Jackson County Jail (1976)

JACKSON COUNTY JAIL is an acceptable thriller from producer Roger Corman; not particularly good, but at least remaining fast-paced and engaging enough to be worth a look for fans of 1970s-era grindhouse cinema. Yvette Mimieux (of THE TIME MACHINE fame) plays one of those movie characters who ends up thrown in the titular jail through no fault of her own, where she's subjected to one of the more unpleasant rape scenes of the era. Eventually she busts out with the help of youthful hoodlum Tommy Lee Jones, and the two escape cross-country, pursued by the corrupt cops. The rape scene aside, this is moderately entertaining, with Mimieux striving to invest her character with realism and Jones excelling in an early role. The gut-busting climax reminded me of DIRTY MARY, CRAZY LARRY.

Dinah Hunter (Yvette Mimieux) is traveling cross country from California to New York. In the deep south she unwisely picks up two hitchhikers. They hold her up and take her car leaving her all alone. She goes to a bar to use a phone. The bartender tries to attack her but she fights him off. Then a policeman wanders in and the bartender accuses her of attacking him! She's hauled off to jail and locked up. Then she's brutally raped but kills the man who did it. With the help of a fellow prisoner (Tommy Lee Jones) she escapes and they're both on the run.What sounds like a typical exploitation picture is surprisingly not bad. Aside from the rape scene (which is downright disgusting) this is pretty tame. There's next to no nudity (Mimieux briefly bares her breast) and it has a good script. This has been praised as a feminist picture. I don't agree. Sure she fights back and kills the man who rapes her but so do other woman in other exploitation films. Also she almost immediately falls in love with Jones and clings to him to save her. That's hardly feminist. The film also has plenty of shoot outs and car chases and Mimieux and Jones are very good in their roles. So it's worth seeing but a little overpraised and not a feminist film at all.

Fast, tough, and unsentimental. Sure, a potboiler like this is not going to win any awards, but it's got more sheer pluck and energy than twenty A-productions of the time. Pity poor Dinah Hunter (Mimieux). One minute she's a bigshot ad executive in Hollywood; the next, she's ducking cop bullets somewhere in fly-over country. It's a yuppie nightmare all the way for poor Dinah, a steady downhill once she tries a cross-country car ride. On the way she meets homicidal kids, a chiseling waitress, a righteous cop, and a prison guard from heck. No wonder she's on the run with cool dude Coley (Jones). How else can you deal with a cross section of Roger Corman's rural America. Next time she better take the plane like other bi-coastal types.Corman really hit pay dirt with hillbilly epics like Boxcar Bertha (1972), Big Bad Mama (1974), Crazy Mama (1975), and this one. One look at these and you'd think rural America is just as bloody and hormonally driven as big city America. But these epics are also in the great tradition of the American B-movie, those cheap productions that show guts, energy, and style. Sure, a flick like JCJ is also what some might call vulgar and exploitative, which it is. Still, there can be a lot of truth even in exaggerated crowd pleasers. Besides, these drive-in specials are generally entertaining as heck, just like this one.

I thought the film was good with fine acting coming from the stars : Yvette Mimieux and Tommy Lee Jones. Jones is in his first major movie of his career and performed well. The jail house rape of Yvette is very graphic and I doubt if any other movie will show such a powerful scene unless you see "Two Women" again where the Italian Star is similarly abused.Perhaps the scenes showing Jones in a gun battle with the local police was not too realistic as it might have been but overall I believe the story rang fairly true to life and regret that it had to be placed in the area that presented the law as having such men who would take advantage of a good looking blond woman in distress. The truth is that such things do happen and if nothing else the movie reminds us all that while it is good to try to help strangers in need,it is not wise to pick up hitchhikers.