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Terry Rich, an escort entangled with high-ranking foreign officials, is arrested after being found with wanted revolutionaries. She is placed in a filthy women’s prison in a remote location in the Philippines. Terry along with the other women is bent on escaping this jungle prison and seeking revenge against the vile Warden Zappa, all while preparing for an attack with the revolutionaries on the savage penitentiary.
Jack Hill, after attaining staggering success with the highest-grossing independent film THE BIG DOLL HOUSE, is coming back with his weird parody style. Reuniting with his two favorite actors Pam Grier and Sid Haig, Hill starts work on what most consider to be his greatest work. Hill, who also directed Jack, utilizes breathtaking jungle scenery as the backdrop for parts of the film that he plans to blow up in his later project, APOCALYPSE NOW.
Jack Hill was one of those directors who worked wonders by perfecting the art of trimming the excess to deliver a superior product. To some degree, Hill understood what the audience wanted. His films consisted of numerous gruesome killings, a plethora of nudity, and a high dose of action and THE BIG BIRD CAGE is no exception. Furthermore, he also penned the scripts for several of his films, including this one.
Hill was also kind enough to grant his actors some leeway with regards to portraying their characters by letting them alter dialogue if they believed that it was a better substitution. A number of the witty retorts and other dialogues were improvised on the set for THE BIG BIRD CAGE (1972). Below is one of the funniest, and most outrageous ones.
Some women’s groups were not impressed with the line from the sultry Anitra Ford where she stated that given a choice, rape wasn’t a scenario that particularly bothered her. Later on, however, she does get gang raped by a group of horny men in a small restaurant located in the jungle post her successful, albeit brief, escape from the prison. Sex plays a crucial role in this film.
Since the element of rape seems to be an integral part of the WIP (Women In Prison) category, there is quite a bit of sexual escapades on display here. Most of the characters are sex-deprived people and that also includes the other people outside the prison. The characters of Blossom and Django (Grier & Haig) seem to be in constant affairs while they feverishly declare a revolution the specifics of which are not mentioned.
One particular scene shows the two of them engaging in a battle that finds its conclusion in a pig’s mud pit. Feeling aroused, they relax in their bunker, whilst Django’s craving for attention followers wait restlessly outside. They peek at their own ladies who are all old and ugly, then turn back to the hut that Django is currently in, and marvel at what he is saying, “Blossom what a woman.”
Carla played by the lovely Candice Roman, one of the female captives looks like she is literally losing her mind if she is not given some attention from the masculine side of the species. In one scene where a girl returns from meeting the warden, Carla attempts to get the girl to tell her all those details regarding the meeting. When she refuses, Carla outraged starts shouting she has no right to hide anything from people who are eager to know. Then she tells everyone, “Is there no one who has a dirty joke?
Among the many sexual overtones that are often prevalent in these types of films, lesbianism is one of them. Although it is quite like male relationships, there is still an accent towards female homosexuality in this film. Politically incorrect Hill has always attempted to accommodate in his films, this time he did not shy away from that aspect.
Along with being racially insensitive, in THE BIG BIRD CAGE, he also tries to come off as making some humorous notions about gay people. The two primary male guards are household names and serve as a source of entertainment. The character who shines the most is Rocco. He is played by one of the most famous Filipino villains, Vic Diaz, and Rocco is perhaps one of the most unforgettable characters in this film. Hill states that at first, Diaz wasn’t too thrilled about the character because it was too weird for him.
In an unusual turn of events, the particular scenario tends to be placed first in the film, as no other production would showcase such a freakish scene. One of the action-packed moments is where the climax is set and the fighters for the revolution finally charge. Django tells the girls to keep Rocco quiet to which Carla, who has been starved for sex, ‘wasn’t having it’. Women get hold of him and with much struggle, start working on Rocco to get his member into position. The girls in anticipation watch and Rocco gets louder and louder. To quiet him, Bull, the male character seated vigorously on Rocco’s face, does the expected.
As Carla goes over the edge, the battle starts to shake rattle, and roll with the destruction of a water tower Caroline screams, “They never saw me coming.” The females chuck Rocco to the ground and since he is weaker now due to clanking on him, a group of demented women who were once kept in a rattan cage shred him to pieces. The jaw-dropping part is where it got turned into a cult classic amongst the gay community while Hill is over-excited with stereotypes at all times during the film.
The MPAA compelled Hill to eliminate certain frames from Rocco’s rape scene involving the lustful women. Frames of Candice Roman riding Vic Diaz and the subsequent groping motion were cut to obviate an ‘X’ rating. Obviously, Hill is of the opinion that he did reprise some of them later on. The scene is beyond comparison in its comic appeal and the best-put parallel perhaps rests with one peculiar death scene from the cult classic ILSA, HAREM KEEPER OF THE OIL SHIEKS (1976), which was made by another exploitative master, Don Edmonds.
Anitra Ford was a model, a ‘Price Is Right’ model, and later, she became an art photographer. During her fleeting time as an exploitation diva, she starred as the leading lady in INVASION OF THE BEE GIRLS (1973). It’s unfortunate she didn’t last longer in the sleaze cinema industry because she was quite a good actress and pleasant-looking. She also has some television credits to her name.
Pam Grier is so well known in the film industry that she hardly needs any formal introduction. Having worked in almost all of the cinematic genres, she will always be known as the actress who defined strong female leads in the Blaxploitation films, COFFY (1973) and FOXY BROWN (1974). Grier also had roles in horror films (THE TWILIGHT PEOPLE and SCREAM, BLACULA, SCREAM), fantasy films (THE ARENA), and even sci-fi (CLASS OF 1999).
Strangely, most of the women who acted in BIG BIRD CAGE did not continue into the same, or Hollywood genre films. Carol Speed, who plays the popular and obnoxious slave Mickie who harangues his fellow prisoner, the giraffe woman named Karen (modem Karen McKevic plays her with a certain amount of unspeaking harmfulness), seems to have had the longest career outside of other films starring Pam Grier and Anitra Ford. Speed landed the lead in ABBY (1974) alongside other television series and Blaxploitation roles. Where did the natural beauty of Candice Roman, who so convincingly played the sexually depraved Carla go after the end of 1972? She seemed to entirely vanish from the film world.
On the disc commentary for the film, Jack Hill shares some interesting tales about the production process. One such tale discusses how Hill met the actor Sid Haig and managed to name his character in the Django movie, a revolutionary leader. Hill and Haig had beards while filming for the movie if I remember correctly. They used to go out a lot, and Hill overheard some locals speaking in Spanish, and one of them said something that sounded like ‘Choongo.’ Hill thought it was very close to Django, so in the script, he called Sid’s character Django. Later on, the director found out that the word, Choongo, was actually Spanish for monkey, and that it was derogatory to use against Filipinos.
Yet another museum-quality piece of art is the insane modality surrounding the search for appropriate sites. Jack Hill together with his producer was trying to locate suitable jungle locations when they stumbled upon some cabin in the middle of nowhere. To their amazement, they found the famous screen-torn guy, William Smith, lying on a bed in this cabin. The bewildered Smith, upon coming to his senses and seeing Jack Hill (‘because he knows him’), standing in the jungle thought he was dreaming. He did not expect to find a friend in the middle of the scorching tropical forest of the Philippines where he was shooting a film.
Jack Hill is the father who designed the Big Bird Cage of the title and as the rest of the family inform the audience, he built it to last. A scene during the fiery finale required the evil warden Zappa to be tortured in a contraption that was meant to collapse and crush him. As John Hill was trying to assure himself that the attached cables would successfully pull down the ‘Big Bird Cage’, he had to come up with an alternate method for the destruction of the building when the huge apparatus proved difficult to tear down. In addition, John Hill had a hand in building the Walt Disney castle and a number of theme park rides.
With how Hill crafted Haig’s character, it’s clear that he was a fan of Italian Westerns. Hill also employs some dialogue from Italian horse operas as well. The line about Django being in the mountains after he died was taken from VIVA, SABATA! (1970). Jack Hill also had a plan for a sequel, which was THE PIRATE WOMEN OF ZAMU WENGA. That sequel never went further than brainstorming. Coming up with ideas for that BLAXPLOITATION classic, COFFY (1976) became the more important priority for Jack Hill.
Somehow, THE BIG BIRD CAGE (1972) lost to its prequel at the box office, but over the years it seems to be the most revered in the cult film community. It’s one of my favorites and contains so much great, and in some quotes so politically incorrect, dialog. If you enjoyed Jack Hill’s other works, this Women In Prison adventure is definitely worth a repeat watch.
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