CAGED
HEAT (1974)Director: Jonathan Demme
New Concorde Home Video
CAGED
HEAT (1974)CAGED HEAT is perhaps the greatest send-up of the women behind bars genre ever made. It is one-fourth REFORM SCHOOL GIRLS with a dash of "CAGED" and a smattering of Pam Grier in her Blaxploitation mode. Long Island-born Director Demme labored under the school of fast and furious filmmaking that became the workshop for the likes of Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich and Francis Ford Coppola.
Working on a threadbare budget, Demme shows shrewd judgment in casting and especially in his script that keeps the camp sensibilities from spilling over and creating believable characters within the framework of the prison genre. Actresses like Erica Gavin and Barbara Steele are showcased in a way unique in their careers and it shows their trust in the fledgling talent of their director.
CAGED HEAT opens with a chase and a bust that ultimately puts a relatively innocent girl in a nightmarish situation within a penal colony bubbling over in a pressure cooker of ever-present danger and psychological brutalization. The prison is under the supervision of a wheelchair-bound, repressive, possibly lesbian warden named McQueen (Barbara Steele). She administers punishments and derives pleasure from her authority over the lives of the helpless females that she governs.
Barbara Steele has fond memories of both Demme and the suicidal pace of low budget filmmaking under Roger Corman. "Jonathan displayed such confidence that it was utterly contagious. Both Erica Gavin whom I liked a lot and myself trusted him completely. I am basically a very shy person and I hadn't made a film in a while. I accepted the role mainly because it was written especially for me and I was literally tracked down on Hollywood Boulevard by the casting director who had already put the word out to find me as I didn't have an agent and didn't even have a picture in the Academy Directory. My favorite memory was creating the cabaret dream sequence where McQueen reenacts 'The Blue Angel' in a lavatory. I knew that Jonathan was going to be a player and I am not the least surprised in his tremendous success. He certainly earned it."
The gritty reality of being deprived of male contact as well as the violence the women inflict upon each other is well realized and sent up within the conventions of the exploitation genre. The film does not miss an opportunity to address this whether it be in the showers, in the lockups or in solitary. There is a sequence where one of the black inmates is put in solitary so often she creates masturbatory fantasies in order to survive.
Many other sequences not only establish the frustration of being confined and punished in a system that disregards the individual and the psychological harm that results but wisely uses humor to balance the violence culminating in the final breakout and denouement that give the exploitation crowd as well as the dyed-in-the-wool film buff their money's worth.
The poignant harmonica and viola soundtrack is performed by John Cale, a former member of The Velvet Underground. The camerawork is by Tak Fujimoto of THE SIXTH SENSE (1999), SOMETHING WILD (1986), DEATH RACE 2000 (1975) and the essential SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991).
The presentation is as good as it gets for those that have only seen this film at a drive-in, grindhouse or on VHS. CAGED HEAT is presented full-screen in the 1.33: 1 aspect ratio, and image quality looks superb. The colors are solid and the transfer utilizes a pristine film source. The mono sound is excellent with no noticeable problems. The presentation also includes the theatrical trailer (introduced onscreen by Steele herself!), and well-written bios for some of the main participants.
Leonard Maltin conducts an interview with the ever-predictable Roger Corman (conducted for the VHS release of several years ago), which will be of interest only to those totally unfamiliar with the often lionized director. No new ground covered here, although it does comprise brief clips from the documentary "Roger Corman: Hollywood's Wild Angel." As Barbara Steele was fond of saying of him, "He's more like a CPA than a film director and is too concerned with budgetary issues to be considered an auteur."
In bringing CAGED HEAT to DVD, let's hope that the rest of Corman's New World quickies will follow in hot pursuit. (Christopher Dietrich)