Lady in a Cage is a 1964 film directed by Walter Grauman.
It's a psychological thriller starring Olivia de Havilland as Cornelia Hilyard, a rich middle-aged lady who lives in a fancy house with her grown son Malcolm. At some point in the recent past, Cornelia broke a hip, and she is still using a cane to get around. She is rich enough that she had an elevator installed to allow her to reach the upper floors of her fancy house.
Malcolm takes off for a 4th of July weekend, leaving Cornelia alone. A fender-bender outside and some very poor wiring from a utility pole cuts the power to Cornelia's house and leaves her trapped in her elevator between the first and second floors. Worse, the only alarm she has only rings a bell directly outside her house. That bell attracts the attention of, not police or anyone inclined to help, but a ragged wino named George who proceeds to rob Cornelia's house. George recruits a blowsy ex-prostitute named Sade (Ann Sothern) to help him rob the house. Things go from bad to much, much worse for Cornelia (still trapped in her cage elevator) when the activities of George and Sade draw the attention of three vicious young criminals, led by a violent thug named Randall (James Caan).
Something of a changing of the guard in Hollywood, as it was the next-to-last starring role for De Havilland (followed by her last starring role, in Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte) and the first starring role and in fact first film credit for Caan (he had been an extra in Irma la Douce and had some TV credits). A pre-stardom Scatman Crothers appears briefly as the pawnbroker's assistant.
Tropes:
- And Starring: Caan and Jennifer Billingsley (Elaine) both get an "introducing" credit.
- Animated Credits Opening: An opening credits sequence that basically rips off Psycho has lines shooting around, suggesting the bars of the cage that Cornelia will soon be inhabiting.
- Arc Words: "Repent."
- Bathtub Scene: Elaine takes a bath in Cornelia's bedroom. Given the circumstances, it's Fan Disservice.
- Bystander Syndrome: Everyone who isn't indifferent to Cornelia's plight (and to the ringing bell) is aggressive and brutal to her.
- Carpet of Virility: Randall spends the whole movie either shirtless or with a shirt that is unbuttoned to expose his hairy chest. In context, it underlines his aggression and animalistic nature.
- Chekhov's Boomerang: The two pieces of metal trim that Cornelia pries off of the elevator. She first tries to use them as shivs to stab Randall in the back, only for them to bend as they're far too weak to penetrate flesh. Randall laughs, then sexually humiliates Cornelia by sticking the shivs in her Victoria's Secret Compartment. That's why they're still there at the climax, when she pulls them out as Randall is dragging her back into the house, stabbing both his eyes and blinding him.
- Elevator Failure: The plot revolves around Cornelia being trapped in her failed elevator as various hoodlums and thugs invade her home.
- Enemy Eats Your Lunch: Of course, Cornelia's entire home is being ransacked, but Randall makes a point to stroll around the first floor eating the fruit that he took from a bowl in the kitchen.
- Feet-First Introduction: George the wino is introduced with a closeup of his ratty, crumbling shoes as he shuffles along.
- Gory Discretion Shot: Essie's murder of George happens behind a couch and all the camera shows is the knife appearing and disappearing as Essie swings it.
- Heat Wave: The tension and rage throughout is underlined by the fact that it's a hot summer day. Cornelia gets increasingly sweaty and desperate as she's stuck in her cage after the power outage kills the air conditioning.
- He Knows Too Much: Randall decides on the easy way to make sure that Cornelia can't identify them or that George and Sade can't betray them: kill all three.
- If It Bleeds, It Leads: Part of the general thesis of the decay of society is underlined with the radio news broadcasts about traffic accidents and road fatalities going up. Cornelia snarks that the radio people seem to be happy about it.
- Impairment Shot: Blurred vision from a dazed, semi-coherent Cornelia towards the end, after she's finally fallen out of the elevator and taken a hard landing on the floor. She sees a blurry Essie leaving and mistakes him for Malcolm.
- Incest Subtext: There's something very creepy about Cornelia's relationship with her son Malcolm. They call each other "darling". She kisses him on the lips and asks him if he left her any more of his "love notes". In fact he did, but it's a "Dear John" Letter in which he says "Release me from your beauty. Release me from your love." Randall picks up on this when he reads the note and wonders if maybe she still breast-feeds Malcolm.
- Inner Monologue: Several times in the film, Cornelia's inner monologue is heard, in very over-the-top hammy dialogue, as she ponders her situation.
- Ironic Juxtaposition: One bit in the opening credits has some religious fanatic woman on a car radio screeching "Have we an anti-Satan missile?", while the man and woman inside that car are indulging in Auto Erotica.
- Laughing Mad: Cornelia starts doing this about halfway through the film, as the stress of being locked in an elevator nine feet off the ground while a bunch of violent criminals ransack her house starts to get to her.
- Most Writers Are Writers: Cornelia is a poet.
- Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Randall is abusive to both of his flunkies. He dunks Essie's head in the bathtub at one point for gawking at Elaine, and then smears his face with lipstick. Elaine, for her part, has a black eye. Essie and Elaine follow Randall because they're obviously intimidated by him, but once he's rendered harmless after Cornelia stabs him in the eyes, they taunt him and then abandon him.
- My Beloved Smother: It's ambiguous how much the Incest Subtext is either just subtext or meant to show an actively sexual relationship between Cornelia and Malcolm, but she's clearly very controlling. She tries to stop him from going away for the weekend, and she forces him to drink a glass of orange juice that he doesn't want because she's decided he needs to maintain his blood sugar.
- No OSHA Compliance: One might imagine that an elevator, especially a high-end handicapped elevator that a rich lady had installed in her home, would have either an outside phone line, or a battery to power the elevator for at least a ride or two in case of a power outage, or both. In fact, even in 1964 it was standard for an elevator to have an emergency phone line. But if Cornelia's did, there would be no movie.
- Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic: Cornelia has a lot of very flowery, writerly dialogue, both spoken and in her Inner Monologue, that doesn't sound like anything a person would actually say."We built cities and towns and we thought we had beaten the jungle back...not knowing we had built the jungle in."
"You're one of the many bits of offal produced by the welfare state!"
"He who unleashes the terror reaps the terror!" - Stocking Mask: Randall and Elaine wear stockings over their heads as they ransack Cornelia's home. Sade later has a stocking put over her head by Essie on Randall's requests as she's coerced to assist the gang by carrying out the loot from Cornelia's house. Essie himself does not wear a stocking over his head and seems to wear a knit ski mask.
- The Smurfette Principle: Sade is the lone female conspirator.
