No Surrender Cinema: Caged in Paradiso
The summer sun is upon us, and what better place for No Surrender Cinema to go this month than to an island getaway! Instead of packing your shorts and sandals, you’d be better off with guns and knives, because there’s bound to be trouble in paradise. This is no resort, but rather and island inhabited by prisoners! How will one woman survive when her undying loyalty to her husband finds her Caged In Paradiso?
Some of you may be familiar with Irene Cara, the star of Caged In Paradiso. If her name isn’t ringing any bells as far as being an actress, you’ve no doubt heard some of the songs she’s sang, such as the theme songs to the films Fame and Flashdance. This is a woman who has Golden Globes, Academy Awards, AND Grammy’s on her resume. So how did she wind up in a cheapie action flick that shows us what Lord of the Flies would have been like if it took place on Devil’s Island? That’s an answer that we may never get, but just like I made the choice to watch this film, she made the choice to be in it, and since we’re both obligated to fulfill those commitments, let’s press on!
Caged begins with a nervous man who looks like a poor man’s Patrick Bateman (played by Joseph Culp, son of legendary actor Robert Culp) planting a briefcase bomb in the elevator of a courthouse. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t read his terrorist handbook, and completely forgot to allow additional time on the bomb for his being caught up at the security check. With a getaway driver anxiously waiting outside, Christian Fail tries to make a run for it, but his driver speeds off just as the bomb detonates, killing the bomber and almost 100 others in the blast. News reports call it “the biggest bomb ever used by terrorists”, and we’ll have to take their word for it, since the special effects budget makes it look like a popcorn fart compared to the excessiveness made famous in Michael Bay movies. Eva (Cara) is at home watching said report when she’s shocked to hear that her husband, Eric Harrigan (Peter Kowanko) is a member of a terrorist group known as “The Red Hand”, and was the masked driver during yesterday’s incident. No sooner does that bomb get dropped on her (sorry, bad choice of words) than the military is kicking her door down and holding her at gunpoint, on the hunt for her husband.
It turns out that the leader of the Red Hand group, Helmut Schuler, is being sentenced to Paradiso Island, a penal colony created by Senator Franklin Paradise…
OK, time out.
Franklin Paradise. FRANKLIN PARADISE. Did we really have to dumb things down that much? Government officials in B movies usually have some intimidating sounding names, but I guess the writers here wanted you to remember that this is the EVIL Senator who turned this tropical locale into the home for the lowest common denominators.
Time in!
So Senator Bahamas gets a talking to from a Congressman who seems concerned with what he’s heard about Paradiso Island. The Congressman seems to have some mercy for those who have been exiled to Paradiso, but Senator St. Thomas laughs off the reports of convicts killing each other and even eating each other, feeling as though they deserve whatever reckoning comes their way. Plus, anyone who tries to escape will be fried by the laser that is set to evaporate anyone who goes beyond a two mile perimeter. The next day, the Senator sentences Eric to Paradiso, despite Eric’s protests that he’s a political prisoner waging war against oppressive forces. Eva is heartbroken, but Eric’s is a condescending prick that talks down to her, the guard, even his own lawyer. Despite being talked down to like a child, Eva finds out that citizens have the ability to follow their spouses into exile, and she responds to this news rather excitedly. Eric does his best to downplay Eva’s codependency (going to so far as to explain that prisoners are neutered, thus ending their hopes of having a child (on a prison island, no less), but her mind is made up, and she will essentially be sentencing herself all in the name of love.
Eric, Eva, and a plane full of convicts are forced to skydive onto Paradiso, armed with a bare minimum of supplies. Eric and Eva land apart from each other, so he takes off in search of her. He finds her being attacked by three natives, but instead of stopping the attempted rape of his wife, he stays hidden in the brush, watching. Fortunately for Eva, she is saved by Queenie and her tribe of women. Even after the rescue, Eric doesn’t show himself, and Eva is accepted into Queenie’s community. All of the other prisoners are confronted as well; one named Link, who was said to be a crazed murdered is captured quite easily and brought to tears. Another, Josh, is told that he can fight or work in the field, so his response is to snap the leaders neck and take charge of his crew. Queenie makes the creeps that attacked Eva cliff dive to their doom, and explains that it doesn’t matter what happened back home, all that matters here is that they survive.
The women have formed what seems to be the most civilized community on the island, with jobs, rules, and a sense of social structure. Every other tribe on the island borders on unhinged, but that’s merely my take since we barely have any backstory on them. This includes a group of vagrants led by Big Man (wrestling legend Big John Studd), who seem to fear one of the other groups. I mean, if you were casting an action movie and had access to an imposing ex-WWF Superstar, would you waste him on the role of a homeless coward? There’s also the island loner, Montoya, the last remaining native of Paradiso. He meets Eric and explains that he refused to leave his home, which douchey Eric naturally tries to imply was some type of political statement.
While Eva learns how to fend for herself and trains to fight with her new friends, Eric runs from any confrontation, choosing to stay hidden or be chicken. Big Man’s crew is attacked by a group with what looks like the skull facepaint favored by the guys from Cobra Kai, and the movie shows that it chose not to take advantage of Studd’s size or name value by having him immediately killed by a flurry of blow darts. So instead of bodyslamming bad guys, we get Studd as a 7 foot pincushion. Maximum Security, minimum effort. Another prisoner lands on the island, the previously mentioned Helmut Schuler, so you have to think that something is bound to happen now that both he and Eric are on the island. McHenry, one of the prisoners that landed with Eric and Eva, tries to attack him, but is easily overpowered and made into a lackey within 30 seconds of Helmut’s arrival.
Speaking of people doing other’s bidding, Eric finally gets the balls to approach his wife, but wants her to run away with him, telling her that Queenie’s crew will kill him. Eric berates Queenie and her girls, and Eva, bad decision maker extraordinaire, leaves the safety and comfort of the community to follow her husband further into the woods where he’s been hiding out this whole time. He tells Eva to stay put while he goes to gather some food, but his claims of safety turn out to mean shit when Eva is attacked by two guys who seem to be wearing beehives as masks. Eva screams for Eric (who is so accustomed to his awesome new surroundings that he can’t find it and can only scream back for her), but she finally stands up for herself and fires arrows into her attackers, showing that their might be some hope for her after all. Eric, chickenshit that he is, moves Eva into the hidden cove that Montoya resides in. Unbeknownst to her, he goes off to find the old man and threatens him, turning hostile on the one person who aided him and stealing his property, then sends him off into the woods to die. Of all people to come seeking justice for Montoya it turns out to be Helmut and McHenry, and once Helmut realizes that Eric is a part of his organization it’s all smiles. Montoya winds up getting his cove back, while Helmut’s ragtag terrorist group makes plans to rule the entire island. Helmut’s plan includes wanting to increase the population (which is totally implausible given that convicts sent to Paradiso are given vasectomies beforehand, so this guy may not be the best choice for leader of a terrorist organization after all…), so Eric blows the lid on where he can find some women for those purposes, selling out his wife’s friends. Eva protests Eric’s actions, but in true husband of the year fashion, he downplays it. She trails the group and watches as Helmut kills Josh and takes command of his men, luring them to his side by saying they can have the women all to themselves. With a little help from Montoya, Eva warns her friends, and shows up just as Helmut and Eric attack. Now, it’s the moment of truth for Eva: will her loyalty lay with her husband as it has throughout the film? Will she devote herself to Queenie’s cause? Or will she wind up just another casualty among the exiles?
Caged In Paradiso, aka Maximum Security, is quite the cinematic oddity. Some sites list it as being released in 1990, others say 1988, and my cable guide has it as coming out in 1989. That’s not as bad as Blackbelt II coming out in 1988 under an entirely different title and then being re-released years later to capitalize on an amazing Don “The Dragon” Wilson movie, but it’s up there. It’s a movie that was only released on VHS and Laserdisc (remember those?), and seems to have minimal copies available online. The alternate title is a rather generic one, but searching for either of them comes up with few results. In fact, the only review I could find of the film before writing this one was from one user on IMDB, and that’s it! It’s also evident from the promotional material and even the VHS cassette cover that the studio was confused as to what they wanted this movie to be. Instead of showing Irene Cara caught up in a war on an island prison, it looks like it was marketed to be another one of those “women in prison” style movies like Caged Heat. Aside from a very PG romantic reunion with Eric, there wasn’t anything remotely tantalizing about this movie, despite it’s R rating.
Besides the misleading cover and synopsis (“A group of women falsely imprisoned in an island fortress plan to escape”), the other epic fail of Caged In Paradiso was its cast. Cara had credibility, and I get that they wanted Eva to have her epiphany where she became a badass, but she spends 75% of the movie in a toxic relationship and whining about her husband (you know, like most of the women on social media these days). It’s one thing to develop a character trait and another thing for your heroine to be completely annoying. Peter Kowanko as Eric is one of the most unbearable idiots you’ll ever see, and you want to slap him long before he takes home the prize for biggest pussy on the island. Helmut is a caricature of every foreign baddie you’ve ever seen (ironic as actor Wolf Muser would go on to play Adolf Hitler years later on the critically acclaimed Amazon series The Man In The High Castle), and as mentioned before characters like Studd’s Big Man were glorified cameos unimportant to the main plot. The only character really worth a damn was Queenie, who had a role in Eva’s transition all the way up to the final scenes in the film. Oh, and that plot point about the Congressman mentioning cannibals? Never expanded on, although you could make some off color jokes about Queenie’s crew eating each other.
By the time the credits rolled on Caged In Paradiso, I was confused about how I felt about it. It’s a goldmine for those into cult cinema, but there’s not much appeal beyond that. It had a little bit of star power and tried to market it as being on the level of similar B movies that were blowing up on the video rental market and late night cable, but based on the lack of reactions online it didn’t seem to garner an audience. Caged In Paradiso escaped viewers for years until randomly being resurrected by the EPIX family of channels recently, which put it back on TV for the first time in at least 25 years and allowed me to see it for the first time. I can’t really recommend it for any particular action sequences or must see scenes, as everything just feels flat. Still, if you’re into diving in the dark depths of cult cinema, this one is a recommended watch, because it appears to be a film only a select few are privy to; just me, you, and that other guy who wrote a review.
