My review was written in April 1984 after a screening at Cine 42 theater on Manhattan's 42nd St.
"Caged Fury" is a dull, low-on-action women's prison film made in the Philippines. It packs none of the B-movie fun of its forebears, which flourished on the drive-in circuit in 1970-74.
Plot device is reminiscent of "The Manchurian Candidate" and "Telefon". In contemporary Vietnam, American girls (as well as local girls who consorted with G. I.'s during the war) are rounded up and put in camps to be brainwashed (by electric shock aversion methods) into becoming zombie-like agents. Taking an unwise cue from Richard Brooks' "Wrong Is Right" film has them turned into "human bombs", exploding themselves (wearing vests containing explosives) back home in order to kill important people nearby.
While a U. S. officer (Ken Metcalf) tries to swap a renegade Vietnamese genral, wanted by his people, for the girls, the heroines attempt to escape from the camp in a series of laughably executed "action" scenes. Finale involving a train, tanks and U. S. helicopters is thoroughly unconvincing hokum.
Chief surprise here is in the casting, done by Jim Wynorski, former New World Pictures publicity man who is latterly an indie writer-director. While the Filipinos made films in this genre of the 1970s inevitably gave employment to Pam Grier, Jeanne Bell, or others, no black actresses appear in "Caged Fury". The actresses on view here give tired walk-throughs, indistinguishable from the "zombies" in the cast. Tech credits are subpar, with dialog articulated in English but inadequately post-synched.
