The Naked Cage (1986)THE NAKED CAGE opens with a shot of a two-lane highway as a really nice pair of legs adorned with red cowboy boots walks across the frame to the music of The Fabulous Thunderbirds 'Tuff Enough'. The first thought this scene conjurs up is "Damn, the eighties".
The legs belong to Christina Whitaker who plays badgirl escapee Rita (and the rest looks just as good as the legs). Rita is, of course, up to no good as she involves one of her rides, Willy, in a bank hold-up where, interestingly enough, his ex-girlfriend Michelle (Shari Shattuck) is a teller.
Things go bad during the hold-up, so they end up taking Michelle hostage. During a shootout with the police, Willy is killed while Rita and Michelle are taken prisoner (huh). Of course it plays out that Rita fingered Michelle (stop that) as her accomplice, so they both go to prison.
Being the naive, young, innocent girl in prison, Michelle is introduced to a world of protection rackets, violent inmates, drug addicts, and bad acting. Of course the prison is populated with the usual suspects in a WIP flick: a corrupt warden (female, lesbian, and played by Angel Tompkins); a sleazy guard called Smiley who thinks rape is a normal daily activity; a contingency of black inmates interestingly lead by a woman who does not believe in violence or drugs; a heroin addict who cannot stand up for herself and needs a big sister; and any number of stereotypes that were shaken out of other prison flicks and landed here.
Rita also shares this cellblock with Michelle and has an axe to grind, or at least wishes she did as she starts off with a screwdriver and advances from there. Rita apparently is blaming Michelle for getting caught and is wanting to snuff out the perceived thorn in her side.
THE NAKED CAGE starts off interestingly enough for the first ten minutes, which makes it appear as though this is going to be an interesting film, then takes a nosedive into boredom and annoyance for the next 30-40 minutes before it picks back up again. It then becomes a mediocre film at best with some entertaining action sequences.
THE NAKED CAGE does provide a good amount of nudity which is expected from WIP flicks. The character of Rita is particularly nasty, well played, and hot. And it does provide an interesting sub-plot which I will not reveal. It unfortunately is also littered with too many annoyances and poor writing to really make its good parts pay off. It does become an entertaining watch for the WIP flick fan but I would not highly recommend it for anybody else.
THE NAKED CAGE has a runtime of 97 minutes and is presently out of print, at least under this title. It is available on VHS, used, from Amazon.com:
The Naked Cage VHS/Amazon
