By Erin Free
In this regular column, we drag forgotten made-for-TV movies out of the vault and into the light. This week: the 1975 behind-bars drama Cage Without A Key, starring Susan Dey, Michael Brandon, Sam Bottoms, Jonelle Allen and Susie Elene.
The women-in-prison subgenre is one of the most spurious and low-rent in all of exploitation cinema, with shockers like The Big Doll House (1971), The Big Bird Cage (1972), The Hot Box (1972), Black Mama White Mama (1973), Caged Heat (1974), The Concrete Jungle (1982), Chained Heat (1983), Hellhole (1985) and others stoking up the sex and violence to salaciously sleazy effect.
Though never too shy to tackle exploitative subject matter, the network telemovie existed under the often very tight strictures of what could and couldn’t be shown on commercial TV in the 1970s and 1980s. Thusly, telemovies couldn’t indulge in graphic sex and violence in the manner that the aforementioned exploitation movies did. That didn’t stop the telemovie, however, from going behind bars in a women’s prison. Linda Blair was the subject of horrific (and duly infamous) abuse whilst in juvenile detention in the notorious 1974 telemovie Born Innocent; and Deborah Raffin endured a southern work farm in 1976’s Nightmare In Badham County.
Wedged in between those small screen cult faves was the lesser known (and decidedly less exploitative) Cage Without A Key, which first aired on major US network CBS on March 14, 1975. Though it has much to offer, this tightly wound drama is principally remembered now as the film Susan Dey chose to break away from the squeaky-clean image she’d so effectively cultivated on the popular musical sitcom The Partridge Family, which came to an end in 1974. And if you were a young actress looking for an image change in the 1970s, there was no better route than the one leading to small screen prison.
Penned by pioneering TV vet Joanna Lee and directed by rock-solid Unsung Auteur Buzz Kulik (Brian’s Song, Riot), Cage Without A Key stars the charming and engaging Dey (then 22-years-old) as seventeen-year-old high school graduate Valerie Smith, a “good girl” out for some fun on a road trip with her best friend Joleen (Anne Bloom). Unfortunately, along the way, Valerie gets mixed up with goofy psycho Buddy Goleta (Sam Bottoms), and is then sent to the slammer when she’s unjustly tagged as an accomplice during a grocery store robbery and murder.
Innocent but steely, Valerie winds up at The San Marcos School For Girls, a bright, sunny institution that looks more like a college campus than a women’s prison. But though it has a hair salon, regular “rap sessions”, and solitary confinement has been rebranded “meditation”, this is very much a prison, complete with gangs, unfeeling guards, and a strict line to be toed. Almost immediately, Valerie finds herself caught between the respective cliques of the tough but straight-up Tommy Washington (Jonelle Allen) and the sneaky, duplicitous Suzy Kurosawa (Susie Elene). Meanwhile, on the outside, Valerie’s dedicated public defender lawyer, Ben Holian (TV movie fave Michael Brandon), tries to get his innocent client out of prison.
Though very chaste indeed when compared to its sleazy, in-your-face big screen women-in-prison brethren, Cage Without A Key still boasts a few lurid moments, with a couple of high-tempo cat-fights and a memorable scene where a post-shower, towel-clad Susan Dey is sexually menaced by Suzy’s lesbian offsider, played with appropriately threatening malice by Lani O’Grady, best known as big sis Mary Bradford on Eight Is Enough! There are inter-gang squabbles, a planned escape, and even a strong dose of pathos, with the initially sinister Tommy Washington slowly revealed to be a young woman with a tough past trying to create a new family around herself while incarcerated.
Director Buzz Kulik certainly knew how to handle actors, and he mines strong performances from his cast here. Though occasionally histrionic (complete with shrieking and bizarre hand-flapping), Susan Dey still easily elicits high levels of audience sympathy with her sweet brand of earnestness, and legitimately makes you care about Valerie’s fate. Michael Brandon, meanwhile, is great as the liberal, hip lawyer Ben Holian, who you could almost see fronting his own weekly series, bravely taking on youth-themed cases that nobody else will touch and triumphantly sticking it to The Man.
On the other side of the law, Sam Bottoms is freaky and very peculiar as the lying, wacked out Buddy Goleta, while Jonelle Allen brings abundant intensity to the role of the hard-nosed Tommy Washington. Though Bottoms is weird, he has nothing on Susie Elene, whose gang boss Suzy Kurosawa feels like she’s wandered in from a far more demented movie. With her long black pig-tails and baby doll voice, Susie Elene (best known for the 1976 T&A shocker Revenge Of The Cheerleaders and the TV series Magnum) is insanely over the top. But rather than tip the film over into silliness, Elene gives Cage Without A Key a welcome dose of inspired loopiness.
Enjoyably sensitive and mildly salacious at the same time, Cage Without A Key gleefully finds the high drama in its premise while also making a clearly stated plea for the treatment of young people caught up in the justice system. It’s a strong mix, and when coupled with the anchoring presence of Susan Dey, it makes for a highly enjoyable watch indeed.
Availability: Cage Without A Key is very easy to find online, but it’s unfortunately in pretty rough shape, though it’s certainly watchable.
If you enjoyed this review, check out our other vintage telemovies The Weekend Nun, Then Came Bronson, The Kansas City Massacre, 21 Hours At Munich, Because He’s My Friend, Rodeo Girl, Citizen X, Relentless, The Connection, Zuma Beach, The Third Girl From The Left, Snowbeast, Stagecoach, Terror On The Beach, Strange Homecoming, The Possessed, Memorial Day, That Certain Summer, Elvis And The Beauty Queen, Scandal In A Small Town, Victims For Victims: The Theresa Saldana Story, The Seduction Of Gina, Blue Murder, The Brotherhood Of Justice, The Wave, The California Kid, The Cracker Factory, Night Terror, Inmates: A Love Story, The Shadow Riders, CHiPs: Roller Disco, Dawn: Portrait Of A Teenage Runaway, Young Love, First Love, Escape From Bogen County, The Death Squad, Hit Lady, Brian’s Song, The Defiant Ones, A Cry For Help, Trilogy Of Terror, Policewoman Centerfold, Smash-Up On Interstate 5, Something Evil, Savage, A Step Out Of Line, The Boy In The Plastic Bubble, The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission, A Very Brady Christmas, The Gladiator, Elvis, The Rat Pack, Silent Victory: The Kitty O’Neil Story, Terror Among Us, The Hanged Man, Hardcase, Charlie’s Angels: Angels In Vegas, Vanishing Point, To Heal A Nation, Fugitive Among Us, To Kill A Cop, Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, Police Story: A Chance To Live, Murder On Flight 502, Moon Of The Wolf, The Secret Night Caller, Cotton Candy, And The Band Played On, Gargoyles, Death Car On The Freeway, Short Walk To Daylight, Trapped, Hotline, Killdozer, The Jericho Mile, Mongo’s Back In Town and Tribes.
