Caged Heat (USA, 1974) 91 min color DIR-PROD: Beverly and Ferd Sebastian. SCR: Beverly Sebastian. MUSIC-DOP: Ferd Sebastian. CAST: Claudia Jennings, Douglas Dirkson, Bill Thurman, Clyde Ventura, Janit Baldwin. (Sebastian International Pictures)
This rural revenge trash isn’t nearly as vile as its reputation suggests, but it still is rather by-the-numbers despite an interesting role for its star, Claudia Jennings. She plays Desiree Thibodeau (cool name!), a backwoods gal who seeks revenge on another hillbilly family that murders her sister after wrongly believing she was responsible for the death of their kinfolk. The most novel this film gets is early on, when we see one hillbilly fiercely groping a country gal who doesn’t seem to mind, until Pa comes out and says “That’s your sister”! And for Ms. Jennings, this is perhaps her most unusual role, and one that doesn’t exploit her sexuality. Instead, her primitive character blankly pursues the villains through the bayou, luring them to their certain doom, as she knows every inch of the swamp like the back of her hand.
The last part of that phrase, by the way, is actually a line of dialogue uttered by the patriarchal Bracken character (Douglas Dirkson), who is dogging her vengeance along with his two dimwitted sons and a couple of corrupt lawmen. Similar redneck cliches abound: the lawmen are named Billy Boy and (yep, you guessed it) Joe Bob. Despite that this mini epic is surprisingly well made, at the core, it’s still as generic as they come. The chase is really not suspenseful, as we don’t care about any of the characters. Still, this minor trash is noteworthy for Jennings’ coldest, most dispassionate role, and the casting of Bill Thurman (seen in southern-fried films of Larry Buchanan and S.F. Brownrigg) as the sheriff. Beverly and Ferd Sebastian, who produced such agreeable drive-in fare as The Single Girls and On The Air with Captain Midnight, followed this film up with a belated sequel, 1988’s Gator Bait II: Cajun Justice.