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Illustration : Unknown |
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The Big Bird Cage |
Jack Hill | USA | 1972 |
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Director Jack Hill’s
spoof of the women-in-prison genre is a delicious slice of
entertaining exploitation courtesy of Roger
Corman’s New
World Pictures. Shot in the
Philippines and featuring a cast of cult names — Sid Haig, Vic
Diaz, Pam Grier
and Carol
Speed — the film
interchanges between comedic moments and nastiness with consummate
ease, keeping the viewer amused and startled in equal measure. The rich clientele of a cabaret nightclub
are held at gunpoint and robbed by a band of revolutionaries led by the
charismatic Django (Sid Haig)
and his prickly lover, Blossom (Pam
Grier).
Making their getaway, Django abducts impossibly gorgeous socialite
Terry Rich (Anitra Ford),
but is forced to leave her in the hands of the police as he escapes
over the side of a bridge. The hapless Terry is incriminated for the
robbery and end ups incarcerated in an all-female prison camp. Run by a veritable caricature of sadism, warden Zappa (Andy Centenera), the prison dress code is hot pants and short tied-off shirts (holding in heaving breasts threatening to burst out at any moment…). His two ruthless and homosexual sidekicks, Rocco (Vic Diaz) and Moreno (Subas Herrero) bully and coerce the girls on a daily basis, forcing them to work the fields collecting sugar cane to feed the titular ‘Big Bird Cage’ — a huge mill in the centre of the camp. Meanwhile, whilst Terry jostles for position within the prison hierarchy, Django hatches a plan to start his Revolution, taking inspiration from the storming of the Bastille. His notion is to liberate the prison camp from the inside out: planting Blossom as a Trojan horse prisoner in order to facilitate the revolutionary band’s later assault.
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After the BBFC
rejected both The Big Doll House
and Women
in Cages outright for
theatrical exhibition in the UK, The
Big Bird Cage
was unsurprisingly passed over. In April 1984, Warner Home Video
gave Hill’s
film its long delayed premiere; this version however, was informally
examined by the BBFC
who made the following cuts amounting to 2 minutes 45 seconds: Rina walking through the smoke-filled back
room; female prisoners used as prostitutes in the background.
The ripping off of Terry’s shirt and cutting of her hot pants during the aborted rape . All shots of Terry hanging by her hair from the scaffold. Removal of the torturing of Blossom with bullets pressed in-between her fingers. The female inmates raping of Rocco. Carla sat on top of Rocco exclaiming “Jesus, I’ve never had one like that before!” just as the water tower explodes. The 1986 release featured here was given a
total make-over sleeve-wise, with the old US poster artwork (as
partially utilised for the 1984 release) discarded altogether. Whilst
eye-catching in execution, bars and concrete prrison cells are nowhere
to be found in the movie! aka : — cast : Pam Grier, Anitra Ford, Candice Roman, Teda Bracci, Carol Speed, Karen McKevic, Sid Haig, Marissa Delgado, Vic Diaz, Andy Centenera, Rizza Fabian, Subas Herrero, Wendy Green |