The Bars of Wealth are Locked!

One of the risks of locking yourself in a cage is you might not be able to get out when you want to. Duh. Olivia de Havilland makes this seemingly elementary mistake in the 1964 hagsploitation/delinquent exploitation film Lady in a Cage. The plot is strenuously ridiculous and everyone overacts, especially the director, but its gaudiness has a campy charm.

A wealthy. elderly poetess called Cornelia Hilyard (de Havilland) lives in an enormous, decadently decorated house with her grown son, Malcolm (William Swan). He leaves early in the film and we never see him again. This is so she can be all alone in the house when the massive cage elevator she has installed to take her up to the second floor breaks down due to a power outage.

She only has this thing temporarily because she's recovering from a broken hip. By now you may be wondering--where the hell are her servants? I think we're meant to believe she and her son take care of the place all alone. Even Walter Neff had a cleaning woman come in once a week to his apartment in Double Indemnity. None of the delinquents who wind up busting into Cornelia's house even seem to worry for a moment that a maid or a groundskeeper might show up at some point.

Leading the bunch is none other than James Caan in his first major role. He and his two young cohorts bicker cartoonishly, assuring the viewer that these kids are just as devoid of compassion or morality as anyone reading the newspapers gathers about youths these days in the early '60s.

Caan and de Havilland both give good performances, though they're both dialed up to eleven for the duration. De Havilland very quickly descends into mental breakdown and is hallucinating before the end. There's a message about how she might be partially responsible for her son's possible suicide because she coddled him too much. In a scathing letter, he accuses her of adding another room to the house every time he thinks about moving out, in the process making it seem more incredible she has no housekeeping staff.

The influence of Psycho is clear from the Saul Bass-ish opening titles with animated lines and rapid tempo score. None of Hitchcock's subtlety or psychological insight is present but by the end I couldn't help smiling at the film's heights of absurdity amid its heavy-handed political allegory. When de Havilland stabs Caan in the eyes in an update on Oedipus I was kind of delighted.