Pamela Suzette Grier is an American actress and singer. Described by many as cinema's first female action star, she achieved fame for her starring roles in a string of 1970s action, blaxploitation and women in prison films for American International Pictures and New World Pictures. Her accolades include nominations for an Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Satellite Award and a Saturn Award.

The Big Doll House is a 1971 American women-in-prison film starring Pam Grier, Judy Brown, Roberta Collins, Brooke Mills, and Pat Woodell. The film follows six female inmates through daily life in a gritty, unidentified tropical prison. Later the same year, the film Women in Cages featured a similar story and setting and much the same cast, and was shot in the same abandoned prison buildings. A nonsequel follow-up, titled The Big Bird Cage, was released in 1972.