A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

If I recall correctly, Pam Grier appears in about four women-in-prison films on both sides of the bars. In this film, she is the Chief Matron, and not a nice person at all.This was one of the last films for director Gerardo de Leon, the most- awarded director in the history of the Filipino Academy of Movie Arts and Science.It also features Judith Brown and Roberta Collins, who both appeared in several women-in-prison films.In an uncredited role, you see Sofia Moran, a Philippine action star, who became their 13th President.Torture, showers, crawling through the sewer (Yech!) and boobage.

I'm a little disappointed with this film. The DVD cover led me to believe that this was BAAAAADDDDAAAASSSSSSS cinema, so I bought it on this pretence. It has Pam Grier in it so it has to be BBBBAAAAADDDDAASSSSS, right? WRONG. This film is just BBBBBAAAAADDDDD! Trying hard to be a 'roughie' and exploitation / escape film at the same time, Women in Cages is a hotch potch job, it's all over the place. I had trouble deciding which character I despised more. Sure, there's nudity and violence etc, but not much else to stay awake for!!! Exploitation, fair enough but this isn't even 'good' exploitation, if that makes sense. I likes mah explore-tation a tad mo sleaziuh and mo well done than this.......

American B-film companies found in the Philippines a cheap, plentiful supply of labour and locations for their tropical drive-in sleazefests. Admittedly these exploitation films are an acquired taste and a dubious form of entertainment; however they mark an important cultural milestone as the first features where a black actress, even playing a prison moll or topless revolutionary, is given a lead role of any substance. Director Jack Hill started the eightball rolling when he shot The Big Doll House in 1971, set in a nameless Latin American prison but filmed in the Filipino jungle. Unseen in Australia since the early 70s, the film featured a mixed cast of local and American exploitation regulars, but it's remembered as the first high-profile role for the later Queen of Blaxploitation, Pam Grier.Legend has it that Sam Arkoff, head of American International Pictures saw a statuesque Grier at his company switchboard and cast her on the spot for her breakthrough hit Coffy. That, as they say, is bull shee-it. The former beauty queen made her film debut in 1970 as an extra in Russ Meyer's big breast bonanza Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls, and appeared in a number of B-pics shot in the Philippines the following year for AiP's rival company, Roger Corman's New World Pictures. Alongside her role as the tough-as-nails prostitute in Big Doll House were supports in the horror flick The Twilight People and as a topless hooker (again!) in Cool Breeze, then back behind bars for Women In Cages.In Women In Cages, Grier plays the sadistic warden for once, a pot-smoking lesbian with a fully-equipped torture chamber (including a guillotine!). The 'New Fish' (a recent inmate, for you prison film novices), a ditzy blonde ex-stripper called Alabama, has taken the heroin possession rap for her pimp boyfriend. She knows too much, so the pimp blackmails her cellmates to execute her. A competent and well-shot entry in the tropical prison genre from Filipino director Gerry De Leon, it places the embittered ex-addict and prostitute Grier in the position of slave owner, watching her white charges toiling away in the plantation with obvious ironic glee.

Spoilers ahead? I'm going to have to say that `Women In Cages' is a downright ugly film with little redeeming value. In fact, I can't even imagine a Pam Grier fan liking it. The Queen of Blaxploitation is downright bad in this one, and I don't mean baaaad, as in `Coffy,' `Foxy Brown,' and `Scream Blacula Scream.' Her role as a one-dimensional lesbian sadist is just too much, and her death scene (being drowned in a river while raped by a gang of Asian thugs) is unbearable! Outside of that, Jennifer Gan, who plays Jeffries, is so bad you want to lock her in the hole for good and throw away the key! She stands around like the proverbial gentle giant, hovering above the cast like an Amazon, and looks absolutely pathetic (which the audience is supposed to decipher as innocence, dismissing the fact that her boyfriend is a drug-smuggler). Then, the director expects you to believe this whimpering idiot is capable of masterminding a prison break? Outside of a few TV appearances, Gan's acting career got the Electric Chair after this film (her only other flick is `Naked Angels'). and rightfully so! However, Roberta Collins (who played Matilda the Hun in `Death Race 2000') plays Stoke here and does an OK job, especially when juxtaposed against the rest of the cast, including Miss Del Monte Queen of the Philippines Sofia Moran (an actress once dubbed "The Sophia Loren' of the Philippines). Lastly, Judith Brown is especially bad as the back-stabbing junkie!The direction, lighting, and editing are horrible, the acting is three leagues under bad, and the plot, if you can call it that, centers around different ways to get the cast naked, including scenes involving a floating Asian whorehouse boat. It's not even worth a look if you like women-in-prison films, as the nude scenes are pretty drab and unpleasant looking. To its credit, it's only 78 minutes long though, so it's not like you're sitting through `Dances With Wolves' or `Gettysburg.'