Caged Heat 3000 Reviews

CAGED HEAT 3000 transplants the standard elements of a women-in-prison picture to the year 3000 AD, when a huge women's prison has been constructed underground on a uninhabitable asteroid 45 million light years from Earth. Despite the possibilities that could be teased out of such an absurd variation on the genre, CAGED HEAT 3000 never rises above humorless exploitation. Kira Murphy (Cassandra Leigh) makes up for having been wrongly imprisoned by brutally murdering an inmate who dealt drugs to other prisoners and allowed guards to rape and kill a young friend of hers. Hoping to exploit racial tension and Kira's violent temper, prison officials transfer her to high security where she shares a cell with Daly (Kena Land), a Black activist lawyer who is loathed by the officials. White inmates led by Billie (Debra Beatty) try to befriend Kira, but she refuses to join their racist gang, and inflicts some serious casualties when she takes them on single-handedly in the prison gym. In retaliation, Billie forms an alliance with the Black gang and plots a killing spree designed to end in Kira's death. Daly makes a last ditch effort to convince both gangs to end the violence, and barely escapes with her life. Prison administrators, distracted by visiting journalists, are unable to control the ensuing riot. In the chaos, inmates are able to tell the press about conditions at the prison. When Daly is released, Kira promises to stay out of trouble for the remainder of her sentence, and it is announced that prison officials have been indicted for mistreatment of prisoners. Except for languid showers enjoyed by the inmates, most of the intended eroticism of the film is undermined by rape and torture scenes that not even the sadistic guards seem to enjoy. The acting is largely amateurish and the action indifferently blocked (many of the fight scenes take place in clumsy silhouette). Only the brightly-hued sets--which forego realism for a slick, if hokey, futurism--provide small respite from the mean-spiritedness of CAGED HEAT 3000. If only the story--and the acting, for that matter--had likewise been able to do so much with so little. (Violence, extensive nudity, sexual situations, profanity.)