JACKSON COUNTY JAIL - exploitation this good should be criminal!

I love Roger Corman and his unending parade of schlock, shameless rip-offs of other movies and exploitation drive-in fair. Movies that is utterly suitable for two hours of pure escapism and necking in the back seat. Then there's the occasional one-off that's actually a kind of serious and dramatic, like 1976's Jackson County Jail.

Yvette Mimieux (from the criminally underrated The Black Hole) is Dinah Hunter, producer at a Los Angeles advertising agency. After a spectacularly sexist client totally blows up at her and she comes home to her boyfriend (played by Doctor Johnny Fever!) dipping his wick in another ladies candle, she throws in the towel and goes back to her old job in New York.

But instead of spending the six hours on a plane, she decides to see the country and drive from coast to coast. And so she packs her lemon yellow AMC Pacer (!) and sets off up what I'm guessing to be route 66. One unfortunate carjacking later, she finds herself in Texas in the middle of the night sans possessions, money, or her wallet - which leads to her getting locked up in the local jail on vagrancy charges before getting the shit raped out of her by the Night Duty Policeman.

Bet she's regretting that whole "Get to know America" thing now.

Anyway, after attacking back against her cop rapist and accidentally killing him, next thing she knows, Hunter and a very young (and still really good looking) Tommy Lee Jones are on the run from the long arm of the law. Plenty of car chases, gun fights and daring escapes ensue. . . .

While being in jail is certainly an important plot point, Jackson County Jail isn’t really a Women In Prison flick. There are no gratuitous shower scenes, there's not a lot of nudity, and shockingly, there's actually a plot and reasonably complex characters. Sure it’s a brutal flick, but it's not quite to the level shameless exploitation of flicks like The Big Dollhouse or Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS.

The acting is, for an exploitation flick, top notch stuff. Showcasing Roger Corman uncanny talent for finding untapped talent and bringing it to the screen, we get Tommy Lee Jones first big flick. Jones is just terrific as inmate-on-the-run, Coley Blake, really showing off that, yeah - he is totally star material. Yvette Mimieux hasn’t exactly been burning up the Hollywood charts (her only notable appearances are the old George Pal Time Machine and The Black Hole, plus a couple of made-for-television movies and appearances on the Love Boat) and that's a damn shame, because she is excellent here. Her post rape shell-shock state is emotional with a real sense of her just holding it together.

THE DVD -
There is an older edition of Jackson County Jail that's cropped pan and scan and a newer edition from Shout! Factory presented in 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen, and it looks pretty good. There is the odd instance of minor print damage here and there, mostly near the reel changes, but it's never intolerable or off-putting. As far as the soundtrack goes, we get a Dolby Digital Mono track that is clean and sharp - not bad considering the low budget nature of this 35 year old flick,

THE EXTRAS -
Shout Factory delivers the good again, with a boatload of trailers (The Big Dollhouse, Big Mama, Piranha and The Great Texas Dynamite Chase - plus a trailer for his new Sci-Fi Channel flick: Sharktopus, which I will now go on record right now as proclaiming the greatest achievement in the history of film EVER!) an interview with Roger Corman conducted by Leonard "Laserblast is better than Blade Runner" Maltin from the mid nineties and an audio commentary with director Michael Miller, cinematographer Bruce Logon and producer Jeff Begun. It takes a little bit to get really going, but once the three loosen up, they have loads of trivia and production tidbits to lay out.

Plus there's the Grindhouse Double-feature feature, where trailers play before each film, recreating the 42nd Street experience without all those pesky junkies and perverts in the theater with you.

THE BOTTOM LINE -
It's unfair to call Jackson County Jail a B-Flick. Sure it comes from Roger Corman, sure it's salacious and titillating and brutal - but it's also well acted and well shot. The story is strong, and there are some great performances from Tommy Lee Jones and Yvette Mimieux.