Caged Fury

I don’t know about this one guys.  A teenage girl named Kat leaves her Utah or Nevada or someplace around there home to try and make it as an actress in L.A.  Along the way she picks up a hitchhiker, Rhonda (well it’s a little more complicated than that but whatever), who knows a guy they can stay with in L.A., Buck.  So they go to Buck’s place who tells them that he’s setup a meeting with an agent the next day.  Kat and Rhonda are so naive that they go along it even though Rhonda seems to have been around the block a few times so that’s kinda weird.  But big shocker, the agent guy just wants to use them for porn.  When Kat and Rhonda try to leave the cops are called and they get arrested.  Next thing they know they’re in the slammer.

That’s the general idea, now to fill in some details.  The night that the girls arrive in L.A. they and Buck go out to a bar.  After shootin’ the shit for a bit Kat goes to call her dad but gets jumped and taken outside.  Rhonda and Buck don’t notice ‘cause they’re getting it on in the bathroom.  So this is typical right?  An innocent young girl comes to town, doesn’t know shit about the city and gets in trouble.  But out of nowhere Victor, Eric Estrada (CHiPs, Sealab 2021), and Dirk, Richard Barathy (Fist of Fear, Touch of Death; Snake Eater), come to the rescue and beat the rapists/muggers up.  Actually Eric Estrada punches a couple of guys but Barathy does most of the work.  And he has a good look too with his girly mullet and mustache.  But don’t let that fool you because he does look pretty intimidating with his huge muscles and beefy build.  It’s too bad he didn’t become a staple 80’s or early 90’s henchman or bad guy because I could totally see him in those kinds of roles.  But he’s a good guy in this movie.  However, there’s no explanation given why he and Victor fight these guys.  We can see that Victor likes Kat but is Dirk just getting his pal’s back?  I mean it’s not cool to rape people ‘n all but they make it feel like there’s been some sort of feud brewing between Victor and this gang.  I dunno.

Victor then drives Kat around on his motorcycle for a while and they go back to Buck’s place.  When Buck answers the door he acts like her father at first asking where she was in a very impatient tone.  These two just met a couple of hours earlier and Buck is a total scumbag so why is he so concerned about her all of a sudden?  And then after that brief moment of worry Buck invites them in for some drugs.  I mean I get that he’s supposed to be a bad guy but what was that fatherly berating all about?  Anyway Victor and Kat talk, make out and we move to the next day which is when Kat goes to prison.

Soon after Kat and Rhonda are in jail we get introduced to the warden.  She’s decked out in only half gimp garb.  She’s pretty mean I guess but I dunno.  She barks a lot of orders but doesn’t really get her hands dirty.  She has no problem ordering her guards to kill people but doesn’t do any of it herself.  This is a fairly weak villain if you ask me.  There’s some menace but if you’re only going to go half way on the gimp outfit then that’s not enough for me.  It’s all gimp or nothing. 

Anyway, the guards force Kat to phone her dad to tell him that she went to Mexico to film a movie.  The dad tells Kat’s sister Tracy, played by Elena Sahagun who apparently was in Marked for Death but she must’ve had a real small part ‘cause I don’t remember her.  Of course Tracy thinks this Mexico thing is bullshit so she goes to L.A. to look for Kat.  But you see Tracy is the older sister and she’s been living out in L.A. for a while now.  She just went home to visit their father.  I love that they had her wear a Lakers hat to show that she lives in L.A.  Anyway, Tracy finds Buck’s place and Buck tries to rape her.  Good thing Victor and Dirk show up just in time to save her.  Dirk beats some info out of Buck and Tracy goes to check out the talent agency.  But Tracy must have graduated from dumb fuck university summa cum laude just like her sister because she falls for the same damn trick that Kat does.  So Tracy also ends up in the same fucked up prison.

Spoilers.  I’m gonna spoil a lotta shit right here but this movie wasn’t that good so whatever.  So this prison isn’t really a prison but a front for white slavery.  Hell yea.  White slavery is one of my favorite movie subjects.  And to be honest I didn’t really see it coming.  It definitely doesn’t seem like an ordinary prison but I thought it was just what the movie was going for.  This is a shitty low budget production so it’s hard to tell what’s supposed to be weird and what’s weird because they didn’t have enough money.  But white slavery?  Hey they got me.  So the whole damn thing, the cops, the judge, the courtroom, the jail, the guards, the warden, everyone is in on this racket.  But how they explain it is kinda funny but also really poorly done.  Kat tries to escape and is brought to a room where the warden is showing off one of the girls to potential buyers.  They’re all international sleazy businessmen.  The warden starts to explain what the prison really is and that’s fine.  But then the foreign buyers start to explain shit.  They talk about it so smugly like it’s such a clever idea and that’s what I didn’t like.  Not that this movie is incredibly engrossing but this takes what little movie you’re going along with and throws it in the trash.  I would have preferred if Kat stumbles upon the room but hides and overhears the white slavery scheme.  The warden telling her this stuff is fine because she’s the main bad guy but one of the guards has to get in on the act by saying, “do the words white slave trade mean anything to you?”  I think the movie could’ve benefitted from being more subtle.  And according to one of the buyers they go through the whole fake prison routine to break their spirit.  They have a lot of girls that they’ve rounded up too.  That’s a lot of spirit breakin’.

The guy that comes to rescue the girls is Dirk.  Yea, not Victor but Dirk.  Why is Eric Estrada in this movie again?  Whatever, the two of them are so concerned about Kat and Tracy that they go to the talent agency and beat those scumbags up.  Victor gets himself shot by an old man so Dirk is on rescue duty alone.  I still don’t know what his motivation is though.  He’s not even the guy that Kat likes, that’s Victor.  So Dirk is willing to risk his own life for his friend’s girl who he only spent a couple of hours with a week ago?  I guess you could argue that Dirk sees something isn’t right and it would be morally wrong to just ignore it.  But what about the cops?  Call the fucking police.  Oh wait the police actually are in the movie.  Yeah Tracy goes to the cops before getting thrown in fake jail.  Kat is even able to sneak in a phone call to the cops while she’s inside.  And one of the cops in this movie is James Hong, fuckin’ Lo Pan from fuckin’ Big Trouble in Little China.  He’s a really great actor and he’s done a ton of other stuff but he’ll always be Lo Pan to me.  So Hong starts to track this fake prison down but it doesn’t lead to anything.  It’s never resolved.  The cops don’t do dick man.  I mean Kat and Dirk are the ones that kick ass and set the prisoners free.  If the call and visit to the police weren’t going to lead to anything then why are they in the movie?

Another thing that’s never resolved is the warden.  We never see her die or run away or anything.  So what happened to her?  Last time we see her she orders the guards to make sure no one leaves the building alive.  After that, nothing.  After Kat gets out of the prison she realizes that Rhonda is still in there and goes to find her.  So we get the Rhonda character all squared away, guards are killed and even one of the scumbag buyers gets the wrong end of Barathy’s leg but they leave the main villain out of it?  I don’t get it.  Also when Kat runs back into the prison neither Dirk nor Victor (who happened to arrive just as they all escape outside) go with her.  What the fuck guys, go help her.

This movie was kind of entertaining but not very.  It’s actually not a bad idea, it just needed a better…well a better everything.  If they had a bigger budget and got a legit director and actors then this could’ve been a lot cooler.  I like the soundtrack though.  It’s almost like a slowed down version of the Commando theme which also reminds me of “No Self Control” by Peter Gabriel.  And Richard Barathy is pretty good but he could’ve used a better fight choreographer or any fight choreographer for that matter to show off his skills better.  He looks awkward when he fights in this probably because he had to slow down for the camera and I’m sure the fights weren’t really planned out that much if at all.  If you’re interested in learning more about Barathy check out the videos below.  But overall Caged Fury doesn’t totally add up to a good time because unfortunately the shittiness seeps through quite a bit.  I would recommend a couple of drinks before or during a viewing but I think it would just lead to impatience.  Watch at your own risk.