Caged Heat II: Stripped of Freedom (1994)

Rating: (4 out of 5)

Starring: Jewel Shepard, Pamella D’Pella, Susan Harvey, Chanel Akiko Hirai, Ed Crick, Vic Diaz, Ramon D’Salva, Bon Vibar, and Totoy Torres.

Directed By: Cirio H. Santiago

Ah yes, a tale of two directors. While Jonathan Demme used Caged Heat to move into mainstream pictures, Cirio H. Santiago has spent his whole life making exploitation movies. Santiago is, in fact, one of the great men of exploitation films, having directed and produced movies in the women-in-prison, blaxploitation, rape-revenge, forced-to-fight, martial arts, and post-apocalyptic genres. Maybe the B-Masters Cabal should do a retrospective of his work at some point.

This is an absurd movie in many ways, but also quite entertaining. It begins at what seems to be a cultural show in an Asian country. The king is sitting on a dais, watching a group of native dancers. On his left sits his daughter, dressed in traditional garb, on his right, a redheaded American, who everyone assumes is his mistress. In the middle of the performance, a group of spectators suddenly produces anti-American banners and begins to riot. The king watches this anxiously, but his security forces seem to be containing the demonstration. Suddenly, one of the performers pulls a gun and shoots the king. In the ensuing pandemonium, the king is whisked off in an ambulance with his mistress, while his daughter (Princess Marga, played by Chanel Akiko Hirai) is eventually captured by an angry mob. The ambulance drives directly to an American Air Force base, where we learn that the whole thing was just a charade, and that the “mistress” is really CIA agent Amanda Kelly (Jewel Shepard). As we learn later, the king was about to be overthrown, and the CIA planned the whole fake assassination to exfiltrate the king more easily. Marga is the only flaw in the plan. She’s been captured by the mob, and the new government wants to try her for treason in her father’s place. She is sent to the Rock, an island prison. It is now Amanda’s job to infiltrate the prison, and with the help of friendly guards get Marga out.

Strip searched!

Getting into the prison is the easy part. Amanda books a flight out of the country. At the airport, a drug-sniffing dog singles out her luggage. Naturally, the authorities find the drugs she placed in her suitcase. Unfortunately, another American, Lucy (Susan Harvey) happens to be talking to Amanda when all this goes down, and she get swept up by the authorities as well. It turns out that Lucy is transporting illicit pornography. (Hey, Lucy, ever hear of the internet? You don’t need to carry that stuff with you on planes anymore.) Both Lucy and Amanda soon find themselves incarcerated at Rock Island Penitentiary. Their first experience is chilling; they witness the guards beating the daylights out of an attempted escapee. Their second experience is not much better, as Amanda (and presumably Lucy too, although that isn’t shown) is strip-searched by the Warden Chen (Vic Diaz) and his captain of the guards.

Once in the general prison population, there is a confrontation in the lunchroom as several of the inmates harass Lucy. Amanda comes to her aid and tangles with Paula (Pamella D’Pella) who is both the toughest gal in the place and also the warden’s mistress. Amanda and Paula remain at each other’s throats throughout the movie; the two can’t seem to be in the same place at the same time without coming to blows. The next time they see each other Paula grabs Amanda from behind and with a knife at her throat gets a grudging apology out of Amanda. Considering Paula is a hardened con, Amanda gets off pretty easy.

Mud wrestling in the prison yard

The next day, the princess arrives at the prison. Most of the inmates revere the princess, but some are less than friendly, which is sort of understandable considering that most of them have been put in prison by her father’s government. Paula tries to throw a rock at Marga, but Amanda steps in and stops her. The two get into a wild fight, with some of Paula’s minions jumping in. Amanda is a heck of a brawler. She even gives one of Paula’s girls a straight kick to the chest that looked painful even if it was a stuntwoman taking the blow. Lucy jumps in to knock out one of the women Amanda has knocked to the ground. Amanda and Paula continue fighting, until by the end they are rolling around in the mud. They only stop when the guards turn a high pressure fire hose on them.

In any case, Amanda soon finds Marga and informs her about the planned break out that evening. Marga is understandably suspicious of this CIA agent who also orchestrated the mock assassination of her father, but she agrees to go along. Lucy, by contrast, refuses to try to escape for fear of retribution. Smart girl that Lucy… well, as smart as you can be if you’re a porn smuggler.

Amanda hanging by her hair

That evening, the captain of the guards comes to Amanda’s cell with a couple of his co-conspirators and gets her and and Marga out. Their escape starts out okay, but soon they meet resistance. They manage to get over the wall despite being shot at by the guards, but instead of getting away easily, they end up being chased through the woods in the rain toward the beach where a boat is supposed to be waiting. Unfortunately, when they get to the beach, they are ambushed by the warden and his men. It turns out that one of the guards betrayed them. The captain of the guards is executed and the turncoat becomes the new captain. The warden then rapes Marga, and orders Amanda hung by her hair as punishment. Now, I admit, I’m not an expert in this sort of thing, but can you really hang someone by their hair? Admittedly, she has a lot of hair, and she’s pretty slim, but it seems to me that this is probably not physically possible.

Bruised and battered, Amanda is returned to her cell. She tried to cheer up the beaten down Marga, and admit that she too has been raped (although it isn’t clear if it happened at the Rock or elsewhere). That night, Marga watches Paula shooting up the heroin she receives from the warden in exchange for sexual favors. Because Marga is a busybody, she confronts Paula, who basically tells her to buzz off. The next day in the shower, Paula and her girls grab Marga and shoot her up with drugs, which probably teaches Marga to keep her mouth shut, although given how scarce dope is in this place, you’d think Paula would find some other way to teach Marga a lesson. BTW, Marga never really does show any ill-effects from this attack.

The next day, all the women are out doing hard labor. Well, at least, they’re supposed to be at hard labor but considering how most of them are just scratching at the ground with their picks and shovels, I can’t imagine that they are actually accomplishing much. Anyway, Paula decides to continue her feud with Amanda by coming at her with a pickaxe. Amanda parries the initial blow, and soon the two beating the hell out of each other. Fact is, in a different world, Jewel Shepard could have been an action star instead of being best known as the star of Hollywood Hot Tubs 1 (1984) and 2 (1990). Paula’s friends also get into the act attacking Lucy and Marga. Lucy can take care of herself and she beats off her attacker, but Marga is soon on the ground being choked. When the guards break up the fight, they rough up Marga, and Amanda come to her aid by recklessly punching the captain of the guards. The guards overpower her quickly, and the captain whips her for hitting him.

More punishment… this time whipped

Amanda is like a Timex, she takes a licking and keeps on ticking. Despite being hung by her hair, brutally whipped, and beaten several times, she’s still thinking about how to get out. Those CIA agents are tough. Working to her advantage is the fact that the warden’s got a thing for her. He rescues her from hard labor the next day and propositions her while a fuming Paula looks on. Amanda agrees to meet him that night, assuming that if she gets him alone she’ll be able to overpower him and take his gun once he’s undressed.

Amanda now gets a visitor, a priest. Well, not a real priest, but rather her CIA boss. He informs her that that king has, um, had a heart attack, but he makes it clear he was liquidated for making too many demands. With the king out of the way, there’s no need to bother about breaking Marga out. He tells her that she’ll have a boat waiting for her that night if she can get over the wall, but that there is one room for her. Amanda refuses to leave Marga in by herself.

That night, the captain comes to get Amanda for her date with the warden. The warden has special surprise planned for her. Paula is already there, and the warden is trying to arrange a little interracial, lesbian action. Luckily for Amanda, but unfortunately for the viewer, this never comes to pass. First of all, Paula freaks out at the thought of having to get intimate with her archenemy. Second, Amanda never shows. When the guard comes to get her, the ever resourceful Lucy flashes him her boobs, and while he’s gawking, Amanda quickly disarms him. She frees Lucy and Marga, and the three of them run toward the wall, dodging rifle fire the whole way. As they approach the gate, it explodes from outside, and Amanda’s boss waves them through (even though he’d earlier told Amanda that she had to get over the wall on her own).

Now, it’s time to kick ass…

The three women and the CIA guy race through the jungle to the beach. They get there and along with another CIA agent jump in a small powered dinghy and set out to sea. The escape occurs in the dead of night, but in the next scene it is bright daylight and the warden is pursuing the dinghy in a large powerboat (you’d think the CIA would have a larger ship waiting just off the beach, but apparently not). The powerboat runs them down, and the escapees all end up in the water with the warden and his men circling around them and firing into the water. Just as all seems lost, Amanda propels herself out of the water and fires a grenade at the boat, blowing it up.

…and Amanda gets revenge!

Arriving on shore, Marga is quickly arrested. On a TV we see her being executed. But if you’ve been paying attention, you know what happened really. That’s right, it was a mock execution, and Marga is alive and well, and ready to fly to the states with Amanda and Lucy. A happy ending after all.

Now, this is a great women-in-prison movie. You’ve got all the elements, imprisoned innocents (Marga and to a lesser extent Lucy), an infiltration, a couple of escape attempts, some shower scenes, great catfights, and a lecherous warden. The plot is absurd, but it holds your attention, and it actually makes some sense as long as you don’t think about it too hard. And really, if you wanted to do some hard thinking, would you watching a women-in-prison movie in the first place?