PHENOMENALITY: (1) *uncanny,* (2) *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: (1) *poor,* (2) *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: (1) *adventure,* (2) *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*
In this essay I'll look at two films which put lots of female pulchritude on display, yet do so to very different ends.
BLACK ALLEYCATS uses the twin tropes of victimization and vigilante justice to entertain a presumably male audience with lots of female nudity. Though ALLEYCATS is badly filmed, recorded, written and acted, it does accomplish that one goal, and, unlike a number of films from the time period, does choose some young no-name actresses who are attractive even with their clothes on.
Four women-- all clad in identical garments, later seen to be a boarding school uniform-- are minding their own business, walking a street in some big city, when a male gang pursues them. The nasty fellows waylay the girls in a warehouse and rape them (mostly off-camera). The four women then take crash courses in armed and unarmed combat, and then don black masks and jackets. In these outfits the ladies-- calling themselves the Black Alleycats, even though two are white and two are black-- track down the rapists and beat them up, but don't bother filing charges with the cops.
This is the last time the Alleycats show off even badly-filmed martial arts. After the presumed rush they get from vigilantism, the ladies decide to start fighting petty criminals like numbers runners, holding up the crooks at gunpoint. But the script doesn't explore the usual criminal retaliation. Instead, it works as many peepshow scenes as possible, mostly at the boarding school, where they butt heads with another young woman, resulting in a short catfight. However, the four female felines find out that Girl Number Five has been victimized by a criminal doctor and his wife, who are blackmailing her to perform sexual acts. So the Alleycats induct Girl Five into the group and confront the doctor at his home. Finding that the doctor has some aphrodisiac on hand, they force the doc and his wife to take it, so that the two are humping like bunnies when the cops show up to arrest them. Not sure any evidence is presented for a trial, but by that time, who's thinking any more?
The only principal actor known to me was softcore specialist Marsha Jordan, playing the doctor's wife. If these vigilante vixens didn't wear masks, I might demur from considering them within the uncanny domain of the "outre outfit." Still, even though the masks are so large that it doesn't seem that the girls could possibly see out of them-- the only real amusement in the flick-- those accoutrements still put the Black Alleycats in the same category as more laudable creations like Zorro and the Spider.
WOMEN IN CAGES was apparently filmed slightly after Corman's seminal THE BIG DOLL HOUSE, using both the same Philippine locations and three of the same actresses, Judy Brown, Roberta Collins, and Pam Grier. However, whereas Grier played a minor role in HOUSE-- so minor that I don't even consider her a member of the starring ensemble-- she's essentially the star of the show here. I suspect that some person behind the scenes-- be it Corman or director Gerardo de Leon-- instructed the film's writers to build up the warden's part, whether it was to promote Grier or just to vary the formula a bit.
Certainly the viewpoint character Carol "Jeff" Jeffries (Jennifer Gan) doesn't stand out, save in terms of how naive she is. Her gangster boyfriend, about to be caught by the cops while carrying drugs, passes the illegal substances to Jeff and lets her take the rap. Not only does he allow her to be sentenced to a Manila prison, where prisoners are tortured if they don't behave and cut sugar cane, the creep even colludes with another female prisoner, a junkie, to assassinate Jeff.
For some time prior to the assassination, Jeff assumes that her boyfriend will appeal her case, which proves a source of great amusement to her cellmates: Teresa (Sofia Moran), Sandy (Brown), and Stoke (Collins), the would-be assassin-junkie. After Stoke's attempt to poison Jeff fails, Jeff belatedly grows a spine and plans a way to escape imprisonment, even taking Stoke along with her. The convicts face danger not only from the hostile terrain, but also from local poachers, who are awarded a bounty for capturing or killing prisoners. But the alternative is to remain in cages, where the convicts are continually brutalized by Alabama (Grier), the head matron. (A warden is only briefly seen; a dour Filipino woman who barely registers as a character.)
I argue that Alabama is the starring character of CAGES because, even though she's not the head of the prison, she's the one who makes it a hell on earth. The viewer knows nothing about Alabama except that she's an American Black, and claims to have been "strung out on smack" and to have been raped by a white man (though these claims may be linked to a possible prostitute past). She also hates white girls from her country, though she never articulates what they did to her, aside from not having been forced to grow up in the squalor of Harlem. Still, she goes out of her way to subject the white prisoners to such tortures as fire, electrocution, and even a gladiatorial-looking trident. The name "Alabama" is peculiar since Grier's character never sounds Southern in the least, and if she was given the name to denote her low status as the offspring of slaves, one wonders why she kept the name in the Philippines, where she could've called herself any damn thing. Alabama provides the film with the requisite lesbian sex scenes, since she has a regular thing with non-white prisoner Teresa. However, Alabama shows sadistic cruelty even to a fellow "woman of color," taunting Teresa with the possibility that Alabama may reject Teresa from her bed in favor of Stoke-- prompting one of the requisite catfights. In BIG DOLL HOUSE the mysterious warden tortured her female charges just for Sadean jollies. But when Alabama punishes white girls, her sadism seems tied to the idea of revolution against Caucasian hegemony.
When the big break comes, the convicts manage to drag Alabama along as a hostage, though they end up leaving her behind for the poachers to kill. In an oddly emotional scene, Teresa can't desert her former lover, but she and Alabama perish anyway. The escapees make their way to the gangster-boyfriend's prostitution-boat, possibly with revenge in mind. Yet though two prisoners escape with their lives, the film ends with a harsh scene undermining female empowerment, as a drugged-up hooker on the boat is about to be violated by a Filipino john. It's an odd ending for a film within the generally escapist WIP genre, and seems to be a loose indictment of male hegemony as a whole.
The torture sequences qualify in my system for naturalistic versions of the "bizarre crimes" trope.
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