Cult Camp Classics 2 – Women in Peril | DVD Review

Women in Peril is the second volume in Warner Bros. Cult Camp Classics box set series, and while its selling point is Trog, Joan Crawford’s delightfully bad final film, the gem of the three films is Caged, a camp-free Oscar-nominated film from 1950 about life in a women’s prison.

Why do people love watching bad films? This is a question for the ages, and not one that we’ll try to answer here. Let’s just be content in the fact that we do love to watch them and are not ashamed to admit it. That being said, let’s have a look at the three films included in the Women in Peril set.
• The Big Cube: The least satisfying of the bunch, 1968’s The Big Cube stars a late-in-her-career Lana Turner as Adriana, a widow whose step-daughter Lisa (Karin Mossberg in a wonderfully poorly-acted debut) stands to immediately inherit a huge sum of money if she gets married and the union is approved by Adriana. George Chakiris, who won an Oscar and a Golden Globe as best supporting actor for West Side Story, plays Johnny Allen, Lisa’s money-grubbing boyfriend who devises a plan to drive the ‘wicked stepmother’ mad by medicating her with LSD. While the central idea of the film is a rather good one, the outlandish set pieces and over-the-top performances make The Big Cube palatable only to fans of pure camp.
• Trog: The idea of a prehistoric caveman thawing out and wreaking havoc in present-day society is not a new one and has been played out in film in various ways, most notably for laughs in the Brendan Fraser-Pauly Shore vehicle Encino Man. However, rarely has a film with serious intentions been put together and generated so much unintentional comedy as Trog. This hysterical look at the fear generated by the discovery of a troglodyte living in a cave boasts some of the best over-acting this reviewer has ever seen, especially from Michael Gough (best known as Alfred the butler in 1989’s Batman) as Sam Murdock, a local resident who opposes the capture and study of the creature. He would rather they dispose of Trog (yes, they named ‘him’), for fear of the path of destruction he might cause if he escapes the confines of the local science lab. In an effort to prove everyone else wrong, Murdock sneaks into the lab and enrages the beast before turning him loose. Joan Crawford, in her final film, does an admirable job considering that most of her scenes are played against a man in a rubber gorilla mask. She’s the doctor who tries to teach and train Trog, much like one would train their dog, including playing ‘fetch’ with him. This parable about who the true brutes are in society tries so hard to be a serious thought-provoking film that it becomes a hilarious cult classic about a misunderstood missing-link.
• Caged: This film about women behind bars has no business being included in a box set of cult camp classics. It’s a fantastic, if dated, story about a young lady who is sent to prison for one to fifteen years for being an accomplice in a robbery committed by her husband, who was killed during the arrest. Caged stars Eleanor Parker (1951’s Detective Story) as Marie Allen, the naive new inmate in a women’s prison run compassionately by the warden (Agnes Moorehead, best known for playing Endora, Samantha’s mother on TV’s Bewitched), but ruled with an iron fist by the corrupt floor matron (Hope Emerson, TV’s Peter Gunn). Surrounded by typical prison characters, will Marie maintain her innocence and get paroled after serving the minimum amount of time, or will she become a hardened convict? Co-writer Virginia Kellogg researched the story by posing as a convict in a real-life prison, and the realism of the script shines through in the finished product. Garnering 3 nominations at the 1951 Academy Awards (best actress for Parker, supporting actress for Emerson, and a screenplay nomination for Kellogg and Bernard Schoenfeld), Caged is anything but campy. It’s a gritty and noir-ish film about the corruption and red-tape inherent in the U.S. justice system circa 1950.

While the three films included in this set are of a different calibre, each has its campy moments, even the superior Caged. In one scene, for example, when Marie is in the warden’s office and finds out she’s two months pregnant, the warden offers her a cigarette as comfort. Watching this today, one would cringe at the thought of a pregnant woman smoking a cigarette, but over half a century ago it was not even thought of in a negative light. The Big Cube is rife with campy scenes, especially when we see people experiencing the ‘highs’ of acid, complete with psychedelic lighting and effects. And then there’s Trog, which is in and of itself an exercise in camp. How else can you describe a film in which we see a car explode mere seconds after Trog gently flips it over on its side. There’s even a scene where Trog, while hooked up to various scientific machinery, projects his Ray Harryhausen-like memories of his former life onto a screen for the gathered scientists to see.

While the digital transfer of each of the films is solid and the sound is as good as it can be considering the age of the films, apart from theatrical trailers for all three of the films, there is nothing in the way of bonus features on any of the discs. This is sad, as it would have been nice to have some commentary from film scholars regarding how terrible the make-up effects were in Trog or how Caged can be seen as a social commentary on the state of the justice system and how, at the time, the punishment rarely fit the crime.

There’s plenty to love in this set for fans of campy performances and scenes, but there’s also an under-appreciated gem included in this set that makes it a worthwhile addition to the collections of fans of well-scripted, well-acted noir films as well. The set gets its ‘worthy’ rating only because of the inclusion of Caged; otherwise, proceed with caution is a good advisory.

Movie rating – 2.5

Disc Rating – 1