Macon County Jail

I loved the movie. David Carradine can play so well a guy who is right at heart. And Ally Sheedy was great, too.Not to forget the rest of the crew... And the story is beautiful. One dreams of such an adventure!

OH MY--Ally Sheedy and David Carradine, shame on you for taking money to be in this poorly made movie. I actually laughed during this whole film, it was a hoot.

Three things that cracked me up and stood out were when the cop during the hold up scene at the gas station kept saying, "I told you about that language", when that cop and gas station man have a fender bender and they both blow up in a ball of flame, and during the shoot-out at the trailer, when the young hottie trailer trash babe is hunkered down a moth flies near her mouth and she blows it away...and they left it in the final print!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH--I was rolling on the floor.

I REALLY hope the director of this movie had nothing to do with the poor shots and composition, the infantile editing and poorly placed transitions, and the awful sound problems.

Macon County Jail has to be one of the WORST films of all time.

"Susan Reed" (Ally Sheedy) is having a bad day. First, she gets fried from her job and then when she gets home early she finds her boyfriend with another woman. So she packs her suitcase and heads for New York. Along the way she picks up a female hitchhiker named "Bess" (Jennie Vaughn) who promptly steals her car and the rest of her belongings leaving her stranded in Macon County, Georgia. She immediately heads to a convenience store to make a phone call but the clerk mistakenly thinks she's there to rob him. To make matters even worse they get into a scuffle just as the police happen to arrive and she is subsequently arrested and put in jail over the weekend pending her arraignment Monday morning. If that wasn't bad enough she then gets raped by the deputy that night. Now if any of this plot seems familiar it's because it is almost identical to an earlier film (starring Yvette Mimieux in the lead role) titled "Jackson County Jail" produced in 1976. As far as comparisons go this movie was less intense but on the other hand the acting of Ally Sheedy and David Carradine (as "Coley") seemed a bit more polished in this particular film. Since the similarities were so striking and I enjoyed both movies I have rated this film the same as its predecessor. Slightly above average.

David Carradine stars as a prisoner who protects a vulnerable Ally Sheedy from a corrupt prison warden (played by, of course, Charles Napier) who is out to exact vengeance on Sheedy for the murder of a prison guard trying to rape Sheedy, once again it is up to Carradine to protect her and provide us lucky audiences with a romance subplot between the ancient Carradine and the fairly old Ally Sheedy. Back in the 80's, Sheedy was a brat-packer that like Molly Ringwald, went absolutely nowhere after the decade closed. Following her other co-star Judd Nelson's route, she started making B.movie fodder such as this and this is probably her and David Carradine's most high profile movies in quite some time. By that of course, I mean that it was the only new David Carradine movie you could rent at your local video store because the last one I saw was the dreadful Kill Zone and that was of course sad, since David Carradine is a fairly good actor. Oh and unlike most movies with David Carradine it actually was on Cinemax everyday when it came out, So I was able to tape it and watch it. The movie breaks no real ground as it basically is the elderly version of Bonnie and Clyde. However I do like the fact that Carradine at 60 is still doing these type of movies because few actors are as effortlessly likable as David Carradine. The movie itself rarely deviates from formula but for Carradine fans, this was the best movie he starred in, in the 1990's. True story, sad as it is.

* * out of 4-(Fair)

At this point, producer Roger Corman had made a career of recycling props and sets, as well as footage from other movies. So it should come as no surprise that he eventually went to recycling old scripts as well. This is actually the third go-around for this story (the previous two were "Jackson County Jail" and "Outside Chance".) You might think that having a woman screenwriter/director this time around might jazz things up somewhat, but you'd be wrong. This looks even cheaper than JCJ, for one thing. The two leads don't seem to be having any fun in their roles, and their tired spirits really weigh down on the movie. The movie tries to be faster-paced than its predecessors, but after the first half hour it really pads things out when it realizes that it still has an hour of running time to go. There is a slap-dash feeling to the entire movie, from reflections of boom mikes in car windows to the fact that jailed convict Carradine is allowed to wear an earring in his jail cell.

Still, that first shot is pretty impressive.