Popular reviews

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★½

  Bizarre, blistering conservative nightmare, not that our selfishness breeds contempt or that privilege is a trap, but the dawning, blinkered "realization" that we've spent so much time building glass houses that we've neglected to actually look out the windows and see how bad things have gotten. Everyone wants to take what you earned, and you can only fight primitives with primitive measures. Exquisite, pathetically paranoid moment: Olivia de Havilland shrieks for help while a shirtless black boy fires toy gun caps at her front door. Can't you see they're coming to get us?

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  Review by Jesse Snoddon ★★½ 5

  "Haven't you ever needed help?"

  Mrs. Cornelia Hilyard (Olivia de Havilland), a well off woman who lives large in a nice home, finds herself stuck in an elevator between floors in her home. When she rings for help, decent people ignore the lift alarm, but unsavoury characters take it as an invitation to come in and loot the place while she is forced to helplessly watch from her cage. 

  The film is thematically in tune with the 1960s anxiety of a world gone mad and the dissolution of community. Things start off normal enough but quickly descend into chaos fairly quickly when the first vagrant is followed back to the house by Randall Simpson O'Connell (played by a young James…

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  Review by Ian Curran ★★

  “Help! Please! I’m trapped in a small, private elevator!”—😂

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  Review by Hot Take Nick ★★½ 2

  On paper, this seemed like a really interesting concept for a movie. But I just couldn’t fully get into this, it came across almost a little cartoon-ish at times. 

  This did star a young James Caan though so that was cool. 

  I had never seen the trick of wrapping your hand in newspaper to punch through glass so this movie did still teach me something. 

  I laughed when the radio said, “While we’ve been conquering polio and space, what have we done about the devil?” 
  Radio also denounced armament stocks saying that war is a terrible way to make money. 

  Overall, I wouldn’t say this is a bad watch but I also found myself unable to get fully invested in it.

  Movies Watched in 2020, Ranked

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  Review by laird ★★★★½

  Parasites

  Really mean and nasty for a 1964 studio movie! The only thing that could have made me like it more is if it was set in the South.

  I love the America of this movie: a never ending stream of traffic, a constant din of industrial noise and crime reports, the isolated wealthy with their contempt for the lower classes (and the tax dollars that go to them), those animals, a sea of predators climbing over each other for ill-gotten gains whether stolen, fenced or, as the character played by Olivia de Havilland (a real good sport for going through what she goes through in this!) says:

  "All this war talk in the papers, maybe we should go into armament stocks again. It seems such a terrible way to make money though, don't you think?"

  That "again" hanging in the air like a noose. Is there anything but "terrible" ways to make money?

  This movie is ANGRY!

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  Review by Luke Kane ★★★½ 5

  Elevator to Hell

  In the original trailer for Lady in a Cage, Olivia de Havilland urges 'adult, responsible people' not to see it alone, but to 'take somebody along that you can hold onto... for dear life!'

  An off-shoot of the psycho-biddy genre, which came into full swing after 1962's Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, Lady in a Cage was originally intended for Joan Crawford, who reportedly turned it down because she'd just played a terrorised invalid in the aforementioned movie. It was the second and most notable film by Walter Grumman, a B-Movie director known mostly for his work in television, and written/produced by American playwright Luther Davis. Contemporary critics reviled it at the time of it's release. A.H…

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  Review by Scumbalina ★★★½

  I was anticipating a suspenseful yet classy thriller. Like something that would have come from Hammer at the time. But it ended up being much more transgressive than expected. Shades of David Hess in Caan's performance, a little bit of Cash Flagg from Thrill Killers as well. There's something a little off about it but that ended up adding to the disorienting punk rock hostage scenario. Up there with I drink Your Blood.

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  Review by eely ★★½

  olivia de havilland reading a book and drinking tea as her elevator takes a literal decade to reach the second floor of her house is high comedy. the rest of this was...something else

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  Review by Chip ★★★★★ 2

  I was a few days late, but I still managed to rewatch my favorite Fourth of July movie (appropriately with fireworks and/or gunshots going on outside). What qualifies this as a Fourth movie? It takes place on the Fourth of July weekend (although the holiday itself is only referenced in a banner during the opening credits), and the movie seems to be a diatribe against the modern day (as of 1964) Sodom and Gomorrah that America has seemingly descended into.

  Released during the period when aging actresses were being recruited for pulpy thrillers, this movie is probably the least horrific of the bunch, but it's pulpy as fuck. It features Olivia DeHavilland, Ann Sothern, Scatman Crothers, and a very young…

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  Review by Danielle ★★★ 5

  I’m a big fan of Olivia. I’m not a big fan of this film. I went in expecting a whole lot more and “Lady in a Cage” was just another cheap rip off the ol’ biddy genre. Meanwhile, Olivia was in ONLY in her 40s when she did this film. She was NOT an old biddy. 
    The ending was decent though. James Caan never looked so good. 😂🤣 
  It was an adequate enough first film to watch in our new home. I’ve been waaaay too busy these days with this move and this house, it’s consumed me. I have had zero time for LB. 😩🥹. Happy holiday to all my cronies!! 🕎🎄🍾🥂🎄

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  Review by Oliver Swift ★★★½

  ‘Introducing James Caan’ is a jarringly pleasant title card to see

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  Review by Joe ★★★½

  Shockingly grimy for a 1964 studio release, probably the only time in movie history where you could see James Caan (RIP) belching repeatedly in Olivia de Havilland's face. I'm a sucker for any well-constructed chamber thriller but unfortunately (or maybe fortunately for my claustrophobia) this doesn't really capitalize too much on its broken home-elevator hook, instead unfolding more or less as a typical home invasion story, albeit a particularly nasty and cynical one.