Monday, March 27, 2006

Our blog tonight is brought to you by the
Society for the Preservation of Women In Prison Movies

The Big Bird Cage – 1972

     This sequel to the Big Doll House (which is a Long Wait on my Netflix queue) by Jack Hill, the man who gave us Switchblade Sisters. (see earlier entry). And I gotta say, I was really looking forward to it. And I got worried, because the first special affect, a woman getting her hands crushed in gears, is really bad. I mean, the hands don’t look hurt at all. So I start worrying. OH MAN, I think, is this gonna be a let down.

I shouldn’t have worried. Jack Hill comes thru in spades. First off, there’s a great cast, headlined by Pam Grier and Sid Haig. Then, there’s some over the top actors, especially the warden and the gay guards (we actually only see two guards, but they’re both gay, to make sure that the girls can’t tempt them, I guess). Finally, there’s the supporting cast of beauties who are the “women in prison”. This includes the main actress from Abbey (also reviewed here recently).

The requisite shower scene is nice, but the dialogue is hysterical. Two examples to prove the point. The first, after Sid Haig has kidnapped this hot chick from a casino, she asks him what he’s gonna do. Sid tells her he’s gonna rape her. She says, and I quote

“You can’t rape me. I like sex!”

They don’t write dialogue like that anymore (or if they did, it would get cut out by the censors because it offends women). Next example, the really over the top warden is trying to convince a woman to rat on her friends, when he delivers in the oiliest voice imaginable:

“lying only makes you suffer!”

Oh, yeah, like this place has been a picnic all along.

You just haven’t lived until you’ve seen Sid Haig swish around, pretending to be gay. And the climatic (excuse the pun) gay man rape by the women is a scene you couldn’t even suggest today. (God, I miss the seventies. Except the clothes)

Jack Hill’s commentary is really good too (and it’s a good thing, since it’s the only extra on the disc). I love his frank, honest, down to earth approach. Kinda like David Friedman in a lot of ways. He admits that, with a WIP picture, there are expected conventions (like the shower scene, or the fire hose scene). The challenge is to present these elements in new and interesting ways. Nice to see a director who “gets” it.

This is an enormously entertaining movie. Not bad for only $150.

Four beers out of five