Caged | Full Movie | Movies Anywhere

Long before the “women’s prison film” got overrun by sadistic wardens, leering male guards, and lesbian trysts among the inmates -- thus becoming the exclusive property of drive-ins and grindhouses -- Warner Bros. offered this hard-hitting drama.

All of these qualities give the film a unity of tone and style that we don't run into so frequently.

A grim, unrelieved study of cause and effect, it adds up to very drab entertainment, unleavened with any measure of escapism.

Deemed harsh in 1950, Cromwell's melodrama about women in prison has lost its edge but the acting of Agnes Moorehead and Hope Emerson, as a monstrously facist matron, is good; the film still offers valuable lesson about how life in prison makes criminals