The Mafu Cage
March. 19,1978 RTwo strange sisters live in a crumbling mansion, where they keep a pet ape, which belonged to their late father, locked in a cage. While one of the sisters seems to be keeping her head on straight, as it were, the other appears to be sinking further and further into barbarism and insanity.
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Reviews
Too many fans seem to be blown away
Sadly Over-hyped
People are voting emotionally.
There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.
Actually, I rather liked this film. I was lucky enough to find the DVD edition on a shelf in my local Pound Shop. The lighting/filming techniques were behind those of the day and I think that was intentional - as it adds to the mystery of the whole story. You don't really understand the whole story until you've seen the whole film, sat for a while, thought about what it was about, watched it again and then finally formed a thesis around what and why the story went the way it did.To answer a previous post; they don't appear to have any neighbours as such as they live in an old dilapidated manor house and its quite clear that any friends they do have are of the open-minded, scientific type who are'nt that interested in why someone may need something unusual.It's a sort of 'what if' scenario where the extremes of entrapment are explored and it is quite clear why the two sisters are so psychologically deranged - if you have a little bit of insight in to the human psyche.There are also two levels of captor/captee that maybe many miss.The younger sister is actually captee of the older sister who is her provider of food/water/bedding/...and pets.And the younger sister becomes captor through learnt behaviour from watching her father at his 'study', which is why she copies him and sketches her captives in the same way.There is also a suggestion that hypnotic musical rhythms help to strengthen these psychotic pathways of the brain(hence the African rituals).Her general behaviour is childlike, not grown up and illustrates that even though she has taken on the responsibility of captor she is not prepared mentally to accept this and care for her captees - which is why her psyche revolts. But at the same time she is trying to understand how the captee feels because she gets locked in the cage herself.If you understand what I've said here, then you'll also see the similarities with 'The Cell'.Quite an intelligent story I thought, though admittedly I originally bought it for a horror flick night in. I'd have given it a 10 if there was more explanation in the film of how it all started.
If you're going to make horror picture, you should make sure of the following: 1. It has an understandable plot.2. It is scary.3. It should filmed in enough light for you to know what's going on.This film follows none of the above criteria. In fact, the words "PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER" on the front of the DVD box must be the biggest lie in the English language. So what as it got to offer? Well, no attractive women, Carol Kane and whoever plays her weird sister in this are as ugly as sin. What they wear is quite nice, perhaps because they moved from Africa at the start of the film. Why do I mention this? Because the plot seems to revolve around the younger sister missing her old home to such an extent, she plays tribal music full blast all day long, and walks about in outfits that wouldn't look out of place on a shaman's wife. Eventually she hears voices in her head(?) and decides to kill and torture a few people in a cage they have built into their house. There is a rather grim ending. And that's it. I was seriously freaked out by this surreal movie, which I doubt even made sense to its director. What was she hoping to accomplice? If it was giving me a hernia, her efforts were an unqualified success. 0/10
This movie was flat out weird. Carol Kane plays Cissy, a woman who dresses in African-type clothing and has literally turned the house into a jungle. Cissy lives alone with her older sister, Ellen. They only have each other and you can tell right from the back that Cissy has issues!!! She loves her sister dearly and longs to spend time with her. She sleeps with her sister at night as if she's a child and does things that maybe not many women do to their sisters. For instance, there's this one scene where Cissy is sleeping with her sister in a hammock and then Cissy begins to kiss and touch her sister while she's asleep and then you see the hammock turn over. Don't know what the heck that was supposed to mean. Then this other night, Cissy is telling her sister how she loves to be naked next to her and how she's the only person that's touched her breasts and all that stuff. Then Cissy is pouring hot oil over her sisters back and giving her a sexual back massage. WEIRD!!!Anyway, Cissy kills her pet monkey and threatens to commit suicide when she can't get another one. After cutting her wrist, her sister gives in and gets her another one. One day Ellen hears Cissy screaming and sees her beating the monkey to death with a chain. ISSUES!!!!!!!!!!!! Cissy then kills her sister's boyfriend, whom she hated. She then causes her sister to go crazy and eventually the sister dies. The quality of the DVD was very weak and dark. You can hardly see much of the movie but other than that....it was good!!! Once again, KUDOS to Kane!! She's excellent!!!! Every movie I've seen her in so far she blows me away. She's really good!!! I especially love it when she plays psycho characters like this one and the one from 'Office Killer'.
While perusing the 50cent rental section at the local video store, I came across "The Mafu Cage." Reading the flipside of the box led me to believe that this would simply be a run-of-the-mill 70s horror flick. However, it was hardly that; And very perversely bizarre. Cissy falls into the depths of insanity and general crackness while living with her older sister after her ape/monkey researching father dies...Riddled with tribal music, inferred incest and a living room converted to a jungle, I'd recommend "The Mafu Cage" to any who desire a high weirdness factor in their movies.