RED DESERT PENITENTIARY

Dan McMann & Myrna Greenbaum

RED DESERT PENITENTIARY - 1984

This parody of B-films turns around on itself more than once to come up with twists that out-twist B-film plots. Kearnheim, a producer (George Sluizer, also the director) hikes his cast and crew out to a remote desert location to start filming a saga called Red Desert Penitentiary -- supposedly based on an autobiography by a certain James Gagan (Will Rose). The story tells of Gagan's 20-year imprisonment in a one-room shack in the desert. No guards, no locked doors. And then reality takes another jump off the high-dive board and the star of the film, Dan McMan (played by country and western singer James Michael Taylor) is confused for the character (Gagan) he is playing and is sentenced to twenty years for a crime he did not commit.

Here's a very strange film, the back story of which must truly be fascinating. Apparently produced with the co-operation of a small local theatre in some backwoods burg, Red Desert Penitentiary tells the story of an up-and-coming screenwriter traveling to the location of his first feature film shoot. He hitches a ride with his lead actor ( Taylor, who also supplied the score) and the two engage in a series of misadventures and recreations of old film scenes. Written and directed by Dutch anti-auteur George Sluizer, whose next film would be the huge art-house hit Spoorloos (The Vanishing), this film feels like a product of the 1970s: there are echoes of The Last Movie and Two-Lane Blacktop, amongst others. The acting is uniformly amateurish, but the result is oddly satisfactory. A true example of the lost art of independent film-making, Red Desert Penitentiary is no lost classic, but it will hold your attention. -John Seal from Oakland CA.

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My gal and my stunt man...

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SURVEILLANCE

ETC

JMT with Billy D. Williams on TIME BOMB - 1984 - Morgan Fairchild