Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

Lightdeossk Captivating movie !

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

kapelusznik18 ***SPOILERS***Olivia de Havilland is the incapacitated woman of the house Cornelia Hilyard who's babying of her 30 year old mamma's boy son Malcolm, William Swan, has driven him to just about to commit suicide just to get from under her apron strings. It's on a July 4th Holiday weekend that Malcolm plans to do himself in by taking a ride out in the country and blowing his brains out. It's then that Cornelia ends up stuck in her in-house elevator and menaced by the three teenage psychos who just escape from a youth reformatory looking for action and something to steal. With a blackout hitting the city and all electrical circuits out Cornelia can't get any help to free herself but at first does get a number of neighborhood visitors including the drunk religious nut George L. "Repent" Brady Jr., Jeff Corey. and his fellow drunkard and drinking partner over the hill hooker Sade, Ann Southern.The three escaped juvenile delinquents lead by the grinning hairy chested and burping Randall Simpson O'Connor, James Caan, who's made to look like a young and rebellious Marlon Brando-but comes across more like a young and slimmed down looking Donald Trump-plan to ransack the place and murder after brutally torturing Cornelia so there won't be any witnesses to their crimes. The two fellow nut cases that O'Connor has with him the spaced out,on drugs and alcohol, Elaine, Jennifer Binningsley, and what looks like a pot smoking and severely mentally retarded Essie, Rafael Compos, are of no help to him and screw him up and his "Master Plan" at every turn. It's not long that both Bradly Jr. is put away by a kill crazy Essie, under orders for his boss O'Connor, who stabs the pleading for his life drunk to death in order to shut him up and keep him from reciting the bible at every given opportunity. Sade in seeing the writing on the wall, in her being targeted to be murdered, escapes by locking herself into a closet and holding her breath not to be heard or noticed by the deranged trio.***SPOILERS*** It's when Cornelia finds out through a good-by cruel world letter left to her by her son Malcolm what his plans are she tries to make her escape by jumping out of the stuck elevator and breaking both her legs. O'Connor in then trying to murder the crawling to safety Cornelia ends up getting his eyes gouged out by what looked like two metal toothpicks she had hidden in her bra and ends up blindly walking or staggering into traffic and run over and crushed like road kill. Essie, who in fact can't drive, and Elaine end up getting caught by the police when the car Essie was driving lost control of slammed into a garbage dumpster. With her now rescued and out of danger Cornelia wants to find out if her son Malcolm didn't go through with his planned suicide. And hopefully if he didn't she'll do everything possible not to interfere with his life that was the very reason that been driving him to attempt to do it!

Charlene Lydon This is a one of those films where the set-up says it all. It caught my eye on Amazon and I thought it sounded like the greatest film ever. I have never heard anything about it but I figure if it attracted Ms. De Havilland, it have some merit, right? I was so titallated by the set-up that I had no doubt in my mind that this was going to be the best film ever. I was right! The film begins with a darling little setup of a 30 year old man, Malcolm, living with his kind but overbearing mother. He is going away for the 4th of July weekend, leaving behind a suicide note for her to find when he is already gone. It is clear that they have a strange relationship as he jarringly refers to her as "darling" (shudder!!). Soon after he leaves, due to a power cut, Mrs. Hillyard find herself trapped in an elevator they had installed since she broke her hip the year before. Hot and panicked, Mrs. Hillyard tries to free herself but soon finds she may be safer where she is when a string of nogoodniks break into her house with trouble in mind.I don't want to give away too much about the plot but the reason I found this film to be so charming is the role of the villain. It starts out as a harmless, crazy homeless man accompanied by a down-on-her-luck ageing prostitute stealing silver to pawn but they soon become victims themselves when they are joined but three dangerous teenage delinquents. Later in the film, Mrs. Hillyard's own conscience places her as the villain, at least in her own mind. She sees herself as a monster, which in some ways she is, bringing the circle of villainry to almost a perfect circle.The people around her are so busy getting away for 4th of July weekend that they fail to notice her strife despite her use of a fairly effective alarm a number of times. A shot, during the opening credits of a dead dog lying by the road, ignored by passers-by is gory and distressing and foreshadows a later scene in which Mrs. Hillyard tries to get help out on the busy road outside her house.The relationship that is built between Mrs. Hillyard and the ringleader of the delinquents (a very young, very intense James Caan) is interesting, particularly an exchange between the two in which she begs him to show mercy on her as she is a living breathing human being, to which he replies that he is an animal. This is how the film ensues. He is an animal. He is a frightening, menacing character and the moral and physical content is quite shocking for a film from the 1960s.Now, it should be noted that this is exploitation cinema. It is not your typical Olivia De Havilland affair. It is low-brow, it is visceral and it is full of (effective) shock tactics. Admirably gory for such an early film, Lady in a Cage delivers a string of unexpected twists and turns and never fails to deliver horror and melodrama in equal measure. Olivia De Havilland is a class act as usual, and the chemistry between her and James Caan illustrates the enormous generation gap that existed in the early sixties and highlights the running theme throughout the film which was integral in most of these fear-mongering, moral high ground films about juvenile delinquents; fear of the future.This is a film that (at least for me) has everything. It has a classy leading lady, a truly frightening villain, a high-concept setup and a charmingly exploitative accusatory tone, rampant on the early sixties, regarding young juvenile deinquency. Highly recommended and you can pick it up here for the stupidly cheap price of £1.50. Enjoy!

dougandwin "Lady in a Cage" was banned in Australia for a long time, and has only just been released on DVD. I had read much about it, and now having seen it, have to say a lot of the criticism was justified mainly because of the terrible script writing - some of the things Olivia de Havilland had to say were so juvenile and out of context that I felt they destroyed one's interest. It is a film for viewing only once as the violence was so strong for the 60's, but way below what we are being served up today. If you could eliminate some of the script, and certainly fix the continuity as well as repair the poor ending, there is the basis of a good story. de Havillands acting was excellent, while James Caan made a very frightening villain, but for me, the performance of Ann Sothern as Sade, the Hustler, was the highlight. At the conclusion of seeing this Film, I felt dissatisfied in the fact that with some proper scripting and direction, it could have been very good.

fedor8 This total piece of crap was obviously made by a forerunner of the late 60s left-wing Western protester. This laughable, ludicrous "suspense" movie is all about making an anti-U.S. hence anti-capitalism statement about the oh-so horrible detachment and isolation that rule the western world, an environment in which people care only about themselves, where no one will help anyone and where things just look damn, damn grim. As opposed to the warm environments of socialist and communist societies in which people never cease smiling and where everybody is always ready to take the last shirt of his back to give to a person in need. Yeah, right...The movie is so idiotic it defies belief. What is even more preposterous that it is rated highly by critics, often described as "underrated" or "overlooked". First of all, the way De Havilland loses electricity is too stupid, even for a 60s movie: her son leaves the house, leaving behind a sort-of suicide note, and just as he is unpacking his car he hits some ladders which disable the electric cables. How brilliant! Perhaps brilliant in a simple-minded comic-book or a comedy-of-errors type story - but certainly not here. Then De Havilland rings her alarm on and on and on, but the very very evil capitalist citizens ignore her alarm, for they are too busy amassing riches and property which is all these goddamn no-good capitalist a**holes really care about, ain't it? After a while, a whino enters the house, then his fat woman friend, and then a totally ridiculous trio of hooligans who learned their acting technique in the Freddie Francis School of Mugging and Overacting.There is nothing suspenseful about this movie. It is too silly to be taken seriously, which is the main ingredient for suspense. The social commentary is pathetic, and quite embarrassing. When Caan and de Havilland have an exchange we see the left-wing stereotypes rolling in: Havilland - the selfish rich person out of touch with reality, and Caan - the hooligan who turned out so because the evil capitalist society made him so, and so the poor thing turned to violence as his only means out. So touching... *sob*...A film for morons.