I've watched the 1977 Karen Arthur movie The Mafu Cage about a half dozen times since it was reissued on DVD late last year, and I still don't know what the fuck a Mafu is. I believe it is the name Carol Kane's Cissy character gives to all of the creatures she keeps in a cage in her house and eventually murders because she doesn't like being touched. These creatures are usually apes but sometimes humans. Oh, and she doesn't always dislike being touched: she actually enjoys being touched by her sister, who she has sex with, except when she does that, she does most of the touching.
This movie is so fucking weird!
The Mafu Cage is Three Women meets Grey Gardens meets Tarzan. It is ridiculously '70s. It is so '70s, it should come with a Quaalude and 3D glasses where one side is brown and one side is green. It being as '70s as it is means that it is both entirely off the wall and paced like a person on crutches. And not temporary crutches, but the kind with the bicep cuff. Hardcore crutches that bespeak genuine disability. It also is completely un-PC, from a scene in which Cissy brutally beats her orangutan to death (they didn't actually kill an ape for the sake of this movie -- even though it wouldn't have been unheard of in the '70s -- but as Kane relays in a recent interview that's on the DVD, she visibly disturbed her orangutan co-star, whose trust she spent much of the filming gaining) to having its principal characters carry out the aforementioned incestuous lesbian affair, despite (or probably because of) Cissy's unspecified mental illness...
"It’s been a long time since anyone but me stroked your breasts," says Cissy to her sister Ellen (played by Lee Grant) at one point. And not to be a weirdophobe, but yuck.
Having Kane play a mentally ill and/or handicapped character is insensitive enough, but that's nothing compared to when her character dons blackface:
It's a head-scratcher -- is Cissy fucking mad, or is it this entire production? Does parsing this out even matter, as one was bound to be if the other was, anyway, right? (This should be especially true if the movie is to take itself seriously, which I believe it does.)
The blackface scene, by the way, doesn't read as hateful, despite whatever history-neglecting insensitivity is there. Cissy and Ellen grew up amongst tribes in Africa with their scientist father, and she is wrapped up in nostalgia and dresses accordingly. She also listens to reel-to-reel tapes of jungle sounds constantly. If anything, she's trying way too hard to be down.
Way too hard.
But oh, the costumes are really something!
And the film is gorgeous most of the time (if always through the murky filter of a '70s production).
The acting is over-the-top (“You wish I was dead!”) to the point of hysteria.
I don't know whose idea it was to have Cissy say, "Dumb shit! Dumb shit!" as a verbal tic when she's triggered, but it is safe to say that it was a real life dumb shit. Really, though, I can't imagine this movie being anything than what it is, basically because I never would have imagined this movie in the first place. I came across it by chance, never having heard of it (not even via its other even more ridiculous alias titles Deviation and Don't Ring the Doorbell). It's as hard to qualify the performances in this movie as it would be hard to qualify the performances of a child's playtime. The sounds of both are eerily similar, given the jungle soundtrack and Carol Kane's mellifluous voice (she talks like a sock puppet with a sock stuffed in its mouth). It's strange to imagine a movie that defies categorization to the point of refusing to be placed in the realm of good or bad, but then The Mafu Cage is unimaginable in every way.
I have wanted to watch this movie for YEARS and YEARS after reading about it in some obscure film guide. I had no idea it was available on DVD, sadly netflix made me put it in the "saved" section, so I might just have to track it down otherwise. I LOVE Carol Kane and her crazy voice.
Posted by: matty | January 11, 2011 at 02:05 PM
thank you for this. it is now going on my netflix que. as for crazy flicks, have you seen Santa Sangre (by Jodorowsky and unfortunately not on DVD)) or Dr. Caligari (not the cabinet one, the movie from the 80's by the same folks who did Cafe flesh).
Posted by: jessica | January 11, 2011 at 05:32 PM
Well, this looks like a must see. Thank you so much for this review.
Posted by: Melinda | January 11, 2011 at 08:28 PM
Unbelievable! I've been obsessed with this film since the early 1980s when my best friend and I taped it on VHS from the tv and watched the horribly grainy copy repeatedly throughout the years. We named one of my cats 'the mafu' When I ask anyone if they have seen it & try to describe it... they just stare blankly.
I'm often amazed at the synchronicity of your taste in media to my own, but this truly beats all.... no one has even heard of this! Maybe because the copy I have titles the film 'My Sister, My Love'. I've never been able to find it again, but then I never looked for 'The Mafu Cage'
This is great, thanks for helping me find this in dvd format... I can't wait to see it clearly for the first time!
Posted by: betty | January 11, 2011 at 09:56 PM
Carol Kane was so cuuuute. Too bad it's a "save" on Netflix--that means I'll never see it. :)
Posted by: liz | January 13, 2011 at 03:15 PM
So unimaginable, it doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mafu_Cage
Posted by: sarah g | January 13, 2011 at 04:28 PM
Touch me in the morning and just walk away.... This one is the top of my long list of creepy lesbian Carole Kane movies! Like scrooged!
Posted by: VA loan application | January 16, 2011 at 03:04 PM
i JUST bought this dvd a few weeks ago when i was having a Carol Kane Is Funny-Looking Festival.
I tripped balls. LOVED it. Kickass commentary on it, dude. rock on!
Posted by: LittleKiwi | January 17, 2011 at 06:11 PM
I think you are right when you say this. Hats off man, what a superlative knowledge you have on this subject…hope to see more work of yours.
Posted by: Health Blog | January 26, 2011 at 05:56 AM
I love the costumes but i can't say the same for the movie, errrr.
Posted by: kate welsh | April 06, 2011 at 11:06 PM
What a flashback! I saw this in the theater when it first came out. Believe it or not, there are others like it, like Naasha Kinski's Cat
People, which came out about the same time.
These movies would be considered edgy to the point of shocking now. I despise gratuitous animal abuse, but in the case of the Mafu cage, the wardrobe and cinematography were so beautiful they managed to over ride some of the more offensive parts of the movie.
Posted by: Lulu | December 27, 2011 at 03:19 AM