Caged Heat 1is a masterpiece of irreverent cinematic kitsch, a circus act of flip dialogue, absurdist implausibilities, Brigitte Nielsen and her disappearing accent and gratuitous nudity.

Caged Heat 2 scores one-and-a-half out of four, and most of the credit for what it does, goes to "scream queen" Jewel Shepard for playing her character with a perfect degree of self-indulgent flippancy.

Shepard is a snarly undercover CIA agent who's assigned to guard a third-world potentate. A staged assassination attempt allows hostile forces of the dictator's regime to come out in the open but backfires to the degree that his daughter is taken prisoner. Shepard is ordered, with ice cream-licking nonchalance, to retrieve the daughter, who's incarcerated in a place called Rock Island, a shit hole in the Pacific atoll. A porno tape frame-up is established (an Alexis DeVell masturbation tape, no less), and Shepard is remanded to custody and under the more-than-watchful eye of a sex-obsessed warden who looks like pro wrestling's Mr. Fuji.

Ah, the waste of potential. This film has an eager, surrealistic playfulness about it, but tightens its own reins like an old fogey demanding a curfew on prom night. Perforce, it ultimately demands of itself a strict ledger accountability and resolution of proceedings, and does it in brisk, business-like fashion. Even the anticipated nude shower scenes require the girls to wear panty bottoms. And the strip search? Forget the strip search, unless you like yours equipped with cinematic chastity belts.

Now how old fogey-ish can you get?