Review of Nightmare in Badham County

Sweet Cathy Phillips (well played by the lovely Deborah Raffin) and her sassy best gal pal Diane Emery (a winningly brash and spirited performance by the fetching Lynne Moody) are a couple of California college students who experience car trouble while driving cross country in the deep rural south. The pair run afoul of evil small town Sheriff Danen (a deliciously nasty portrayal by Chuck Connors), who gets the ladies sentenced to thirty days time on a harsh prison work farm where the conditions are positively hellish and inhumane. Director John Llewellyn Moxey does an expert job of relating the grim, yet gripping story at a constant brisk pace, effectively creates a dark, bleak, gritty downbeat atmosphere, and stays true to the uncompromisingly sordid and depressing tone to the literal bitter end. The trashy script by Jo Heims offers a neat and engrossing blend of elements from both the women-in-prison and "don't go down to Dixie" redneck exploitation sub-genres. Better still, the seamy plot covers all the essential scuzzy grindhouse bases: we've got rape, lesbianism, a handy helping of tasty female nudity, savage whippings, pedophilia, and racism. The sound acting from a top-drawer cast constitutes as another significant asset: Raffin and Moody make for excellent and engaging leads, Connors has an absolute ball as a supremely slimy and hateful no-count crooked lawman, plus there's fine supporting turns by Ralph Bellamy as a kindly, but corrupt judge, Tina Louise as mean prison guard captain Greer, Robert Reed as smarmy pervert Superintendent Dancer, Della Reese as wise, hard-bitten veteran con Sarah, Lana Wood as wicked guard Smitty, Fionnula Flanagan as the equally vicious guard Dulcie, and Kim Wilson as scared, vulnerable teenage inmate Emiline. Charles Bernstein's twangy, flavorsome countryish score hits the harmonic spot. Frank Stanley's slick cinematography likewise does the trick. A nice'n'grimy slice of Southern-fried sleaze.