Caged Heat

The US drive-in audience's taste for renegade women has thrown up some pretty bizarre movies, but few more distinctive than Demme's directorial debut. It starts out as a bare-knuckled women's prison pic and turns into a 'girl gang' rampage, by way of a lot of witty feminist gags and the incursion of what William Burroughs would call a 'technological psychiatry' theme. A percussive, Velvet-y score by John Cale and several casting surprises (including the long-absent Barbara Steele) help keep both pace and interest high. It's no more than passable as a thriller, but the density of invention and energy in other respects is enough to shame a dozen contemporary major studio movies.