Ubiquitous Punk Lady

If you watch splatter movies from the 80's then you'll recognize this face, or more likely, the haircut. This woman was the ubiquitous punk rocker that gave so many low budget horror and sci-fi films legitimacy.
I don't know who she is, I can't figure it out by looking at the cast list for any of the movies she's in because I can never remember more than one or two at a time.
For all I know, this is a mystery that has long ago been solved by other movie nerds. Not me. Hell she probably has her own website.

The above image was captured from Tim Kincaids Mutant Hunt, a film in which Punk Lady has a mystery role. I have no idea what her purpose in the plot actually is.

Here she is in Street Trash about to set a homeless guy on fire, and later getting booked at the police station.

And making an ass of herself as one of the freaks in a Hitler moustache in Troma's Class of Nuke 'Em High

Anyway, if you know of any other movies she's in, or who the hell she is let me know and send an image please.

The ongoing list of movies featuring Ubiquitous Punk Lady:
Slammer Girls
Mutant Hunt
Street Trash
Class of Nuke 'Em High

Blood Beach

Cover scan courtesy of itsonlyamovie.co.uk

Blood Beach
United States - 1981
Director – Jeffrey Bloom
Media Home Entertainment, 1982, VHS

Just moments after the opening shot, shit, in the opening shot, a granny is sucked screaming, into the sand of an LA beach while her dog and a harbor patrolman look on. Sadly the patrolman, Harry, knows the old lady and all the more traumatic for him, used to date her daughter Catherine. It might not have gone any farther than that as far as Harry is concerned, except that the following night, in an epically metaphorical cross cutting of scenes, Harry gets it on with his sexy foreign stewardess girlfriend while simultaneously the granny's dog gets its head ripped off on the same stretch of beach. Now Catherine, a sensitive artist type, arrives in town and Harry’s all nervous and twisted up with inrequited "harbor patrol" duties.

Meanwhile, on the scene to investigate, is a pair of perfect character actor cops. Uncouth, unkempt and unruly ex-Chicago cop Royko (Burt Young from a million things) and his scolding fatherly Lieutenant (Otis Young) a stern and overly serious "black cop". Permissably perplexed, the cops have nothing to go on until the next day when a rich bitch on the beach gets her legs chewed on. Enter the big man on precinct, tough as nails Capitan, John Saxon (Cannibal Apocalypse, Nightmare on Elm St.) who orders the entire beach exhumed by a backhoe.
Nothing.

Saxon, a media vulture, and Royko (Young)

For no reason except perhaps to compensate for the relative timidity of scares thusfar in the film, the script resorts to a simple "unexplained noise + cat jumping out of nowhere" ploy, which on second thought only morosely emphasizes the previous fact. As if that weren't enough. When Harry's goofy partner, affectionately called "Hoagy", parts ways with his girlfriend, she gets sexually assaulted under the pier but throws the guy off. Crawling towards her, apparently while fully erect and penetrating the sand, his weiner is gruesomely removed by the sand creature. Follow wiener joke.
Next it's Harry's girlfriends turn to go under, and while the all the backhoes in the world didn't find shit the first time, this time one guy with a spade is able to find her eyeball, solidly placing her in the dead meat category and sealing Catherine's place at the top while nonetheless steeling Harry's resolve.



At this point it's clear that despite the best efforts of a generally talented crew of actors this movie is not going to deliver on the serious meat, or creeps. John Saxon himself cracks down on his boys and pushes them toward the inevitable sideline role all cops play in this type of watered down everyday-quasi-hero horror flick. Harry will inevitably discover the solution somehow linked to his and Catherine's past relationship. And while the cops will execute the final actual kill, Harry will be the artistic father of the operation, and receive the movie's only real hero medal, the girl.

Despite its relative predictability, Blood Beach holds great promise, never altogether delivered, but certainly promised. There's an assload of talent here, and the fact that the monster is based on a real life insect, the Ant Lion, is pretty rad. I thought those bugs were pretty creepy when I was a kid. Here though, the concept isn’t played to its full potential and when it comes so close to the end, there’s no time to let the full weight of the idea sink in. Seeing people getting sucked into the sand and gored is awesome, but there's not enough of it to make all the talent interesting, and the strain between moments of each is only just bridgeable by intoxication.

Some poster art, mostly in languages I don't understand, the last looks like a double feature of some kind.

Haogies

If you've ever seen a film called Blood Beach, and chances are you have not, you may remember a character named Hoagie (seen getting snuffed in the pic to the left). Pretty stupid name, but in the context of the film it might be fitting, y'know, stoner beach-bum likes to eat sandwiches or whatever so his friends nickname him Hoagie right? Apparently people are actually named that, or anyway it is a familiar shortening of the name Hoagland, which is just a little to close to hog-land among other things for me to take it even remotely serious.
If you are trying to find pictures on Google of our foggy brained friend of said moniker, you will not find them, but instead, pictures of America's favorite Hoagy (spelled differently than I had assumed), Hoagland Carmichael composer of music for films among other things. To his credit is the heartwarming classic "Heart and Soul" which played such an integral part in that effervescent and enucleating Tom Hanks classic Big.
Nevertheless, should you pursue the matter, and I don't recommend it (everything interesting is written here as far as I'm concerned) you will find that Hoagy Carmichael does indeed like sandwiches. Preferably those consisting of canned lunchmeat Treet, raw yellow onions and mustard.
Happy eating.

While I'm on the subject, I'm angry that George Lucas didn't get Tom Hanks to star in one of the the Threequels. That would have been fucking awesome.

Vintage Treet ad from gather.com

The Octagon

The Octagon
United States – 1980
Director – Eric Karson
Media Home Entertainment, 1983, VHS

Chuck Norris is called Scott James in this one, and you know what they say about people with two first names. This is possibly the most overt plotline parallel of Norris’ life I’ve seen so far. It’s also the most emasculated I’ve ever seen him.

Head firmly ensconced in its turgid, golden helmet of hair, Scott does little else but change from one nasty, over-tight jean/collared shirt combo to another, and bicker with his buddy AJ (Canadian TV actor Art Hindle, Porky’s). Supposedly a semi-professional fighter, AJ’s revolting, floofy coiffure rivals his grating personality, and in tandem they disgorge the sort of cheesy, dumbass ladies man schtick one might expect from say, a Three’s Company or a Love Boat episode. During his excellent delivery of this brilliant dialogue, his mouth even begins to resemble a puckered purging, waste-crusted blowhole.

Begin with a bunch of runaways and rednecks dropped off together on a dirt road: together, they walk into a training compound, where they have apparently paid to undergo the world's most rigorous martial arts training. The guy in charge of the camp? Scott’s brother Seikura, (Tadashi Yamashita, Gymkata) a sore loser turned evil. The camp itself seems to be a vocational college for underprivileged aspiring terrorists, revolutionaries, and mercenaries, staffed by an army of pushover stocking-cap ninjas, and a big guy who I think is probably a leper.

But back in swinging LA, Scott hooks up with a doe-eyed airhead chick who is immediately killed by Seikura’s ninja. Lee Van Cleef, no stranger to such ridiculous and poorly conceptualized plot motivators, and with a fire that belies his withering face and career, tries to warn Scott away. Spooky. Scott hooks up with Justine, a rich European chick with a rigid dome of hair perched atop her bony, makeup-slathered head like a giant dried elephant poo. She tries to get him drunk and help her go after Seikura. Scott refuses because he's sworn off professional fighting, but since AJ’s about as smart as a turd, he storms off to take care of Seikura himself, essentially calling Scott and his golden mane a pussy.



Finally, though I wouldn’t say the 3rd time is the charm, Aura, a whimpering terrorist camp alumnus (class of Last Week), teams up with Scott’s “repetitive-bitch-slapping” technique, offering such useful tactical skills as the “stand-aside-and-watch”, and “topless-hog-immolation” fighting styles.

When AJ arrives at the training camp, he comes face to face with Seikura’s glimmering black cascade of evil hair, and quickly looses all his body and shine, finally lying limp and bloody on the wooden floor of a tiny cage. Scott and Aura show up just in time to get AJ killed. Like in Gymkata; a film which shares many of the cheap production values, secondary actors, and overtly laughable story concepts - the golden-haired boy kicks everyone's ass, but it’s too dark to see most of it, and this time Norris’ unintelligibly-reverb-laden, whispered narration is suddenly and enigmatically silent.





See this guy? He answered the above classified advertisement and two years later became a genetically enhanced serial killer in Silent Rage the only other Norris film with overt nudity. (Don't worry, Chuck prayed to Jesus for forgiveness on the boob thing and it's all cleared up.)

Mutant Hunt

Mutant Hunt

United States - 1987

Director – Tim Kincaid

Wizard Video (distributed by Lightning Video), 1985(?), VHS

Mutant Hunt is one of the eight or so films helmed by Tim Kincaid during his brief detour from adult film. That story is far more interesting than the plot of this film, but I digress.
An evil scientist named simply “Z” turns on his not so evil coworkers and sics his cyborgs (also known as mutants in this film, keep in mind, the terms are interchangeable.) on them, but they escape. They find a mercenary, Riker and his pal Felix, who will help them kill the evil cyborgs. Another scientist meanwhile, a rogue, named Domina is cooking up her own cyborg scheme for her own reasons; she’s a Euphoron junkie.
Euphoron? What’s that in English? They kill for pleasure stupid, ever since the Space Shuttle Sex Murders.
In the future, all the apartments, (do they have those?), have hardwood floors and baseboard moulding. At least except for Riker’s fly joint, a second floor walk-up (boxing gym?) with jagged whitewashed brick walls that have carefully positioned nails laden exclusively with melee and missile weapons. It might be hard to call out Chekhov’s Gun here, because Riker does use a few of these weapons on the spot while wearing tighty whities, but there’s plenty enough that don’t get used either, and none of it after this one scene.
Felix, Riker's sidekick is called on his implanted earphone by Darla using a touch-tone pay-phone only to spend the rest of the movie (not only as the quasi spastic awe inspiring fight choreographer) looking like he’s hoping this film will bolster his burgeoning (mid 80’s NYC) rap career. Despite the use of laser guns in the first 10 minutes of the film, everything else is strictly lo-quality grappling.


At Darla’s converted basement/loading dock crib, which is furnished with 70’s laminated wood furniture, she and Riker knock the dust off, proving my childhood memory of this movie to be at least partially false at least on the extremely brief nudity front.
Hey, the gore effects in this baby are pretty damn good for being on the cheap, hell there were movies coming out in the mid 90’s that wished they had effects this good. That little tag on the box cover is obviously exaggeration, but what with all the gooey mutants and dismemberment it aint bad. I still gotta give it up to Mister Kincaid though for successfully hanging all the rest of this trash on that.

Here is the text of my original review of Mutant Hunt published roughly in 1997, in my zine “Sorority Slasher Massacre on Planet B” which reviewed only tapes that were available for rent in the local shop "The Video Stop":

DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT rent this movie, under any circumstances. This is the most horrible movie I‘ve ever seen. The plot stinks, the acting reeks, the sets suck. The whole thing seems like a porno movie with a wannabe premise. But there isn’t even any nudity! Ugggghhhhh this was so horrible. Gag gag gag.
Well, wait a minute, if you like super horrible movies, or you wanna suffer, this might be good for you. But so might a bullet to the head. Plan 9 From Outer Space looks like an epic classic masterpiece whatever compared to this crap! (I have since also changed my opinion of Plan 9)

In 2009, I honorably submit an appeal to my former self to commute my death sentence to a sentence of suffering, through Tim Kincaid movies to which I now happily submit.

Oddly, or not so perhaps, I was right about one thing way back before (my hippie parents allowed me to have) the internet, Mutant Hunt does come across as a porno without the fuckin’. Tim Kincaid is the maestro of early gay porn from back in the mid 70’s, properly revered and honored in the community. Mutant Hunt was part of a three year period of non-adult filmmaking which was underwritten at least in part by Charles Band of Full Moon Features. Much of the music from Mutant Hunt and other of Kincaid’s “standard” features was lifted directly from Richard Bands scores for Full Moon movies. In any case, Kincaid returned to porn in 2001 to fill those empty sets with sweaty friction. In the meantime he did leave a legacy of "straight" trash for us to suffer through happily (including a film hilariously titled "Breeders". Get it?).

Watch the Mutant Hunt trailer at Cult Trailers
My friends at Direct to Video Connoisseur have a great review as well.

Here's a Dutch video cover courtesy of Rolfens DVD with the same artwork. I think it's awesome that artist C. Winston Taylor made sure the mutant/cyborgs shirt had a sleeve that extended along with his arm, and that the incredibly voluptuous victim has camel toe.

New Stuff

Some newly acquired VHS tapes and a DVD title I was hoping would be screenable at Kung Fu Grindhouse.
I heard I Was a Teenage TV Terrorist was just bizarre, and it's an early Troma production so it's bound to have something going for it.
When I saw Space Camp on the clearance shelf I snatched it up thinking it had to be one of those promotional movie projects, almost like a safety video with a plot, but in this case with an obvious commercial aspect. It is commercial but it's also plotty enough that it has a DVD release. Eh, whatever, I guess it can still be entertainingly bad even if it's not hard to find.
To Sleep with a Vampire, hmmmm, I'll admit that one intrigued me because of Charlie Spradling (Ski School, Puppetmaster 2), but there is another reason as well. It's one of the super cheap films that were filmed at Roger Cormans studio during I think the middle 90's. At that time they were cranking out skin flicks in 3 or four nights, using the same sets that bigger budget (in the Corman sense) films were using during the day. Just two actors and some dialogue. That's it.
Soul Brothers of Kung Fu was a random purchase from HKFlix because the plot semed amusing. Fortunately it is, despite the fact it was released by BanZai Media who has a penchant for releasing grainy, faded, fullscreen VHS transfers as "Special Edition".
Soul Brothers stars Bruce Li as Bruce Li, an awesome martial artist who idolizes Bruce Lee but works as a day laborer in Hong Kong. He saves a young black kid from being beat up, and starts training him. Over the course of the film they incur the wrath of some mafia dudes I think, and Bruce starts to practice a crazy pressure point technique involving the testicles. Well that's creative. Anyway in the end of course they confron the bad guys and Bruce uses his awesome new skill to actually stab the baddies to death with his fingers. All the restored footage advertised on the back of the sleeve was really not noticeable except for the alternate ending which ran (in full screen) after the climax. It was a lot gorier and happier if you can believe that. All in all Soul Brothers was pretty good, the fighting was pretty coarse and there were some talky bits but the payoff was decent, and thankfully, the print was actually good.

Last Remake on the Left

There has been some talk about the remake of Last House on the Left, mostly negative. (I'll grant you I am very much out of the loop when it comes to feedback, I get zero media coverage so when I say "some talk" I mean I read probably one or two things online and then talked to myself). But I think I've come to a watershed as far as remakes go, at least in the United States, and I'd like to share it with whomever might be inclined to humor me for a moment or two.
I've seen a few of the recent remakes of classic American slasher horror, most notably Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Halloween.

I have heard many times uttered from the mouths of splatter fans, including my own, "I know it's going to suck, but I want to see what they're going to do with it." or "It'll never be as good as the original but...(add lame justification)."
Often the same people who say the above, (including myself) also say things like, "These idiots don't have any new ideas that's why they have to ruin all our good classics with remakes." and "Who's giving these people money, what a stupid idea, how could they possibly improve on the original?"

The answer is that we are giving them money to re-make our good memories into garbage, because we "are just curious what they're going to do with it."
We know it's going to suck, and we're insulted by remakes, yet we fuel the fire with our 10 dollar tickets.
No excuse.
But, I have decided I won't go and see any more remakes. (even though I've liked a few in the past)
I want to keep what good memories I have left, (not to mention my hard earned dollars)and I want to send those capitalist bastards in Movielandplace a message; "Come up with something new! Quit paying marketing agents to script remakes and hire actual creative people with new ideas, there are some left, (I know they're hard to find since they've been ignored for so long) otherwise you get no more money from me. (and this also goes for Asian films you imperialists of originality!)"

So, if you want originality and creativity and you mean it, stand up for it and don't back down, otherwise, quit complaining. It also means that if a movie comes out that looks weird or cheesy or dumb, but is unprecedented, go see it.

Support creativity and independance.

That is all.

Drug Traffikers (Thunder Warrior)

(cover scan courtesy The Scandy Factory)

Thunder Warrior

a.k.a. - Thunder, Drug Traffikers

Italy - 1987

Director – Fabrizzio De Angelis

Image Entertainment, 1988, DVD

I had nothing to go on with this film. It was a blind shot, a totally random acquisition circumstantially attached to a triple feature DVD set that I bought in order to see Caged Fury That’s alright though, I love getting random movies I’ve never heard of before, and I do so love surprises. I’m not surprised that the Italians weren’t trying to make a socially conscious film here, but they missed the boat by 8 years if you’re counting the far better but equally exploitive Johnny Firecloud.

Our intro is a wild westish theme, with the ubiquitous brown-hued sandstone plateaus, Juniper flecked hills and empty sky, forlorn harmonica music drives the point home. A long haired kid named Thunder hitches a ride home on a truck and hops off at a gas station where a skeezy sheriff proposes “hose tryout” and a private “pump session” to the girl pumping his gas. Ahem yeah. Speaking to an old “native”, our young lad babbles something incomprehensible with wildly flapping lips, oh, it’s Italian! With a sluggish cheap as dogshit-dub no less. I’m starting to think this is going to be, no, it is definitely going to be trashy Injunsploitation. I know this is not new, it is just so crude that it’s hard to track such overt grab-n-smash back to old John Wayne films.


Or not, thankfully, the Italians leave very little space for intellectual acrobatics. After yakking at the old creasy faced grandpa in dubbed out Italian, Thunder goes to the local Indian cemetery, replete with foam tombstones where he finds a burly construction jerk ready to pour the foundation of a strip mall. In the meantime, he steps out of his Cat to drain the lizard on the sacred ground. Patiently waiting for just such an affront is Thunder who issues a massive face beating a-la stray discarded 2-x-4 before running away when the construction worker cavalry arrives.

In town Thunder goes to the police station to ask the cops to stop construction of the strip mall. (I’m assuming it’s a strip mall because that’s the tackiest building I can think of) Sheriff Cole played by Bo Svenson blows him off and one of the deputies drives the kid out of town and dumps him. I hate to call Bo out, he seems like a decent actor, but damned if every movie I’ve seen him in isn’t total crap. Maybe he was making poor choices because he was all doped up.

On the long walk back, the construction workers show up and lasso Thunder to their jeep and drag him around before kicking hell out of him. The Italians know how to ratchet up an anti-native sentiment to howling crescendo of screaming headline quality racism. In town, Thunder goes to the bank that is funding the construction and when the deputies show up to wreck his day again he beats them senseless. I’m getting the impression that we’re supposed to make a jump in logic here. Either Thunder is a ‘Nam vet, or it’s just natural Indian proclivity to kick serious ass.

Pursuing Thunder, the deputies instigate a manhunt that lasts the rest of the movie, often without Thunder present on screen and during which the caliber of firearms increases exponentially. Frankly as far as guns are concerned this is like the entire Death Wish series concentrated into one big murky Injun Rambo played by a very white Mark Gregory. (Bronx Warriors series and this trilogy and that’s about it) So Basically, it’s a white guy playing a native, aping a white guy. (assuming the reality/cinema continuum is seamlessly joined) Unsurprisingly the cops set grandpa Eagle’s house on fire roasting him alive and later, nearly rape his sister, or anyway, that gas pump girl who hangs around with grandpa Eagle and doesn’t say much.

The final scene is effectively a 10 minute hyperviolent recap of the whole movie into one hugely incinerating awesomesplosion as Thunder drives a front-end-loader into the bank and inexplicably bazookas the vault door over and over. By the time the first deputy shows up, the cops are clearly so horrified at Thunders ability to magically generate bazooka ammo, and his carefree penchant to use it that they all suddenly let him go. This is confirmed by the small blond children wearing warpaint who warble in falsetto adult dubbed voices “Thunder will never die!”, making it white kids playing at being a white guy playing at being a native aping a white man. A premise which is so ridiculous in retrospect that nothing else can explain Cole’s sudden sympathetic turn, except that maybe Svenson really was high as a kite. For the record, whatever he's on would be the only drugs in this movie, I don't know why they retitled it that.

The DVD cover of the Drug Traffikers tripple feature.

Zombie

Zombie

a.k.a. Zombie Flesh Eaters

Italy - 1980

Director - Lucio Fulci

Anchor Bay, 2002, DVD

As an unabashed 15+ year fan (short for fanatic) of zombie movies I must admit that one of my favorites, in fact my absolute favorite zombie film is Lucio Fulci's Zombi 2 (known to most US viewers of course as simply Zombie).

There are several reasons for this effusive gushing affection (I choose my adjectives with care).

• The spiritually and emotionally uplifting poster art, see right.
• The effusive gushing gore brought to you by Gianetto DeRossi (more recently he did Haute Tension, a gory (duh) French slasher film from the directors of the decent remake of The Hills Have Eyes.
• The low budget plot which is taken up primarily by zombies eating people, zombies shuffling, zombies rising slowly from improbably shallow graves, and people shrieking as they flee the shuffling hungry zombies. Of course there's some dramatic tension and character development in there too, oh and some nudity, but who's counting when the impromptu tracheotomies-via-zombie-mandible are taking place?
• Tisa Farrow, and more importantly Ian McCullough, two steadfastly mediocre actors who put every ounce of passion into every zombie induced shriek.
• Ummm, it's fucking Italian, and frankly you cannot get much better than an Italian exploitation film. The Wops did it best and they did it best, period. There is something in the Italian cultural mentality that allows for envelope pushing extremes, just ask Benito.
• The soundtrack which just adds a level of low budget menace which cannot be equaled I think by anything American, and few things Italian. Piercing, unnerving, almost nauseating, it is the perfect compliment to the film. When Phill and I at Kung Fu Grindhouse showed this movie, one of the things we were most excited about was getting to hear the soundtrack over a full PA system. It was a thing of beauty.

This last point is a big one, and it is what inspired me to write this blog entry. I've long wanted to have myself a copy of the soundtrack in order to assail my ears with images of undead mastication whenever it so pleased myself to do so. Alas, the one semi-bootleg copy available retail was ridiculously overpriced and had to be shipped from the land of really bad movies (see also the United Kingdom), not to mention being out of print.
Enter The Manchester Morgue, a blog which I found because it was kind enough to post a link here. I wasn't sure for a while what Manchester Morgue was trying to do besides being exploitation movie nerds (which is fine in and of itself) but hey, on closer inspection I got it. If you want to find the music from an old exploitation movie, Manchester Morgue is the place to look. Once I figured that one out (which took all of 3 or 4 minutes of actual attention paying) guess what I began searching frantically for?

Oh sweet wienie roast. Now I can think of flesh eating all day long with a smile on my face.

Visit my new friends over at The Manchester Morgue for good things and look HERE for more Zombi 2 coverage from LVA, and HERE for zombies in general.

Charles Bronson and Jill Ireland

Google Image search for Charles Bronson and you will probably not find these pictures. You have to search his wife Jill Ireland's name and you'll come up with all kinds of interesting pictures of the couple together. That may or may not say a lot about our cultural assignment of gender roles, I tend to lean towards "Says a lot". It should go without saying that I knew neither of these people but I like Bronson movies a lot (understatement) and I find Charles and Jill's relationship interesting because in my mind they seem kindof like opposites, he the quiet reserved type, and her the prissy high maintenance type. I have no idea, I'm just guessing here. I also find it interesting because they worked together on numerous movies during their marriage (which ended with her death in 1990), more than one of which involved scenes of Bronson raping her, or nearly so. On the Blue Underground DVD of Violent City (in which Bronson both almost-rapes and kills her) director Sergio Sollima talks about the oddness of their relationship (I was not paying much attention so I forget what it was but it was similar to my thoughts)
According to IMDB, her first husband David McCallum introduced her to Charles on the set of The Great Escape which starred both men.

Of their working relationship Jill is quoted (on IMDB) as saying:
"I'm in so many Charles Bronson films because no other actress will work with him".

My personal favorite quote of his (also from IMDB):
"I guess I look like a rock quarry that someone has dynamited."

If even half of it is true there's one hell of a bio on Bronson at IMDB which I recommend checking out.

The Naked Cage

Naked Cage

United States - 1986

Director – Paul Nicholas

Media Home Entertainment, 1987, VHS

You might think the movie hasn’t started yet and you’re watching a trailer for a Disney picture about animal husbandry when you spot the first scene coming over the horizon like a gilded unicorn. Buxom blonde Michelle (Shari Shattuck of Arena and later, director Jim Wynorski's Body Chemistry 3) lives the life of a perfect adorable princess well into her twenties, all soft focus, Slisbury Steak dinners, cooing mothers and underthings that smell like sunlight and Jesus. This is the kindof girl that prays every night for god to bless her horsies, c’mon, she actually enjoys her job as a bank teller. Like director Nicholas’ earlier women-in-prison film, Chained Heat, Naked Cage also centers around an innocent baby-fatted princess thrown into the grinder of prison only to come out all tits and gristle on the other side.

Alright!
That’s the first exclamation of enthusiasm coming from the jutting rugged jaw of Willy (John Terlesky of the title role in Deathstalker 2 also directed by Jim Wynorski). Willy picks up a fashion-punk chick named Rita from the side of a lonely desert highway. Over lunch at a roadside diner, a cop takes an interest in Willy’s stolen Corvette, and Rita exposes her inner ex-con by airing out the cop’s brain. Later, after Willy snorts some victory cocaine off her titties, Rita convinces him to rob a bank, but he makes one last drug addled reconciliation plea to with his wife (? This is never clarified) the angelic untainted Michelle. Rebuffed, (and probably a few grams later) it turns out that they’re robbing the same bank that doe-eyed Michelle works at. (big surprise) Michelle tries to intervene in the whole blundering operation, to make Willy stop, to turn him back into the sunshine, but when she jumps in the getaway car to staunch the flow when he is shot, she is taken as an accomplice and is prison bound for all the usual visual vice and expected sin.

Inside she is forced to wear a demeaning little rag of a miniskirt and befriends the stringy-haired waifish drug addict inmate Amy who she counsels in positivity with sparkly sigh-heavy bragging about her pony. The Warden, with a rat’s nest of blond curls piled and sprayed to a rigid finish, gives Michelle the lesbian warden speech. Please me, and your life here will be easy etc. Hmmm, in case you were wondering just what that means, or maybe just wanted the warden to be a little more specific, hold on a sec…

In the Warden’s boudoir, bedecked with every tacky 80’s aesthetic convention short of a Lamborghini poster, she spanks and is spanked by a pillowy chested inmate in low-grade bondage gear and competing spray-hardened rats nest. If you aren’t too distracted, you’ll notice that the inmate is pocketing, er, pantying something, go back to being distracted it never gets explained. But do pay attention to the pug-nosed creep in the closet, he’ll be back in just a … WAIT There he is, raping one of the black inmates before hanging her.
Brought to task by the leader of the black prisoners, Brenda, the Warden upbraids “Smiley” the rapist, but as we know, in detail, she has her own prisonerette vice and there is an uneasy a live and let live, racist-rapist-homicide policy.

Suddenly Rita shows up in the mess hall and you know she’s pure poison because she’s already sporting a custom modified punk prison issue miniskirt and single dangling feather earring. That’s concentrated anarchy waiting to happen.
Good timing too, I was just starting to think Michelle wasn’t going to have a shower scene. But as if to punish me for being such a shallow slob, Rita emerges from the roiling steam to slash Michelle up with a knife, waking her up from her nightmare. This is where things start to get a little bit complicated and overly serious, blame it on director Nicholas who’s Chained Heat (1983) was equally brimming with bloodletting and boobs. He’d rather bite the tongue off than stick it in the cheek.

Here Michelle incurs the wrath of the Warden and her pal Smiley by refusing to rat on the other inmates, and by sticking up for Amy when her pimp comes around. Sent to solitary so Smiley can have his perverse revenge, Michelle shows him how quick a country girl can learn that testicles are sensitive to kicking.
Also like Heat, Cage follows an uplifting arc of revenge and renewal with the inmates rebelling and Michelle chucking Rita onto a giant open fusebox festooned with dangling wires where she fries ever so believably in a shower of sparks like a horsefly on a bug zapper. I don’t think anybody has died like that since 1988.
Having kicked down the rotting house from the inside, Michelle can return to innocence and her 70’s ranch-house all American lifestyle to make out with her stupid pony.