Since the lowest option is a rating of 1, that's what it gets but it deserves far, far less. This movie is unadulterated crap. Zero plot, zero horror, zero acting. To put it simply, it sucked mule.The "cage" is a dilapidated, falling apart, outdoor, chicken wired cage and one person was tied loosely with twine as his girlfriend got busy with their abductors. The ending was non-existent as the movie should be. If you watch this movie trust me when I say you will be begging for that slice of your life back, currently I am flogging myself for the poor judgment in deciding to "check it out". Life is precious, too precious to throw away on this flick.One positive note, the location was nice. I plan scathing emails to the actors, directors and producers of this film for creating it. Shame on them.
... View MoreThis is a film of many parts. Unfortunately, most of those parts don't seem to fit together very well, and some of them are distinctly out of place. Written, produced, and directed by Barrie McLean and Kristen Weingartner, Golden Apples of the Sun (or, as it is more commonly known, Caged Terror) plays like a piece of improvisational theatre shot in the backwoods of Quebec. Elizabeth Suzuki and Peter Harkness star as Jan and Richard, a pair of big city kids who decide to get back to nature by going for a hike in the woods. Here they encounter some impressive nature photography courtesy Roger Moride, best known for shooting that Neil Sedaka slasher flick, Playgirl Killer. The countryside looks beautiful, but Suzuki and Harkness are strictly amateur hour, and things really get a bit awkward when Galt McDermott's jazzy score kicks in (as performed by Bernard 'Pretty' Purdie and his band). It's a fine score, but makes no sense in this setting. Meanwhile, loners Jarvis and The Troubadour (Derek Lamb and Leon Morenzie) are also wandering the woods with their guitars and ponchos, but our four protagonists don't meet up until long after Suzuki and Harkness engage in a little softcore saturnalia and then discover an abandoned house deep in the woods. In fact, the first hour of the film is terribly, terribly earnest, with all sorts of cod philosophy offered as deep thoughts by Jan and Richard. Things then take a turn for the exploitative after Richard decides to take a crap, at which point Jarvis and The Troubadour show up and start flashing back to their time in 'Nam. After an unfortunate misunderstanding involving a gun, the film reaches its climax with violence-prone Richard being locked inside a big bird cage, though not the kind Roger Corman was familiar with. This baffling film defies categorization and criticism: I could just as easily give it a 2 as an 8, so I'm going to take the coward's way out and give it a 5. I can safely claim that there's no other film quite like Golden Apples of the Sun, but the closest I can get is Garson Kanin's extremely underrated post-Vietnam War drama The Visitors.
... View MoreI saw this movie a couple years back. I could'nt sleep and there was nothing on. So I peeped it. What really gets me is it makes no sense and thats why its disturbing. Richard gets tied up in chicken wire and Jarvis starts making out with Richard's girl while she's unconscious. Then Jarvis's buddy Troubador is playing some stupid song on his guitar. By the next morning it shows Richard's girl talking to Jarvis and Trouby and then she walks back to Richard and looks at him while he's still tied up. Then they play some happy music and the movie is finished. I mean what happened? Did they brake up? And what was she saying to those 2 guys(Trouby and Jarvis)? Its to puzzling and to poor to. I can't stand movies that are disturbing and don't make sense. This was the worst film i've ever seen since the 90's version of Lord of the Flies.
... View MoreI used to review videos for Joe Bob Briggs' legendary "We Are The Weird" newsletter. I saw a lot of stinkers, but this by far was the worst, and the years have not been kind - it remains the most indecent crime against cinema I have ever witnessed. Don't get me wrong - CAGED TERROR is nominally more technically competent than, say, MONSTER-A-GO-GO or THE GUY FROM HARLEM or something of that ilk. What solidifies its claim as Worst Movie Of All Time for me is its unique blend of bare proficiency with crippling pretension. Is it a Vietnam commentary? An ecological protest? An incitement to race riot? A study of man's inhumanity to man? A novel exercise in padding nature footage out to (nearly) feature length? In short: a hep young urban professional (possibly the most loathesome screen character ever) somehow seduces a nubile Asian-American associate into camping in the woods with him. After brow-beating her with quasi-philosophical clap for the better part of an hour, they run across two wandering veterans, the unforgettable Jarvis (a righteous brother) and the Troubadour (guitar-toting Manson Family reject). Hey, a plot twist! Tension! Action! Suspense! Well, no, just a climactic getting-locked-in-a-makeshift-wire-chicken-coop-and-lightly-belittled scene. The victim in question stares listlessly at the captors and mutters, "No... no... please... don't..." Meanwhile, Jarvis addresses the Troubadour as "Trouby" once every two minutes, bringing to mind nothing so much as the alien star of Juan Picquer's POD PEOPLE. That's about all that happens in CAGED TERROR, and such a synopsis perhaps makes it seem almost tolerable. But trust me, I've seen thousands of movies in my life, and this one has remained, for the past eight years since I first saw it, the absolute worst. (I pop it in the old VCR once every two years or so just to reassure myself, and reassure myself I certainly do.) I think the element which makes CAGED TERROR so particularly hateful is this: very little happens, and although what little does happen happens quite poorly and quite slowly, what truly makes it compulsively unwatchable is the suffocating sense that the filmmakers REALLY, REALLY WANT to shove some kind of message down your throat. But because CAGED TERROR is so incompetent and ineffectual, what was intended as a civics lesson becomes a crash course in intense viewing discomfort. This film is 75 minutes long and feels like three and a half hours. It's terrible, truly truly terrible. Folks, trust me, I saw GHOSTS THAT STILL WALK and this one is worse. Go see it! You'll thank me. And curse me. Just for the record, my favorite line: (In CAGED TERROR but perhaps EVER) "Yeah, well, you probably think the Song of Solomon was an allegory for Christ's love for the church...!" (NOTE: Must be delivered in a tone of concerted condecension.)
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