Writer: Donald E. Stewart
Composer: L. Loren Newkirk
Starring: Yvette Mimieux, Tommy Lee Jones, Howard Hesseman, Betty Thomas, Robert Carradine, Nancy Lee Noble, Severn Darden, Gus Peters, Mary Woronov, Hal Needham
More info: IMDb
Tagline: What they do to her in the Jackson County Jail is a crime!
Plot: Fed-up advertising executive Dinah Hunter quits her job and goes on a cross-country car trip from Los Angeles to New York en route to another job. Along the way, she meets up with two psychotic hitchhikers and they steal her car. Ditched and stranded in the middle of nowhere, she seeks refuge in a rural bar run by a drunken lout. After a misunderstanding, she is thrown overnight into the cells of a local jail where her bad trip continues to take a turn for the worse.
My rating: 7.5/10
Will I watch it again? Maybe.
What a nice surprise. I went into to this thinking it was another Roger Corman produced exploitation picture when it turned out to be a serious drama. The poster and trailer betray the tone of the film. The performances from the leads are fantastic. Hell, I can't think of any of the actors that didn't bring it. It's only 84 minutes which is precisely how long it needed to be. There really isn't any fat and it flies by at a reasonable clip. Dinah's journey until she leaves the jail is just awful. What happens to that poor woman is just mean. It's one tragic event after another. Nearly the only man she meets that treats her as an equal is Coley (Jones) and he's a hardcore criminal. The ending stops before resolving a main character, leaving someone's fate unknown and I liked that a lot. Find a nice widescreen print and check this one out. It subverted my expectations in such a positive way.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment