The Big Doll House (1971) & Women in Cages (1971) & The Big Bird Cage (1972)

          Overflowing with gratuitous nudity, sadistic violence, and various iterations of sexual abuse, this trio of babes-behind-bars pictures—which were filmed together in the Philippines and share many actors, but which do not comprise a continued narrative—is trashy in the worst way. The movies are also, surprisingly, quite boring. The first flick, The Big Doll House, sets the numbing tone. After sexy blonde Alcott (Roberta Collins) gets thrown into a primitive Filipino prison overseen by perverse warden Miss Dietrich (Christine Schmidtmer), Alcott runs into hassles with cellmates including tough-talking African-American Grear (Pam Grier). The movie features myriad ugly scenes of Alcott being fondled by a swarthy cook (played by B-movie staple Sid Haig), being tortured by the warden’s goons, and/or trudging through catfights with Grear. (The ladies’ climactic battle is fought in a puddle of mud, with the combatants wearing only panties and tank tops.) The slim narrative involves Alcott uniting her fellow inmates for an audacious escape, but the story is really just an excuse for generating scenes of women in demeaning situations. And while Collins, Grier, and their cronies are attractive, the movie is so crass that it’s hard to find much enjoyment in director Jack Hill’s tacky take on titillation. That said, blaxploitation fans may find The Big Doll House interesting simply because it features Grier’s first major role. Her acting is dodgy, but Grier is so committed that she even sings the theme song, an R&B thumper called “Long Time Woman.”

          The second picture in the cycle, Women in Cages, is a decidedly weird type of drive-in sludge. Scored with dirge-like music and featuring such a fragmented storyline that the movie feels more like a series of torture vignettes than a proper narrative, Women in Cages comprises 81 minutes of nearly unadulterated brutality. The gist of the piece is that a political prisoner (Jennifer Gan) gets tossed into jail and rallies her cellmates for an escape. The lovely Collins is back, in a florid supporting role as a heroin-addicted inmate tasked with murdering a fellow prisoner—her methods include loosing a snake into a cell, poisoning a sandwich, and tossing acid onto her intended victim. Grier switches to full-on villain mode, playing a psychotic matron who runs her own personal torture garden. Grier’s performance is bug-eyed and silly, but the actress participates in the movie’s best dialogue exchange: After one of Grier’s victims asks, “What hell did you crawl out of,” Grier replies, “Harlem!” Given the lack of a compelling storyline, it doesn’t really matter that leading lady Gan is inept; this one’s all about grooving on seedy textures.

          The best of these three movies, though it’s not saying much, is The Big Bird Cage, which benefits from an action-packed climax and lots of wink-wink jokes. This one stars icy beauty Anitra Ford as an American who sleeps with political figures for social advantage until a misunderstanding lands her in the slammer. Grier and Haig play revolutionaries who pursue the oddball idea of freeing inmates from prison and transforming them into fellow revolutionaries. Written and directed by The Big Doll House’s Jack Hill, who brought more pizzazz to this skeevy genre the second time around, The Big Bird Cage has several interesting gimmicks, such as the presence of a giant sugar mill in the prison yard; the mill is the “Big Bird Cage” of the title, because workers toil inside the towering structure. The picture also benefits from campy humor, usually involving Haig doing something outrageous. (At one point, he masquerades as a swishy homosexual.) Leading lady Ford has a beguilingly reserved quality—she’s the Faye Dunaway of grindhouse cinema—and Grier locks into a groove playing a gun-toting mama with a smart mouth. In fact, of the three pictures, The Big Bird Cage comes closest to delivering the full Pam Grier persona that blaxploitation fans know and love.

The Big Doll House: LAME

Women in Cages: FREAKY
The Big Bird Cage: FUNKY

Sheba, Baby (1975)

Produced at the tail end of the blaxploitation boom—and in the waning days of leading lady Pam Grier’s initial popularity—this lackluster action flick is quite a comedown after the funky heights of previous Grier joints including Coffy (1973) and Foxy Brown(1974). Wham-Bam-Thank-You-Pam plays Sheba Shayne, a Chicago-based private investigator who returns to her hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, when she gets word that her dad is being hassled by local gangsters. Before long, Sheba’s dad falls victim to gun-toting thugs, so Sheba—with a little help from her pop’s business partner, Brick Williams (Austin Stoker)—unloads you-messed-with-the-wrong-mama vengeance on crime boss Pilot (D’Urville Martin) and his associates. Grier spends Sheba, Baby talking tough while looking great (her knockout figure is on ample display in costumes like the wetsuit she wears for the movie’s last half-hour), but Sheba, Baby is unmistakably second-rate. The dialogue is trite, the production values are mediocre, and the supporting performances are awful. Even the requisite funk/soul soundtrack, often a saving grace for shaky blaxploitation movies, is uninspired. Grier’s nomrally forceful acting falls victim to the general crappiness, because she often seems as if she’s delivering lines she’s just learned—it almost feels as if the movie comprises rehearsals instead of takes. Director/co-writer William Girdler was far more comfortable with in the horror genre, and after making this picture, he banged out a trio of demented creature features (from the campy 1976 gorefest Grizzly to the wigged-out 1978 supernatural flick The Manitou). For Sheba, Baby, he’s unable to conjure the needed vibe of frenetic violence and urban grime—the picture moves too slowly, the textures all feel phony—and it doesn’t help that Sheba, Baby is rated PG instead of R. Really, what’s the point of trafficking in a sleazy genre if not to present sleaze?

Sheba, Baby: LAME

Cool Breeze (1972)

          A blaxploitation take on W.R. Burnett’s classic crime novel The Asphalt Jungle—previously filmed as a 1950 film noir by director John Huston—Cool Breeze nearly works. The intricate story about a criminal mastermind gathering cohorts for a jewel heist is filled with betrayal and danger, so the narrative fits comfortably into the blaxploitation milieu. Furthermore, the film’s acting is generally very strong. However, first-time writer-director Barry Pollack’s inexperience shows. He fails to reveal exposition clearly, so it’s hard to track who’s doing what to whom, and nearly every scene has the same level of intensity, which creates tonal monotony. That said, the picture has a gritty look and a thumping soul-music soundtrack, so what it lacks in narrative polish, it makes up for in tough atmosphere.

          The antihero of the piece is Sidney Lord Jones (Thalmus Rasulala), a slick thief who just bribed his way out of prison. Planning the robbery of a vault containing diamonds worth millions of dollars, Sidney gets into business with Bill Mercer (Raymond St. Jacques), a wealthy crime boss who agrees to bankroll the job. Sidney then hires accomplices including a priest who moonlights as a safe-cracker and a ne’er-do-well Vietnam vet who provides muscle. Also lurking around the story are various cops—some corrupt, some honest—including the unhinged Lt. Brian Knowles (Lincoln Kilpatrick).

          The movie toggles between subplots at weird rhythms, as if Pollack can’t decide whether he’s making an ensemble piece or telling Sidney’s story, but many vignettes are vivid. On the lurid side of the spectrum, the always-ravishing Pam Grier shows up for one sexy scene as a hooker servicing Sidney, and on the character-driven side of the spectrum, supporting actor Stewart Bradley entertainingly chews through his role as an exasperated police captain. (Discovering that Mercer has a young mistress, Bradley goes off on a rant: “I can tolerate a little masturbation. I can tolerate a little sodomy. Let him cavort with a cow! But an old man with a nice, pretty, young girl—that’s too much.”)

          Playing a bookie helping Sidney set up his team, Sam Laws gives the movie’s most amusing performance, because his character is likeable, flabby wimp who whines whenever danger is near. As for Rasulala, he’s appropriately cocky and smooth throughout the picture. Had Pollack’s skills been sharper, this same cast and story could have coalesced into something really memorable; as is, Cool Breeze is entertaining but frustrating. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

Cool Breeze: FUNKY

Blacula (1972) & Scream, Blacula, Scream (1973)

          For a few funky years in the early ’70s, the blaxploitation genre was so popular it produced subgenres—including a string of campy horror movies whose titles were urbanized puns on the names of classic monsters. The first and best of these flicks was Blacula. Starring Shakespearean-trained actor William Marshall, whose elegant bearing and resonant voice class up the inherently trashy surroundings, Blaculasmoothly transposes characters and themes from Bram Stoker’s classic novel Dracula into an African-American milieu.

          The story begins in Transylvania circa the 1700s, when Count Dracula (Charles Macaulay) greets two visitors from Africa, Prince Mamawulde (Marshall) and his beautiful wife, Luva (Vonetta McGee). Bad host that he is, Dracula takes a chomp out of Mamawulde’s neck and buries him, cursing the prince to half-life beneath the earth. Then, when Mamawulde gets released 200 years later in modern-day L.A. (don’t ask), black-on-black bloodsucking ensues until the vampire meets Tina (also played by McGee), whom he believes is the reincarnated Luva.

          Capably directed by William Crain, Blaculamoves along at a good clip and stays focused on the soulful story, while still delivering blaxploitation tropes like pimptastic clothes, streetwise trash talk, and wah-wah guitars on the soundtrack. The picture also boasts one or two genuine jolts, and the gloomy finale has a bit of an emotional punch. This isn’t sophisticated stuff by any measure, but Blacula is moderately better than one might expect—and, hey, the fact that Mamawulde sprouts bitchin’ sideburns every time his blood gets boiling adds an extra blast of campy ’70s flava.

          In addition to triggering a series of imitators (yes, Blackenstein, we’re talking about you), Blaculainspired a quickie sequel that lacks the kitschy charm of the original, even though Marshall reprised his role. (Rather than bringing Crain back as director, the producers hired Bob Kelijan, helmer of the underwhelming Count Yorga pictures, to put Marshall through his paces.) Bearing the fabulously lurid title Scream, Blacula, Scream, the foll0w-up suffers from a drab story and a shortage of exciting moments.

          The story begins when a dying voodoo queen bequeaths her power to her friend/apprentice Lisa (Pam Grier) instead of her immediate relative, the craven Willis (Richard Lawson). Eager for payback, Willis uses voodoo to summon Mamawulde, who promptly turns Willis into a vampire slave. (That’s what you get for thinking you can control a vampire,) Soon, Mamawulde meets and becomes smitten with Lisa—an understandable response, given Grier’s casting. He then asks Lisa to cure his vampirism with that voodoo that she do-do.

          Unfortunately, it takes forever to get that far into the narrative, so the first hour is very dull, and the whole movie is so enervated that even Grier’s formidable charisma is stifled. Except for some tribal-drum-led tension during the movie’s climax, Scream, Blacula, Scream fails to get anyone’s blood pumping—and, sure enough, its unspectacular box-office performance helped kill a promising franchise.

Blacula: GROOVY

Scream, Blacula, Scream: LAME