Caged Heat (1974) from Mongoose and Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski) and Tuna
Mongoose's comments in white

This is THE classic Women in Prison film, Caged Heat from 1974. Certainly not the first WIP and maybe not the best but definitely one of the milestone films of the genre. Erica Gavin plays a dumb chick who gets arrested for her small part in an attempted bank robbery, and is checked into prison by the horny prison doctor.

Brinke Stevens may be top Scream Queen of all time but when it comes to the Queen of ALL the B Movies it has to be, in my humble opinion, Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith. Rainbeaux's masterpiece was the fantastic sexploitation musical Cinderella. 

 

DVD info from Amazon.

NUDE SCENES
  • Erica Gavin being checked into prison and the prison doctor has to check the orifices for contraband 
  • Rainbeaux Smith sleeping in her cell dreaming about being groped by a prison guard, then killing him with a big butcher knife. Rainbeaux taking a shower. Rainbeaux full frontal nude locked up in solitary confinement. 
  • Rainbeaux, Erica Gavin and Juanita Brown standing topless in line to get into the shower.  Juanita in the shower topless.
  • Lynda Gold as "Crazy Alice.", taking a bath. You can take the gal out of the prison but you can't take the prison out of the gal...even after escaping from jail, these ladies still have an irresistible compulsion to bathe together. 
  • Roberta Collins being drugged by the prison doctor, then molested while in a stupor.
  • Several unknown women in the shower, including full frontals.

Scoopy's Thoughts

Caged Heat is the usual WIP crap.

All WIP films have exactly the same plot, with only two possible variations:

1) the prison doctor can be a liberal wimp who is too weak to oppose the brutal warden, or he can be a neo-Nazi using the girls for sexual exploitation and medical experiments

2) after their prison break, the women may be killed in a shoot out, or may drive off without resolution

Unbelievably, Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia) directed this movie, his first. Leonard Maltin says it is deliberately tongue-in-cheek, and there are some obvious visual jokes, but it is not a comedy.

You can tell this is a doctor and not just some slimebag minimum-wage prison orderly because he's smoking a pipe. In low budget films, the actors don't have the ability to reach down and find the ways that Medical School would make a man different from the person he might have been had he spent those same seven years chewing tobacco and shooting squirrels. They could show that he's an educated man by having him use some big words, but the writers of these movies don't actually know any big words. Therefore, they reach for the key symbol. A slimebag orderly would not smoke a pipe. Pipes are smoked by sophisticated guys like Basil Rathbone and George Sanders. Ergo, this must be a man of great education.

Tuna's Thoughts
Caged Heat (1974) is a women in prison movie directed by Jonathan Demme. It has most of the usual cliches. The evil doctor who smokes a pipe, the evil female warden, shower scenes, a crazy prisoner, jailbreaks and cat fights are all present. The only thing they missed was the innocent prisoner, which is usually the main basis for the plot. In this case, all of the prisoners were guilty. The film would have been watchable if they had taken care to develop the characters, so we could understand their motivations, especially the doctor and the warden.

The tit count is very high, and there is a good deal of full frontal nudity. The film was made for $180k, and it shows

The Critics Vote

The People Vote ...

  • With their votes ... IMDB summary: IMDb voters score it 5.1 

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