'LADY IN A CAGE'.....SELF-QUARANTINE WITH A VENGEANCE

Lady In A Cage (1964)   This nasty little item reared its ugly head as part of the mid-1960's Geriatric Horror Boom that exploded on to the scene after the surprise success of "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane".......

                A whole new crazy genre arose.......and long forgotten actresses of Hollywood's golden age found  newly born careers, recruited into horror films of varying quality........ the ladies could bulge their eyes and scream their lungs out in front of  camera....instead of during a nursing home enema.....

                "Lady In A Cage" stands apart in this crowd of Senior Gothic efforts......ahead of its time in its depiction of a crumbling American social order, a society gone awry with senseless cruelty and violence.....

                  The premise hooks you right away........a wealthy matron (Olivia de Havilland) recovering from hip surgery, finds herself trapped inside the small elevator meant to transport her between the first and second floors of her mansion.....and that's exactly where it stops and strands her - between floors.

                   She hasn't yet realized that when her deeply closeted gay son left her alone for day, he left for good, leaving a note explaining that her helicopter-mothering was driving him close to suicide......

                  You think things can't get worse for Olivia?  How 'bout a home invasion from a whole  slew of lowlifes who exist somewhere behind her house........a homeless wino (Jeff Corey), a washed-up hooker (Ann Southern)......and worst of all, a hellish young juvenile delinquent trio (James Caan, Jennifer Billingsley as Caan's bargain-basement Bardot and Rafael Campos as their switchblade-happy minion....)

                   Since this movie's determined to plunge you into a human abyss, its L.A. geography is deliberately skewed.  Olivia's Beverly Hills-style abode sits right in front of a road clogged with speeding traffic, as if her neighborhood's parked on a rush hour freeway off-ramp.  (The crushed dead dog lying by the curb serves as an obvious harbinger of the film's climax....)

                     And as we mentioned before, behind her palatial digs sits a crime ridden hellhole, where a gangster pawnbroker doles out cash for stolen goods......such as the clothing and crockery that Caan and his merry band of psycho thugs plan to haul out of Castle de Havilland.

                    We wouldn't dare spoil the fun of discovering how this all plays out, except to say it's hardly a surprise that it all ends badly and/or bloodily for just about everybody in the cast........

                    Director Walter Grauman and writer Luther Davis have a real agenda here besides delivering up the pulpy gore........they're out to excoriate Los Angeles, turning it over like a huge rock so you can cringe at all the squiggly, crawling things underneath........the omnipresent, ominous parade of cars.....the callous remote apathy......and the riotous collision between the have-not hoods and the oh-so-entitled Olivia is as direct and brutal a  clash of social classes as anything on display in "Parasite".

                    Let's hear it for the cast who go all out to punch up the the film's lurid extremes..... the Hollywood warhorses Corey and Southern, James Caan making the utmost of his first starring role.....and a game and ready Olivia de Havilland, who endures far more torment here than when she barely escaped the burning of Atlanta in 'Gone With The Wind'.......

                    Considered too raw for comfort at the time of its release, "Lady In A Cage" looks more at home now than it ever did in 1964, Any lovers of rogue, cult cinema won't want to miss a ride on that stalled elevator to nowhere.......4 stars (****) Just remember to step over the dead dog......