In an unknown dictatorship, a small group of rebels led by Django (Sid Haig) and Blossom (Pam Grier) are stuck robbing locals for money.
Seeing an opportunity to expand their numbers, the rebels decide to liberate a nearby women's prison. In advance of their assault, Blossom becomes an inmate and Django seduces one of the prison's sadistic guard (Vic Diaz).
Will their plan succeed? Or will they end up in The Big Bird Cage?
The first thing The Big Bird Cage gets right comes right at the start: Pam Grier is top-billed. Good move.
Written and directed by Jack Hill, The Big Bird Cage is a major step up from his first go at the genre: The movie has better pacing and feels more fleshed out. While The Big Doll House felt small and home-made, The Big Bird Cage feels more epic in scope, but also looser in tone.
The Big Doll House felt slow and overly earnest in how it laid out the story. It felt like a rehearsal for this movie, which is all swagger and confidence. The movie has an offbeat sense of humour and a feel for reversing/undermining expectations that makes it far more exciting.
The biggest shift is the revolutionary leader Django played by Sid Haig. Unlike the earnest rebels of Hill’s previous movie, Haig is an opportunist who is out for himself. He spends the movie having to be nudged into action. Overconfident, mercenary and corrupt, Haig dominates every scene he is in. He is also in on the joke, pushing the character toward outright villainy.
In an evolution from their transactional relationship in The Big Doll House, Pam Grier plays his girlfriend, Blossom. Unlike her beau, she has more belief in the cause and is constantly in conflict with him about their goals. Grier is far more comfortable than she was in Doll House - she also gets far more to do than in her previous roles, particularly in terms of action. The script has the good sense to delay bringing her into the prison, with a series of action sequences that set up how much of a grenade she will be once she is in the titular cage. Whipsmart and unstoppable, Grier’s performance as Blossom feels like a speed ramp toward her breakout in Coffy.
As with their previous appearance together, Grier and Haig have great chemistry - they are the oddest of odd couples, but you buy them as a bickering but long-term pair.
The acting overall is better than Doll House - Vic Diaz manages to be detestable while somehow giving his sadistic prison guard pathos when he thinks he has found a new boyfriend (Haig in a ridiculously fey disguise). While the prisoners are a little cookie cutter, Carol Speed stands out as the prison’s resident pot stirrer - she gets a funny extended bit where she tries to convince Blossom that she is the big shot of the inmates.
While it moves well, has scope and has a better sense of tone, The Big Bird Cage is still an exploitation movie. While there is a certain charming bluntness to it, there are elements of the picture which I had to silo off - the movie has a cartoonish vein of homophobia that I am still trying to wrap my head around. It feels like the filmmakers are taking the familiar stereotype of the evil queer guard/inmate and push it into parody - there is a lesbian character who is a sexual predator, but she is treated as a buffoon. There is another inmate who is so fixated on having sex that she assaults a gay prison guard. These moments are played to be ridiculous, but they do not play as well against the film’s broadly sympathetic view of the inmates.
While those scenes clang, other attempts at humour are great - I particularly enjoyed one beat during Django’s escape from the initial robbery. He is so obsessed with escaping he does not realise that the vehicle he has stolen is a cab with an elderly couple in the back.
The movie is a buffet for every possible reaction - you are guaranteed not to be bored. It is easily the most entertaining movie of the sample I viewed and probably the most representative - if I was going to point to a WIP film as one to watch, The Big Bird Cage would be it.
That being said, take the points raised about the movie’s homophobia as a disclaimer.
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