Three young folks - one white man, one black man, and one white woman - drive to the small Southern town of Carsons' Landing to assist in voter registration. However, they are soon victimized - over and over and over again - by the crooked locals, with the sheriff (character actor William Watson, in his film debut) proving to be the absolute worst, a repugnant, racist, brutal piece of work.
Grindhouse cinema legend Jerry Gross made his own directing debut with this "Southern-fried" (although actually filmed in Long Island!) exploitation-drama. It IS pretty heavy-handed, with most of the antagonists coming off as thoroughly evil stereotypes. The others are otherwise morally compromised in some way and thus easy for the sheriff to manipulate into doing his bidding. These cretins put our victims through so much Hell that it would be hard not to feel *something*, for sure. From start to finish, the white woman (the attractive Julie Ange, whose only other film credit was "Teenage Mother") is treated to what her captors have the gall to consider "justice", complete with a total joke of a "trial".
The ending is indeed a little too "neat" and sudden, but I admit that I kept watching this bit of indie trash just to see what other degrading things Gross could come up with. The acting is adequate through and through, although it's worth nothing that Watson had a solid career after this, also appearing in things like "In the Heat of the Night", "Lawman", and "The Mack". Arlene Farber, who plays the sheriffs' trampy gal pal, was also in "Teenage Mother" and went on to appear in the trash classic "I Drink Your Blood" and the mainstream hit "The French Connection".
As has been said, Gross was likely inspired by the real-life murders of three civil rights workers in Mississippi the previous year, the same incident that was recounted in "Mississippi Burning" over 20 years later. He saw the potential in the incident for a potent drive-in movie story, and delivers a fair amount of sordid, depressing atmosphere with this little item.
Six out of 10.
