Irene Cara in Caged in Paradise (1989)

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Caged in Paradiso is a fairly simple film, telling the tale of a woman (Fame’s Irene Cara) who travels to a desolate island where her husband has been unjustly imprisoned. It’s a sort-of Papillon-meets-Lord of the Flies-meets-Discovery Channel special, although that really makes it out to be much more complex than it actually is.

The film might truely qualify as a Women-In-Prison flick were it not for the decided lack of a prison. The island in the flick is “the prison,” and once you step foot on it, you can’t get out (or can you?) thanks to a Government Satellite Death Ray which vaporizes anything that makes it past the beach. Thus, once on “Paradiso,” one is forced to band up with other criminals for survival purposes and the requisite cliques end up fighting each other in the climactic ending sequence. The scenery is gorgeous, but the acting is way over-the-top and the story is entirely unoriginal. In other words, watch Caged in Paradiso on a rainy Sunday afternoon and you might not feel like you just wasted an hour-and-a-half of your life…

Cara could have done a lot more for this film, namely by taking her clothes off a few times. Prison flicks should always include gratuitous nudity. I think it even says so in the Prison Flick Production Rule Book. In fact, I think that might be Rule Number One. At least it should be… in either regard, Cara, as well as all her cast mates, remain entirely covered up throughout the entire movie, although, seeing as it’s obviously hotter than Hell on the island, they spend the better part of their time in bikinis. Cara has a rock-hard body and her bikini is rather teeny, so in the end, all is not lost. It would have been nice to see her take a bath in a waterfall-fed pool, or something, though. Really, is that too much to ask?

IMDb Summary: Nine readers have it at 2.2/10. I’m really surprised nine people saw it in the first place…


Written by: Vance Moravian