Rent Caged Heat! (1974)

Cell Block Meh - Caged Heat! review by griggs

Roger Corman’s factory line had a knack for sneaking half-interesting ideas into films mostly designed to sell lurid posters, and Caged Heat is clearly Jonathan Demme learning on the job. You can already spot bits of the later obsessions — women banding together, anti-authority streaks, oddballs treated with a bit of sympathy — even if they are buried under a lot of boilerplate prison-movie nonsense.

The cast helps. Erica Gavin has proper presence, and Barbara Steele as the wheelchair-bound warden is easily the best thing in it: all icy fury, camp menace and a face that looks faintly insulted to be there. Fair enough. She gives the film some much-needed flavour whenever it threatens to go flat.

Which it does, for a while. The first half plods, the psychology is broad to the point of parody, and even the sleaze feels a bit dutiful. It wakes up once the revenge plot kicks in, and the dream sequences are weird enough to make you wonder what everyone involved had for lunch. Patchy, grubby, faintly interesting, but hardly gold.