Juanita Brown

(On Cable TV, September 2020) Not every Oscar-winning director has an immaculate high-art past, and so it is that the celebrated Jonathan Demme got his start on Roger Corman exploitation pictures, and exploitation thriller Caged Heat was his first directing credit. As a better-than-average women-in-prison film, Caged Heat has all of the nudity, violence, girl-on-girl fighting, anti-establishment screeds and sadistic wards that you’d expect from such films. The plot first goes where you think it will go (unjust arrest; meet the cast; early rebellion; punishment; greater rebellion; escape and so on) and then doesn’t, with the details along the way being little bits of titillation thrown to the audience. Where Demme does bring his touch is that the result is noticeably better than other films of the subgenre: there’s some humour to the proceedings, social critiques, scenes that go beyond the strict minimum, and the film minimizes (but does not eliminate) male-on-female violence to focus on female-on-female oppression (or rather system-on-women oppression). Some of the casting does work: Barbara Steele does have one weird role as the wheelchair-bound warden, and Juanita Brown is simply captivating. It’s not much, but it does work: most of the film plays according to exploitation expectations, but there’s enough going on here to keep interest if you’re committed to the film. I suppose that if you must watch a women-in-prison film, you could do worse than Caged Heat.