Caged Fury

Determined to be an actress, naive Kathie Collins (Roxanna Michaels) leaves behind her father (Michael Parks) and her worldly sister, Tracy (Elena Sahagun), and heads for LaLaLand. Purely by coincidence, she picks up Rhonda (April Dawn Dollarhide), a hitchhiker who's fleeing a fat, horny motorist, and who offers to show Kathie the show biz ropes in the big city. Crashing at the pad of Rhonda's former boy friend Buck (Blake Bahner), a sexy photographer with the instincts of a pimp, the two women jump at the chance for a screen test. During a night on the town, Kathie is nearly gang raped in a biker bar--while Buck is engaged in an impromptu photo session with Rhonda in the ladies' room. Kathie is rescued by Victor (Erik Estrada, who is barely in the movie despite his top billing) and his martial-arts pal, Dirk (Richie Barathy). Before Kathie's new romance with Victor can blossom, she and Rhonda try out for a softcore porn movie. (One of the bigger implausibilities in this illogical screenplay is the gusto that the innocent Kathie brings to her audition.) Not realizing they are being set up by Buck, the two women argue with an obese director, are arrested on trumped-up charges, and are sent to a correctional institute. After being forced to lie over the phone to her father about being cast in a movie in Mexico, Kathie is gradually inducted into the sadomasochism that dominates life in the penitentiary. Refusing to believe her sister's phone call, Tracy visits Buck's apartment to pump him for information, but she, too, is nearly raped. Again Victor and Dirk come to the rescue, then beat Buck into revealing information about the porn ring. When Tracy foolishly goes undercover and is subsequently framed and arrested like her sister, Victor and his multitalented mercenary buddy spring into action. Although Victor is wounded in a shootout at the porn ring's headquarters (and vanishes from the storyline for much of the film's running time), his muscular friend heads for the unusual correctional facility. Reunited in jail, Kathie and Tracy launch a plan. As lesbian Warden Thorn (Ty Randolph) fondles Tracy, and Spider (Greg Cummins), a sadistic guard, tries to get Kathie drunk, Kathie smashes a bottle over the guard's head and makes a dash for the phone. She contacts a dim-witted cop who finally reports the call to Stoner (James Hong), the detective who handled the missing-persons report filed by Tracy. While hiding out in the prison, Kathie discovers the corpses of other women who supposedly have been freed. Then, while Dirk scales the prison walls, we learn that Warden Thorn is busy conducting a slave auction of some of the prisoners for visiting millionaires! It turns out that this arrest-and-imprison operation is an elaborate scam to provide fresh meat for a white slave ring. While Dirk busts assorted heads, Kathie saves her sister and frees some of her penitentiary pals. A bloodbath ensues when Warden Thorn issues orders that none of the girls is to get out alive. During the climax, Dirk kills most of the guards, cops arrive, and Kathie is nearly killed by Spider (whose eye she has mutilated) when she returns from outside the prison to rescue Rhonda. A happy ending is in store for the survivors (Kathie and Victor eventually ride off into the sunset) but not for the sexual slavers.

Credibility may not be an important element in women's prison films, but that's no excuse for the myriad coincidences that underlie the plot of CAGED FURY. Among many unanswered questions in this sloppily made film are: Why would Kathie, who has been given a strict upbringing, audition for a sleazy movie? What happens to the sapphic warden during the riot and why does she insist on shooting even the women who are still safely behind bars? Why would Kathie endanger herself to rescue Rhonda, who is responsible for her being in this mess in the first place? Who were the prisoners whose corpses Kathie finds?

Bargain-basement action flicks are supposed to provide cheap thrills for a male audience, and if this film were a turn-on, none of the above questions would matter. But on every level, this film is a turn-off. For some reason, the titillation sequences are played for laughs, which dissipates the tension of the women's false arrest. What's more, despite liberal amounts of female nudity, CAGED FURY won't send male pulse rates quickening. As for the standard action scenes, when Barathy's Dirk starts kung-fuing bad guys all over the prison, he seems to have wandered in from a Chuck Norris film. Since his character is peripheral to the plot, it's ridiculous to treat him as the hero, even though the film's nominal star, Estrada, is written out of the film until the end. Aside from Bahner, who puts a real leer into his villainy, the cast sinks to the low level of the material. CAGED FURY is a pitiful, disjointed example of the women's prison genre at its trashiest. (Nudity, substance abuse, sexual situations, excessive violence, profanity.) leave a comment