Caged Fury has such a veneer of sleaze you’ll need to squeegee your screen…Aspiring starlet Kat (Roxanna Michaels) leaves Utah for Hollywood and immediately makes every mistake in the exploitation playbook. She picks up a hitchhiker (didn’t she ever see Texas Chainsaw Massacre?) named Rhonda (April Dawn Dollarhide) who introduces her to a sleazebag photographer (didn’t she see Scum Of The Earth?) named Buck (Blake Bahner) who introduces her to some dubious film producers, and in a blink, she’s busted on a bogus solicitation rap and sent to Honeywell Prison in Mexico, which is a front for a white slavery ring. Her sister Tracy (Elena Sahagun) searches for her and ends up in Honeywell herself…so it’s up to her friend Victor (Erik Estrada) and his Kung Fu fighting buddy Dirk (Richie Barathy) to rescue them both…
It takes the boys quite awhile (and a lot of fighting) to find the place, of course…gotta leave room for shower scenes, catfights, lecherous male guards (including Ron Jeremy) and the obligatory predatory lesbian warden, Sybil Thorn (Ty Randolph)…
Caged Fury just screams 80’s, with its action movie music, poodle do’s, mullets, aerobicized thonged booties and MTV style smoke-and-neon mood lighting. The one thing missing from this picture is a truly badass slammer girl like Pam Grier or Sybil Danning. This is pretty much a whole cellblock full of new fish…But there’s plenty of action (Dirk deserves his own series of Kung Fu movies) some kickass tunes from the Zeros during a bar fight, and a surprisingly poignant performance by Michael Parks as Kat and Tracy’s dad. And hey, any picture where James Hong gets to dress like Buddy Love can’t be all bad…
Mondo Confidential 