acting in the film is solid, Ilitch is fantastic as the ​​villain. Smirking, cackling and sashaying through the movie, he is a force of nature. 

One of the more interesting aspects of the movie is that it is based around a rock band. Courtney and her friends are more interested in becoming musicians than their boyfriends. This is a really interesting element in the movie, and I kind of wished there was a little more of it in the movie. One of the strongest aspects of the original movie was the relationship dynamics among the main characters - boys were only a minor element. Here, the dynamics feel more like a generic slasher movie, with the characters all pairing off.

Based on his garb, you could be forgiven for thinking the Driller Killer’s music would be cock rock or glam. Maybe this would have been the case if the movie had a bigger budget. Instead, the music plays into the film’s focus on recasting generic teen romance tropes. 

I am no expert but the Killer’s music feels like it is meant to be a take-off on rockabilly - the lyrics are generic and repetitive in a manner that is designed to make the viewer feel as trapped as the characters.

There is a talking point about the 80s remaking the 50s, and this movie seems to be channeling that idea. The neighbourhood is a facsimile of the 50s, the music is a facsimile of the 50s and the Driller Killer’s persona is a facsimile of 50s dating rituals (cinematic at least).

I feel like there is a goldmine of analysis to be done on this film. Suffice to say that Slumber Party Massacre II is a really fun, unique slasher movie, and has more to offer than you may assume based on the title.

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

You can subscribe on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.