When I think 'Women in Prison', my mind often goes to sleazy Italian/Spanish productions by directors such as Jess Franco and Bruno Mattei; and while these films are often very sleazy, they're also very samey and once you've seen one; you might as well have seen them all. I have to admit that these types of films generally aren't my favourites; but in fact the idea of women behind bars has been done very well on several occasions outside of Italy and Spain; and Roger Corman's New World Pictures is responsible for some of the best of them. Caged Heat is the directorial debut of Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme, and it's a well done little flick with plenty of entertainment value! Naturally, the film centres on the story of a girl who is caught committing crime and sent to a women's' prison where she is introduced to a host of violent inmates. This prison is ruled over by the stuff wheelchair bound Superintendent McQueen; and she takes offence to a play put on by the girls; leading them to plot an escape.
This film is much lighter on the sleaze than I'm used to in a women in prison flick; but this is more than compensated for by some great action scenes and dialogue and that's what ensures Caged Heat entertains throughout. It does have to be said that the plot is not particularly original or ambitious and basically follows a structure similar to many other women in prison films that came before it; but that's not such a big problem. The film never gets boring and is peppered with standout scenes; including an escape attempt while out working in a field and a bank robbery. The film is helped along by assured direction from the man who would go on to helm the masterpiece The Silence of the Lambs and a great cast with plenty of standouts; including best of all the legendary Barbara Steele in the role of the head prison warden. Overall, Caged Heat may not leave the viewer with much to think about by the end; but it's a brilliantly entertaining little grindhouse flick and anyone that enjoys this type of film will surely want to track it down.

This ranks way up there on my top list of worst movies I've seen so far on Starz on Demand. They seem to pick up every straight to DVD crap-fest they can find and put it on here.
Why? Who knows! Apparently anyone with a digital camera and a shoestring budget can come up with a horror movie and get it put on TV. To be honest, this looked terrible from the moment I saw the trailer--but I did give it a real chance.
I always try to have an open mind about low-budget movies. Some of the best movies I've ever seen were films that worked around their low budget or in other cases only required that low budget to be great.
This is not one of those movies.
You know the plot by now, I'm sure, if you're reading this. Either you heard about it on Starz on Demand or for whatever reason you ended up on this page out of boredom. It's about a pathetic and whiny girl we get to know for all of 3 minutes in an incredibly bad "heavy metal" music video. Whoever put it together must have thought it looked really interesting, but it really, really doesn't. Anyway, she kills herself. Then she possesses someone. Then some killing starts. It's really unmemorable and as completely average and boring as possible. When the first gunshot goes off in her apartment it quite seriously sounds like a piece of popcorn popping. Was that the best sound effect they could come up with? I could find a better sound effect to use for free, (with no copyright,) on the internet... right. now.
Don't let the other reviews claiming this is a 10 star movie fool you. They are obviously either distributors of the film or maybe even the director trying to con you into thinking this piece of junk is worth buying.
Laughable.