By Erin Free
In this regular column, we drag forgotten made-for-TV movies out of the vault and into the light. This week: the 1977 road movie thriller Escape From Bogen County, starring Jaclyn Smith, Mitchell Ryan, Michael Parks, Pat Hingle and Henry Gibson.
The vintage telemovie, especially of the 1970s and 1980s, provided a fascinating platform for established small screen series stars to branch out and try new kinds of material. Looking to work in the hiatus periods between respective seasons of their TV series, many stars would take on different, slightly more challenging roles in telemovies that could be knocked out quickly in a couple of months. It was an arrangement that worked both for name stars seeking a change, and TV networks and production companies in search of a high-profile, ratings-magnet name to lead their projects.
The telemovie – which has always had something of a female skew in terms of audience preference – has been a particularly happy hunting ground for TV series leading ladies, and when it came to leading ladies of the 1970s, they didn’t come any bigger than the stars of the smash hit show Charlie’s Angels. [For more on that classic TV series, click here for our review of Charlie’s Angels: Angels In Vegas] All of the Angels spread their proverbial wings in a variety of telemovies, and one of the most successful in this regard was unquestionably gorgeous brunette Jaclyn Smith, who would eventually go on to become something of a queen of the form. Before hugely popular telemovies and mini-series like Rage Of Angels (1983), Florence Nightingale (1985), Windmills Of The Gods (1988) and The Bourne Identity (1988), Smith made her first post-Charlie’s Angels stardom telemovie with 1977’s exemplary road movie/drama/thriller/actioner Escape From Bogen County.
With a rural, off-road brand of laconic cool not too dissimilar from that showcased in 1970s cult essentials like Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry (1974) and A Small Town In Texas (1976), Escape From Bogen County comes with a fair stash of behind-the-camera cache. The director was impressively hard-working TV vet Steven Hilliard Stern (who helmed essential TV movies with 1982’s Mazes And Monsters and 1984’s Draw!, along with interesting features like 1971’s B.S I Love You and 1979’s Running), but the real flash was in the writing department. Escape From Bogen County was the combined work of Christopher Knopf (who penned hours of episodic television, along with two masterful features in 1973’s Emperor Of The North and 1975’s Posse) and Judith Parker (screenwriter of 1978’s classic telemovie Are You In The House Alone? and the 1984 must-watch Valerie Bertinelli-starrer The Seduction Of Gina). This combination of a writer well in tune with action and America’s wide-open spaces and a scribe with a famously strong line in female characters resulted in something special with Escape From Bogen County.
As the telemovie opens, errant wife Maggie Bowman (Jaclyn Smith) is grabbed in Houston, Texas by a couple of thugs and promptly hauled back to Bogen County. Awaiting Maggie is her wealthy, powerful, sneering husband Ambler Bowman (Mitchell Ryan), who runs this patch of barren Texan dirt like his own fiefdom. Maggie is sick of Ambler catting around on her, humiliating her, and treating her like chattel, but that’s how Bogen County’s very nasty kingpin sees her. With Maggie back in Bogen County, Ambler’s cruel treatment of his beautiful wife deepens and widens.
But with the law (in the grimy personage of John Quade’s corrupt and inept sheriff) and the judiciary (via Pat Hingle’s deeply guilt-ridden county judge) in his very deep pockets, Ambler Bowman is untouchable, and there looks to be very little in the means of a way out for the cut-low Maggie. But when the resourceful, put-upon wife makes another desperate run for it, she finds important new allies in Abe Rand (Henry Gibson), a state prosecutor looking to bring her husband to justice; the county judge’s morally sound daughter (Julie Mannix); and outside lawman Jack Kern, a Texas Ranger too individualistic to be easily bought or influenced.
From its opening sequences to its plaintive, downbeat finale, Escape From Bogen County brims and bristles with style and local Texan flavour, and feels more like something Roger Corman’s New World Pictures would have put out than a network telemovie…but without the requisite lashings of nudity and violence, of course. First broadcast to strong ratings on October 7, 1977 on major US network CBS, Escape From Bogen County is especially potent today, dealing intelligently with concepts like coercive control, toxic masculinity and spousal abuse decades before they were even termed. This finely tailored telemovie is a powerful rebuke to cruel men with too much power and outsized, kingly aspirations, and a soaring tribute to iconoclastic outsiders and those willing to put it all on the line to do the right thing. It’s also rippingly, forcefully entertaining, and features a thrilling blades-whirring, tires-screeching helicopter-versus-car chase sequence the envy of any big screen feature.
The casting and performances are also sensational. While Texan-born Jaclyn Smith’s Texan accent flies curiously all over the place, this underrated actress is engaging, sympathetic and gutsy at every turn, drawing the audience in and holding them with her all the way with her deeply committed performance. Pushing hard against Smith as her vicious husband is the great Mitchell Ryan, an excellent character actor with many wonderfully full-bodied performances on his resume, often as duplicitous, snaky bad guys. Mitchell’s nasty work here even rivals the masterclass in blustery western machismo that he so unforgettably delivered in 1973’s extraordinary Electra Glide In Blue.
The supporting players are equally impressive, with John Quade (unforgettable in the Clint Eastwood hit Every Which Way But Loose) hilariously sleazy as a disgustingly disheveled sheriff; Douglas Dirkson a grimy delight as his equally sleazy lead deputy; the always rock-solid Pat Hingle touching in his dignified angst as an inherently decent man who knows he’s been bought; Henry Gibson (Nashville) a wryly funny force for good; Julie Mannix a surprisingly plucky tough girl; and comedian Fred Willard very amusing as one of Ambler’s hick lackies.
Unsurprisingly, late cult hero Michael Parks of course proves to be the major scene stealer in Escape From Bogen County. Something of a precursor to his much later Texas Ranger Earl McGraw – who featured in various films by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez – Parks’ Jack Kern is the very picture of Texas cool. A wannabe country singer (Parks is a noted musician himself and even gets to do a little singing here in one very memorable scene), Parks’ laconic, quietly sensitive, creatively inclined Jack Kern is the polar opposite to the monstrous Ambler Bowman, and he shares a sizzling though largely platonic chemistry with Jaclyn Smith. Throw in his alternately tilted-back and pitched-forward cowboy hat, dark sunglasses, and cool AF Texas Ranger uniform, and in Jack Kern you have a great 1970s neo-western hero. In a far cooler alternate universe, Texas Ranger Jack Kern would have been gifted his own spin-off TV series.
A telemovie that doesn’t really feel like a telemovie, Escape From Bogen County is a truly great example of the form, and a fascinating cult-movie-that-never-was desperately awaiting the proper reappraisal and celebration it deserves.
Availability: Escape From Bogen County is relatively easy to find online in a fairly clear, nice-sounding (if not exactly razor-sharp) presentation.
If you enjoyed this review, check out our other vintage telemovies The Death Squad, Hit Lady, Brian’s Song, The Defiant Ones, A Cry For Help, Trilogy Of Terror, Policewoman Centerfold, Smash-Up On Interstate 5, Something Evil, Savage, A Step Out Of Line, The Boy In The Plastic Bubble, The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission, A Very Brady Christmas, The Gladiator, Elvis, The Rat Pack, Silent Victory: The Kitty O’Neil Story, Terror Among Us, The Hanged Man, Hardcase, Charlie’s Angels: Angels In Vegas, Vanishing Point, To Heal A Nation, Fugitive Among Us, To Kill A Cop, Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, Police Story: A Chance To Live, Murder On Flight 502, Moon Of The Wolf, The Secret Night Caller, Cotton Candy, And The Band Played On, Gargoyles, Death Car On The Freeway, Short Walk To Daylight, Trapped, Hotline, Killdozer, The Jericho Mile, Mongo’s Back In Town and Tribes.
