Lady in a Cage
I watched yet another movie that was supposed to be shocking and controversial for its time. Lady in a Cage is another movie where a group of crazy criminals hold hostages and torture and kill them. It has a whacked out title sequence and is in black and white.
Seemed to me this would make a better play. The main character has an impossibly cultured accent and is a middle aged woman who looks good for her age and shows a lotta cleavage. She uses a weird 60s private elevator in her home to get up and down the stairs coz she broke a hip. Coincidences occur; a wire is accidentally broken, stranding her in midair in her electrical 'vator, and her son has just conveniently left on a trip. She rings the emergency bell in the elevator, which rings cheesy bells outside the house with notes to call the police.
A total cliche wino with Repent tattoed on his hand breaks in and sees her wine room. He also throws a fit over her choice in knick knacks coz they're false idols or something. He peers at her creepily from behind a curtain but doesn't want her to see him. He gets his also-middle aged hustler friend, who looks like Elizabeth Taylor in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? to come help him ransack the house. She gets referred to as fat, heavy, and a pig throughout the movie. And apparently she puts out for the wino sometimes.
Anyway, James Caan, all young and really hairy, leads a trio of sexually aggressive hoodlums who proceed to get the jump on the would-be thieves. They want the riches for themselves. They proceed to take a three-way bath involving attempted drowning, swing a giant ceramic lamp into the wino's head, and later kill him, and lock the female hustler in a room. She never comes out...like, ever...
James Caan gets to be freaky while wearing hosiery on his face. He eventually gets in the cage so he can rough up the woman. They find a note her son left. He was turning 30 and wanted to FINALLY MOVE OUT! He wanted to be free of her 'beauty'. "But we're close," she wails, "close as--gasp!" Ewwwww! see, I was totally confused at the begining, coz I thought she was his sugar momma or sumpin'. Turns out, his note told her he wanted money to live on his own, if he didn't get a yes when he called a little later, he'd KILL HIMSELF! And earlier, when she couldn't reach the phone? OMG! So, now, she has to get out of her cage to save her suicidal momma's boy!
Anyway, there's eye gouging, a crunched head, and plenty of excuses for the main character to crawl along floors with her breasts bulging. At one point she's lying in the elevator with one touching her chin. She manages to crawl out the front door TWICE, and James Caan gets his ass kicked by her both times.
Oh, and a THIRD group of thieves from the shady pawn shop show up, beat the trio up, take their loot out of their car and put it in their vehicle and leave.
So, it's an odd little movie. It wasn't sadistic enough for me, but it was nicely offbeat.