It's amazing what the difference a year can make, a year after The Big Doll House director Jack Hill and two of its stars Pam Grier and Sid Haig reunite for a follow up prison tale (but not a sequel). 1972's The Big Bird Cage is a tale of political revolutionaries trying to cause an uprising in the Philippines by planning a sort of French revolution style storming of the Bastille on a women's prison.
The year earlier fresh faced Pam Grier could hardly act, here as Blossom it's as though a decade has past, Grier is far more confident, far more alert, and certainly more comfortable with herself because her opening scene involves her singing in a seedy Philippine Casino. No delayed reactions here, Pam Grier steals the show, which is actually surprising because although she is first billed cast member I would not go as far as to say she is the movies star
The lead role pretty much goes to Anitra Ford who plays Terry, a woman of dubious sexual ambiguity, and even more dubious standards. Terry despite her past is actually thrown into jail for a crime she did not commit, though after a hasty kidnap does not seem particularly fussed about joining in with her captives. "Why do you want me she asks?" to Django played by Sid Haig "Because I'm gonna rape you!"; the response takes Django by surprise "You can't rape me, I like sex!"
The Big Bird Cage, rather like The Big Doll House is an exploitation movie designed to titillate a mainly male crowd. This time however the sexuality has been toned down considerably, director Jack Hill obviously beginning to find his feet and be looked upon as a serious director and writer. The Big Bird Cage's plot is much more drawn out, better plotted, and to be perfectly honest looks a far better movie as a whole. Now don't get me wrong this is not a quality movie, but for the audience it was aimed at (mainly drive in theatre goers) it's a pretty capable affair.
Unlike its predecessor this movie is set in a jungle prison, it looks a lot like the set of the BBC drama Tenko, with bamboo bars holding the women captive rather than iron bars. It's a lot more back to the roots of prison style approach, with no electricity to provide torture as in Doll House the devices here are far more "rustic" with women being hung by their hair as a form of "ultimate" torture. From this aspect this is a far more shocking movie and I suspect that when Umberto Lenzi created Cannibal Ferox, an Ruggero Deodato created Cannibal Holocaust they used Big Bird Cage as a template idea in respect of torture, the hair torture almost mirrored by the spikes through breast approach of Ferox. But make no mistake this is where the comparison to these Italian movies ends, Big Dolls house looks more like a movie for slightly older kids than anything else.
There are a series of ludicrous cat fats that start about an hour in the movie, that spiral into the compulsory two women fighting in mud scene, but less drawn out here. It's the usual fight for power fights where one of the female prisoners namely the newly installed Blossom (Grier) who wants to be in charge of the prisoners, and help cause an uprising.
Sid Haig who is best known nowadays for The Devils Rejects and House Of 1000 Corpses offers a more rounded performance than Doll House; turning camp at the drop of a hat to help pull off his plan. Again like Grier his acting has improved drastically, this was an actor not afraid to put himself on the line for his craft. In his dual role of Sam Gillespie a camp new warden recruit he is incredibly likable, he seems to some level be having a bit of a joke with himself. While Jack Hill's scripting his him delivering the only laughs of the movie, especially in line of the fact that on introduction he changes his surname frequently (but nobody notices). Yes Haig delivers the light in the piece, which up until his arrival in the prison and the opening scenes had been a pretty straight laced affair.
It's amusing how the prisoners here are used as a disposable commodity, despite the fact that all the prisoners are awaiting proper trials they are often disposed of in the need to keep the camp maintained, one woman is squished in order to ensure a mill is kept working. But don't panic this is not a gory movie, the odd spot of blood or missing limb is tastefully done and to be honest with you your far more likely to be offended (in respect of blood and gore) watching an episode of Lost or 24.
The movie looks great considering its 26 years old and not necessarily designed to be the sort of movie that is seen again. Unlike Doll House the movie print is significantly improved and better restored for DVD audiences. The colourings are fairly weak with green and brown colours being more focused than any other.
While The Big Bird Cage is a very capable movie of this genre it's a disposable sort of movie that you would watch once, kind of enjoy but not watch it again, and possibly forget about it even quicker. I'm personally glad I saw it, but rather like my last sentence I would not partake in this again.
For those a little eagle eyed you might notice that a few locations are the same used in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now.
