JESSE
Famous Monsters of Film Land

 

The Writer, producer, director Steve Balderson’s genre-bending, tragicomedy Stuck! will be playing at the beautiful Egyptian Theatre this Wednesday, February 3rd at 7:30pm.

I implore anyone in love with genre cinema and genuinely unique, low-budget films, to check it out for the discussion following the feature with Karen Black, Mink Stole, Susan Traylor, Jane Wiedlin, Pleasant Gehman, Stacy Cunningham and director Steve Balderson, which should be a hoot.

If you’re looking for a satisfying pastiche of the “girls behind bars” sub-genre of exploitation, Stuck! delivers. Early examples of the genre, like Barbara Stanwyck’s 1933 potboiler Ladies They Talk About, were – like many pictures of the day – problem pictures, in that they aimed to expose social injustices and inadequacies in the justice system. But by the 1960’s, when the genre really came into its own with cult classics like Caged and 99 Women, women-in-prison movies began to slide towards sexploitation and, eventually, by the time Jonathan Demme unleashed Caged Heat in 1974, high camp.

So where does Stuck! fit in?

While many of the performances, costumes, and set designs would imply a John Waters-esque hoot – a send-up of being sent-up as it were – the film itself goes to very different places, very quickly.

Immediately, we’re thrust into the plight of Daisy (Starina Johnson), a young girl reduced to a simpering shut-in by her domineering, depressive mother (September Carter). When Mama’s suicide comes out looking more like murder, largely thanks to the testimony of the “Neighbor Lady” (Karen Black), Daisy is sentenced to hang and sent up to the death row of a hardcore ladies’ prison, crowded to its limited gills with Femme Fatales.

There’s MeMe (Susan Taylor), the strong, but feminine den mother of the tribe; her lover and cellmate Princess (Jane Wiedlin), whose so traumatized by the crime that lead her here, she can only parrot MeMe; Esther (Mink Stole) is the token voice of religious pretension; and finally there’s Dutch (Pleasant Gehman), the hyper-butch, sexually aggressive, takes-no-guff lesbian. All are presided over by the snide, abusive Warden (Betti O), whose MO is degradation, natch.

As Daisy’s prison odyssey (sort of) becomes one of empowering transformation, Stuck! veers off into a subplot following the Neighbor Lady, as she descends into guilt and depression following falsely testifying to witnessing Mama’s “murder.”

Several performers show talent and promise. Starina Johnson carries the film well, thanks to Johnson we are consistently rooted in Daisy’s frightened and fragile emotional state. Her cohorts all milk some fun out of their roles, with Taylor and Gehman gutsy standouts. Genre veteran Karen Black squeezes the over-the-top, desperate best out of her bit.

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