Red Desert Penitentiary

This poorly distributed low budget film, despite not being at all predictable from its early frames to its end, unfortunately also does not adequately disclose its secrets to attentive viewers, not one of whom could possibly be that individual responsible for writing the rather moronic as well as inaccurate jacket notes for the VHS (only) release. The work centres upon a movie being shot in an isolated southwestern U.S. desert locale, and although some of the acting and detail are fine, an overage of cutting results in a film that simply runs short of logic. Completed in six weeks at and near Sweetwater, Texas, the film has a storyline that generally follows the activities of Dan McMan (named Danny McCann in the liner notes), played by country music singer/songwriter James Michael Taylor who portrays in the film within a film one James Gagan (Will Rose), whose published autobiography provides a physical background for the plot and who is grumpily present during the filming, being discontent as he believes that the scenario omits too much from his purported life's history. In the film's best constructed episode, Gagan relates a Kafkaesque tale of his unjust incarceration for twenty years within a ramshackle single cell jailhouse (the building named in the title) and, although he insists that it be known of his martyrdom through a surreal conspiracy, and has resolved to stick with his version in the face of a clear lack of belief for his quaint narrative amid the production's personnel. It is primarily when Taylor, cast as Gagan, is on screen that the picture suffers artistically and as entertainment, due not so much to a distinct disparity in appearance and demeanor between the pair (certainly in accord with the genuine Gagan's complaint of the script's inaccurate adjustments to his autobiography) but more because of Taylor's lack of cinematic appeal. Released prior to the period when independently made films became widely viewed, this effort attempts to satirize a good deal of mainstream "Hollywood", but ongoing soul-probing delivered by several principal characters too often moves one away from an intended focus upon pastiche, resulting for the most part in viewer confusion. Several local Sweetwater residents gain their sole cinema credits here for this film that was seen at the Netherlands Film Festival in 1985, where it had little impact upon those in attendance, some of whom commented upon the work's inclusive lack of coherence. Taylor's songs constitute the score, and one of them, "Sweet Rain", is utilized by PENITENTIARY director George Sluizer for his American produced version of THE VANISHING, a film that seems to be riding strongly upon the back of the Dutch original, SPOORLOOS, until an altered ending that most believe cause the work to lose the vivid style of the first piece; cinematographer Toni Kuhn's creative compositions are in evidence during all three films. In the end, a reasonably engaging concept for PENITENTIARY meanders off onto too many obscure paths and finishes as simply an unfathomable mishmash, although one certainly not helped by the mentioned significantly large degree of cutting. Since the film purportedly has collected a cultish coterie of followers, it must be conceived that some sort of pattern exists to what is an outwardly confusing narrative flow, but the script's unpersuasive dance 'round both logic and artistic acuity will weigh against it to the minds of a great percentage of its viewers.