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| Genre: | Unclassified |
| Year: | 1974 |
| Rating: | R |
| Length: | 1 Hour 19 Minutes |
| Cast: | Jonathan Demme, Juanita Brown, Erica Gavin, Barbara Steele |
Considered the quintessential "girls in prison" flick of the 1970s, novice director Jonathan Demme's Caged Heat is set in a hellish American woman's penitentiary run by vicious, wheelchair-bound Barbara Steele. Statuesque convict Erica Gavin is forced to undergo horrible (but legal) tortures when she is falsely accused of trying to escape. Gavin and fellow con Juanita Brown decide to make a real break, but return to prison to rescue a friend who is about to be lobotomized by the sadistic prison doctor. Then they stage a robbery, only to find a group of male robbers at the bank ahead of them. A final shootout in the prison yards brings the film to a bloody climax. Despite every opportunity to turn this film into a sleaze parade, director Demme offers us a skillful, fairly believable and sometimes (consciously) funny yarn in which we genuinely care about the people involved. Caged Heat was also released under the title Renegade Girls. Hal Erickson
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