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Released by: The Film Detective/Something Weird Video
Released on: April 19th, 2022.
Director: Jerry Gross
Cast: William Watson, Julie Ange, Ron Charles, Arlene Farber, Ron Segal
Year: 1956
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Girl On A Chain Gang – Movie Review:
Jerry Gross is better known for distributing such notorious horror and exploitation pictures as Zombie, I Spit On Your Grave, I Drink Your Blood and plenty more but before he got into the distribution game, he director three films, the first of which was 1966's Girl On A Chain Gang, his feature film debut.
The girl in question is a post-grad student named Jean Rollins (Julie Ange) who, along with two friends – a white guy named Ted Branch (Ron Segal) and a black guy named Audie Dixon – cruise on into a small Southern town in an unnamed Southern state with hopes of getting people registered to vote. It isn’t long before our trio is nabbed by two backwards, gun-toting cops, accused of speeding. They’re marched off at gun point to meet the equally backwards Sheriff Sonney Lew Wymer (William Watson) who slaps them with a fine. When they try and leave, he hits them with propped up charges of immorality and then they find themselves in even deeper trouble and are tossed into jail.
Ted and Audie realize very quickly that they’re never going to be given a fair trial and figure that the only way that they’ll ever get out of the clink is to make a daring escape. When they find their cell door has been left open, they figure this is their shot, but it turns out to be yet another ruse on the part of the cops, who shoot them both, killing Audie and wounding Ted. When Ted is locked back up, snakes are thrown at him and he dies after they bite him, leaving Jean all alone to be raped by the Sheriff. Eventually she’s brought in front of a judge who is no better than the cops, her defense attorney being Wymer’s cousin. She speaks out about being raped but again, propped up evidence is used against her and she’s sentenced to ninety days hard labor on a nearby farm where she’ll work on a chain gang with black men.
Like a lot of Gross’ product, this one is marketed as a ‘chicks in chains’ type women in prison film but the reality is that Jean doesn’t really spend any time on the chain gang in the movie. Those expecting cheap thrills and trashy exploitation might be taken aback to learn that Gross, who would direct Teenage Mother and Female Animal in only a few short years, made a film far more concerned with ideas of social justice and police corruption than with the typical nonsense you expect from a gals behind bars story. The fact that there’s a whole lot of misrepresentation going on in the film’s marketing won’t shock anyone familiar with Gross’ work – he is, after all, the man who changed the title of Day Of The Woman to I Spit On Your Grave.
Still, Girl On A Chain Gang, despite the misleading marketing materials, proves to be a decent watch. Yes, you can tell fairly early on where it’s all going and, as such, it’s more than a little predictable but it holds out attention well enough. The fact that it’s reportedly based on a true story makes it interesting and it’s cool to see a young William Watson show up in this only a year before he’d appear in in The Heat Of The Night. Ange, who also starred in Teenage Mother, is decent enough as the put upon female lead and while the ending is a bit of a mess, overall this works.
Girl On A Chain Gang – Blu-ray Review:
Girl On A Chain Gang arrives on Blu-ray from The Film Detective on a 50GB region free disc with viewing options offered up in 1.37.1 running ninety-five minutes and taking up 25.7GBs of space on the disc. Overall, this looks pretty nice, if not perfect. We get nice, strong black levels, clean whites and a nice grey scale with good contrast evident throughout. The image could have been cleaner, however, as there’s fairly regular instances of fairly minor print damage on display, mostly just specks here and there but some vertical scratches show up now and then. Thankfully the transfer retains the natural film grain you'd want it to, showing no noticeable noise reduction at all. There is a quick insert around the hour and twenty-two minute mark that looks to have been tape sourced (see screen cap #14), but the rest looks good.
Audio for the feature is handled by an English language 16-bit DTS-HD 2.0 Mono track, with optional subtitles offered in English and Spanish. The audio quality is just fine for an older low budget film. The track is balanced well, and the dialogue is always clean and easy to follow. There's a bit of depth to the score here and there, and the track is, for the most part, free of any hiss, distortion of sibilance.
An audio commentary with author Jennifer Churchill is the first of the extras on the disc, and it does a nice job of covering the film’s history. She goes over the facts behind the movie, Gross’ career, details on the different cast members that appear in the picture, who did what behind the camera and a fair bit more.
It’s All In The Title: Exploiting Jerry Gross is a thirteen minute history of the producer hosted by author/film historian Chris Poggiali and produced by Ballyhoo Motion Pictures that traces Gross’ rise in the exploitation movie business of the sixties and seventies as a producer and distributor, tracing his career up until his death.
Inside the keepcase, alongside the disc, is a color insert booklet that contains a new, original essay by Lisa Petrucci titled ‘Race, Rednecks And Civil Rights that is well worth a read as well as a ‘Certificate Of Jury Service’ replica card – a nice touch!
Girl On A Chain Gang – The Final Word:
Girl On A Chain Gang isn’t nearly the trash-fest that you’d expect given its marketing campaign or Gross’ attachment to the production, but it is a pretty decent movie regardless and The Film Detective, with some help from Something Weird Video, has done a nice job bringing Gross’ lesser known feature film debut to Blu-ray.