Caged Heat (1974)

Jonathan Demme (SILENCE OF THE LAMBS) made his directorial debut with this irreverent, politically-charged entry in the 1970s women-in-prison film genre. It stars Roberta Collins, Ella Reid, and Rainbeux Smith as sex-starved inmates who befriend newcomer Jackie (Erica Gavin) at a Connorville women's prison. Their daily routine involves lots of showering, catfights, and drag performances, interrupted by occasional electro-shock treatments and other "corrective therapies" courtesy of wheelchair-bound warden McQueen (Euro-horror icon Barbara Steele). Eventually the girls escape, go on a crime spree, and then return to bust out their sisters in a ferocious hail of bullets. Demme delivers all the requisite nudity and perversion but adds a lot more as well, including bizarre dream sequences (McQueen's CABARET-style bathroom performance is a highlight), feminism, elaborate tracking shots, documentary-style realism, and even some rudimentary character development. CAGED HEAT manages to be in on its own joke while still delivering the payload of gratuitous flesh that fans of this sort of film expect. Former Velvet Underground member John Cale contributes a mournful soundtrack of harmonica and viola. Demme's wife at the time, Evelyn Purcell, produced the film for Roger Corman's New World Pictures.