p e n g u i n d e v i l

Thinking Jack Hill, Sid Haig and, of course, Pam Grier… I figured that I can’t go wrong, so I finally watched the classic old exploitation film, The Big Bird Cage. While it didn’t exactly feature a big bird cage, it was a big bird something, a big bore and a big letdown. Though my limited experience with W.I.P. films is that they tend to be pretty dull, I was thinking there would have to be at least a little good stuff going on with these folks involved. Right off that bat, it didn’t seem it. The movie starts off at a big boring women’s work farm, where nothing seems to happen except bad homosexual stereotypes, bad acting and ripped clothes, luckily we are soon whisked away to a hopping night club where Sid Haig and Pam Grier are the musical entertainment… While this turns out to be tedious also, it is brief and Sid’s two-tone blue and white pants are almost worth watching the first 8 minutes for. Though even he walks through this film like it’s a big joke. Anyway, it turns out that they are actually the leaders of a lame revolutionary gang who are here to rob these cheap looking society folk. What do these have to do with each other? Well, it seems that the revolutionaries are so enamored with Pam that they decide that they need more women for their revolution. So they set Pam up to get sent to the work camp so the revolutionaries can overthrow it and steal all the women for themselves! Sadly, almost the entire rest of the film takes place in that boring work camp in the jungle where you have nothing but the memories of a mud wrestling fight between Pam and Sid and their musical number to give you hope that something fun might happen.

But no. It doesn’t deliver. The first half of the movie is almost unbearably dull. You may find yourself rubbing your temples and looking at the time elapsed to ponder how much more of this there is to sit through. The drama with the uptight warden, the “gay” prison guards, the infighting between the girls, the “hard labor” and the danger of the bird cage never really comes to anything but a bunch of unconvincing talk. Admittedly, once Pam gets to the camp and starts trying to take over the other girls, it does perk up and we get some saucy cat-fightin’ action going on…

But it never manages to really get interesting. There are more mud wrestles, hanging by hair, crushing by machinery and a lady who strips down and covers herself in chicken fat so she can run without people being able to get a hold of her… But it’s all boring and badly done. Sid Haig’s hammy performance reminds you that even he had to find some way to perk it up so that he could stay awake. Luckily, people who saw this when it came out only had a year to wait for the release of the true awesome classic, Coffy!