One of only two films actually directed by notorious exploitation distributor Jerry Gross, this sleazy black-and-white potboiler deals with three Freedom Riders traveling through the Deep South. Arrested by racist police, both men are killed and the woman (Julie Ange) is put on a chain gang with black male convicts. A great deal of overheated dialogue and smarmy leering follows, until Ange and one of the cons escape and run for their lives in scenes clearly modeled on The Defiant Ones. Innocuous at its core, this melodrama ...
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One of only two films actually directed by notorious exploitation distributor Jerry Gross, this sleazy black-and-white potboiler deals with three Freedom Riders traveling through the Deep South. Arrested by racist police, both men are killed and the woman (Julie Ange) is put on a chain gang with black male convicts. A great deal of overheated dialogue and smarmy leering follows, until Ange and one of the cons escape and run for their lives in scenes clearly modeled on The Defiant Ones. Innocuous at its core, this melodrama still creates an oppressive air of perversity which is hard to shake, and its exploitation of the Mississippi civil-rights murders the previous year is even harder to excuse. Gross returned with Teenage Mother (1966). Robert Firsching, Rovi
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