NEW WORLD PICTURES MONTH: The Big Bird Cage (1972)

I always say, “This movie has an all star cast” and often I mean, “It has an all star cast for me.” This would be one of those times, but man, look at this cast:

Anitra Ford, forever Laura from Messiah of Evil.

Pam Grier, taking her third trip into WIP hell for New World.

Sid Haig, as always making movies better just by being in them.

You can say the same for Vic Diaz.

And Carol Speed, Abby herself!

Grier and Haig play Blossom and Django, fun loving criminals and radical guerillas who kidnap Terry (Ford) during one of their crime sprees and get her sent up to a jungle prison hell. The kind of jungle prison that has a big dangerous device for processing sugar that keeps claiming the lives — life is cheap in a Jack Hill directed and written movie — of the inmates.

The script gets flipped when Diaz plays a gay guard and Haig has to seduce him to start the big jailbreak. But can Terry forgive Blossom and Django? Or will there be a reckoning once they escape the bamboo bars of the Bird Bird Cage?

Other prisoners include Candice Roman (The CultUnholy Rollers) as Carla, who seemingly will bed anyone; Speed is a sex worker; Marissa Delgado is losing her mind; Ted Bracci (The Centerfold GirlsHuman Experiments) makes with the jokes and Karen McKevic plays the six foot butch.

Beyond Ford being hung by her hair in this movie — that has to be someone’s fetish — she is dropped off at a cove in the beginning of the film that was also used in Apocalypse Now. As for Hill, he’d follow this movie by making two starring roles for Grier: Coffy and Foxy Brown.

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