Thoughts on Lady in a Cage

 On Hulu in April 2021 I watched Lady in a Cage, a 1964 “hagsploitation” thriller in which Olivia de Havilland is a old rich woman with a hip disability who is stuck in her home elevator when the electricity goes out, and she is terrorized by a crew of home invaders, featuring a young and hairy-chested James Caan. It was pretty fun to watch, it felt like a TV movie of the week, with a lot of Twilight Zone-style music cues by Paul Glass and a Saul Bass-inspired opening credits sequence.

Joan Crawford was originally tapped to star in this, but turned it down. The “hagsploitation” term comes from a sexist and ageist view of aging Hollywood actresses in the 1960s, who would be cast in campy thrillers to either be the cackling villain or be screaming in distress. A lot of these came after the success of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, like the similarly-titled Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte, also starring de Havilland.

I thought it was interesting that a late plot reveal is that de Havilland’s son is gay and closeted, given that the actor who played him, William Swan, was also gay, and died in 2019 at 90. The movie itself is rough and loud, with a lot of yelling from the hoodlum crew, and as noted in the IMDB trivia, Caan was trying to model his performance after Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire, so he spends a lot of this movie strutting in an open shirt and looking like a hustler.

I liked this a lot, I thought it was messy and abrasive and slightly campy, particularly when de Havilland puts a deep, rough emphasis on the words “animal orgy” to describe the crooks’ glee in destruction.

This trailer is pretty funny, with de Havilland introducing it and playing up the “fear” of watching it alone, as well as the cliched labels for characters (The hustler! The wino! The weirdo! The wildo!) and the embarrassingly bad dialogue (“Help! I am. trapped. in. small. private. elevator!”). It’s fun to watch, but cringing too at the same time.

ETA: I just rewatched the trailer, and it just gives away the ending when de Havilland fights back against Caan by stabbing him in the eyes. It’s a good scene, and the trailer shouldn’t have spoiled that.