Instant Favorite.

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Dinah Hunter (Yvette Mimieux) is traveling cross country from California to New York. In the deep south she unwisely picks up two hitchhikers. They hold her up and take her car leaving her all alone. She goes to a bar to use a phone. The bartender tries to attack her but she fights him off. Then a policeman wanders in and the bartender accuses her of attacking him! She's hauled off to jail and locked up. Then she's brutally raped but kills the man who did it. With the help of a fellow prisoner (Tommy Lee Jones) she escapes and they're both on the run.What sounds like a typical exploitation picture is surprisingly not bad. Aside from the rape scene (which is downright disgusting) this is pretty tame. There's next to no nudity (Mimieux briefly bares her breast) and it has a good script. This has been praised as a feminist picture. I don't agree. Sure she fights back and kills the man who rapes her but so do other woman in other exploitation films. Also she almost immediately falls in love with Jones and clings to him to save her. That's hardly feminist. The film also has plenty of shoot outs and car chases and Mimieux and Jones are very good in their roles. So it's worth seeing but a little overpraised and not a feminist film at all.

First of all, forget about the supposedly infamous rape scene. There IS a rape scene. OK; but that's not the heart or focus of this gem of a movie. The story is excellent, as is the direction and photography; but the real asset is the interplay between Yvette Mimieux and Tommy Lee Jones (who was not yet an old geezer 35 years ago).Yvette Mimieux fills my memory of seeing this one back in 1976. Yvette was famously cute and pretty when she was 20 and just getting started in the 1950's. Many actresses lose it as they age; but not Yvette. Maturing added mind-staggering beauty to her face, as maturity added to her personality --- and she still had the same petite lithe body. Women with this combination usually have to fend off dozens of Grade A men while the Playboy types are sitting home waiting for a phone call.If you can find this movie anywhere, look it up.

The best thing this movie has to offer is checking out Yvette Mimieux bare-chested. I cannot believe anyone could otherwise like this film. Shallow, predictable plot, VERY poorly acted bad-ole-good-ole-boys film that never misses a cliché. I would never have viewed it but for some stills from the jail scene of Mimieux. She really lowers herself from the pedestal I'd put her on in "The Time Machine." Weena, where have you gone? ;- (And how did they get so many otherwise worthy actors? I hardly recognized Tommy Lee Jones and Carradine. As for Howard Hesseman and Betty White, where have their standards gone? I could understand it if it was a first film for these guys - it's as if a director put a gun to the actors' heads, threw up the script and gave them one reading and on to the next scene.And is it possible to get a worse soundtrack? This movie has cheap written all over it. I'm going to do vidcaps of Yvette in the jail scene and toss this thing before it festers and affects others.

I thought the film was good with fine acting coming from the stars : Yvette Mimieux and Tommy Lee Jones. Jones is in his first major movie of his career and performed well. The jail house rape of Yvette is very graphic and I doubt if any other movie will show such a powerful scene unless you see "Two Women" again where the Italian Star is similarly abused.Perhaps the scenes showing Jones in a gun battle with the local police was not too realistic as it might have been but overall I believe the story rang fairly true to life and regret that it had to be placed in the area that presented the law as having such men who would take advantage of a good looking blond woman in distress. The truth is that such things do happen and if nothing else the movie reminds us all that while it is good to try to help strangers in need,it is not wise to pick up hitchhikers.