Nearly a decade before Macon County Line brought in bank, notorious exploitation producer Jerry Gross rounded up a few pennies to tread similar territory with his debut, Girl on a Chain Gang. Just as his Teenage Mother isn’t really about a teenage mother, Girl on a Chain Gang is equally misleading and just as scandal-minded.
In the (too-)simple story, three young activists driving through the Deep South get pulled over in Carson’s Landing, a backwater town of shallow-minded people. The corrupt, cigar-chomping sheriff (William Watson, 1978’s Stingray) steals their cash and tosses them in the hoosegow. He also sets traps for them, both metaphorical (using hooker Arlene Farber, the Teenage Mother herself, to pry a false confession) and physical (“forgetting” to lock the cell door so he and his deputies have justification to shoot if the youths escape).
What I haven’t mentioned yet is one of the trio is Black, the least favorite skin color of Carson’s Landing residents. Thus, Gross’ little black-and-white picture is a race-charged look at the antiquated-moralled. His heart is in the right place, but Girl on a Chain Gang, which he also wrote and directed, is as slow, meandering melodrama with only the scarce blip of activity. The proceedings look not unlike a local stage production.
The only memorable moment is an uneducated, bigoted presentation (read: “pree-zen-tay-shun”) to the already uneducated, bigoted law enforcement on the visual difference between Black and Caucasian “spermatozoa.” And that’s not nearly enough to merit the long sit. —Rod Lott