Caged Fury

Caged Fury
United States - 1989
Director – Bill Milling
Cinevision Intl., 2006, DVD

From the title alone it’s pretty clear that this is intended to be bought as a “Women-In-Prison” flick. At least it passes itself off as one. Another film of the same name was produced and directed 6 years earlier by Filipino B-auteur Cirio H. Santiago, and looking for that Caged Fury, I stumbled upon this one.

If my assumption that a WIP flick is essentially required to have lots of skin wasn’t unasailable, I would say that at first, this has the emotional simplicity of a made for TV movie. Opening with a squabble between some prison guards who slash each other with razors between raping the underwear clad inmates offscreen, it’s clear that something besides the budget is going to be low.

Ostensibly a vehicle for top billed Erik Estrada of CHiPS, Caged Fury is more of an ironic diatribe on how men are fucking filthy sexist sharks as even the predatory protagonists are sexist tyrants, only wearing smiles. Kat, fresh young Mormon chum seeking her fame and fortune in Hollywood despite her father’s admonitions discovers from the word go that apparently even nice-guys will use any excuse whatsoever to use your meat and leave you dead in the water.

Look at those choppers.

The first to smell her blood is Buck, a discharge-dripping sleazo-photographer/agent who dolls her up in a slutty dress and takes her to a biker bar, where after being nearly raped by the bikers, she is “saved” by Dirk, a musclebound mulleted ‘Nam-vet/mercenary and his pal, pasty and swollen Estrada with a taut and toothy grin that looks like he could eat anything within arms reach. No sooner said, than Estrada coarsely pressures Kat into what we are led to believe is an offscreen sexual experience.

Next it’s an encounter with a grating overfed porn director who tricks Kat into a compromising situation which leads to her arrest. At an exasperating 38 minutes she’s finally sentenced to “prison” where the guards (including Ron Jeremy as “Pizzaface”) repeatedly rape and abuse the inmates with the collusion of the S&M lesbian warden.

Finally fed up after another 45 minutes of typical WIP debasement at the various and sundry hands of her captors, Kat foments rebellion among the inmates just as Dirk rides his motorcycle to the muscly stoic smash-happy rescue. As an afterthought, Estrada appears again from catering van convalescent leave with his clammy pork-chop face, still theoretically the toothless version of voracious misogynist, but for all his deceptive fat-puppy-dog whimpering, still chattering his fangs like a cold dumb sack-of-hammers.

The DVD triple-feature with which I secured my very own copy of Caged Fury.