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 1981 prison drama Inmates: A Love Story, starring Perry King, Kate Jackson, Tony Curtis, Paul Koslo and Shirley Jones.
Despite its obvious restrictions with regards to violence, sex and nudity, network television of the 1970s and 1980s was regardless never afraid to go behind the bars of the tough, cruel and singularly sadistic world of the penal system. Linda Blair was the subject of horrific abuse whilst in juvenile detention in the notorious 1974 telemovie Born Innocent; Alan Alda witnessed a litany of horrors in the 1972 small screen Truman Capote adaptation The Glass House; Deborah Raffin endured a southern work farm in 1976’s Nightmare In Badham County; Charlie’s Angels pulled a softened women-in-prison trip in one memorable episode; and even the team from 21 Jump Street went undercover in a youth detention centre for one of its best instalments. And in Australia, of course, there was Prisoner, the famous long-running network drama set inside the walls of a women’s prison.
One of the most unusual US prison-set telemovies of the 1970s and 1980s was the now largely forgotten 1981 drama Inmates: A Love Story. Before the title gets you excited about a potential, forgotten boundary-breaking small screen gay-and-or-lesbian behind-bars romance, first things first – this telemovie is set in, yes, a prison that houses both men and women, and also allows them to fraternise and associate with few restrictions. As is spelled out at the beginning of the film, male and female prisoners can mix freely, and even kiss, though sexual relations – and obviously all forms of sexual harassment and sexual assault – are strictly verboten. This may seem outlandish, but there are actually a few prisons in various parts of the world that have used this operating model.
Inmates: A Love Story is directed by noted British cinematographer Guy Green, who shot the likes of David Lean’s Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948), and later directed impressive features including A Patch Of Blue (1965), A Walk In The Spring Rain (1970) and Luther (1974). In the final period of his long career, Green focused exclusively on telemovies with titles like 1979’s Jennifer: A Woman’s Story and 1981’s Isabel’s Choice. This is where Inmates: A Love Story fits in, and Green is given a lot to work with here, as the script by TV veteran James G. Hirsch and one-and-done scribe Delia Jordan bubbles over with incident, unusual characters and compelling drama.
The principal lead here is Perry King, an actor with a wildly diverse career. While he has featured in bona fide cult classics like The Lords Of Flatbush (1974), Bad (1977) and Class Of 1984 (1982) – along with lurid shockers like The Possession Of Joel Delaney (1972), Mandingo (1975) and Lipstick (1976) – the talented and engaging Perry King has never really been considered an actual “cult star”, perhaps because of his traditional good looks and later fondness for fairly bland, middle-of-the-road work in standard episodic TV and telemovies; key example: 1986’s Stranded, in which he is exactly that on a desert island with Loni Anderson. Inmates: A Love Story is very much a part of the telemovie stream of King’s career, but it’s a cut above much of his other small screen work.
King’s co-lead in Inmates: A Love Story is Kate Jackson, who was in the middle of some interesting work between the end of her hit iconic TV series Charlie’s Angels and the beginning of her second major career phase with the popular show Scarecrow And Mrs. King. Alongside the odd satirical 1980 comedy Dirty Tricks and the somewhat controversial 1982 gay-themed drama Making Love, Inmates: A Love Story was a clear effort from Jackson to spread her wings and feature in projects far removed from the glamour and case-of-the-week formula of Charlie’s Angels. Tough, terse and emotionally closed-off, Kate Jackson is a considerably different proposition here, and she gives a strong, nicely nuanced performance.
In Inmates: A Love Story, Perry King is Roy Matson, a happily married accountant charged and convicted of various forms of financial malfeasance. Because of the non-violent, white-collar nature of his crime, Roy is sent to a low-security prison running an experimental programme where male and female prisoners bunk separately but are otherwise allowed to fraternise freely. Once inside, Roy is promptly tapped by the prison’s sweet-seeming but steely warden, E.F Crown (The Partridge Family’s Shirley Jones is surprisingly effective), to cook the institution’s own books, while also getting on the wrong side of tough guy Virgil (wild-haired character actor fave Paul Koslo). A couple of lesbians also hit Roy up as a possible sperm donor, but he finds a decent ally in Flanagan (an endearing, scenery-chewing Tony Curtis), a braggart mobster with questionable credentials.
Roy’s main connection in the co-ed prison, however, eventually comes to be Jane Mount (Kate Jackson), a tough professional thief with leadership qualities who instead chooses to remain aloof and at an emotional distance from her fellow inmates. Supremely damaged by life, and with an estranged daughter on the outside, Jane has little interest in dapper, buttoned-down Roy, but the ice between the pair eventually thaws, and a fraught, tentative romance develops, even while outside forces threaten to rip them apart.
Though it certainly pulls its punches in terms of violence and the usual in-prison nastiness, Inmates: A Love Story (which was first broadcast just before Valentine’s Day on February 13, 1981 on major network ABC) still manages more than a few emotional prods and pokes at the audience. Roy certainly comes under threat, and Jane falls afoul of some of the prison’s heavies too, leading to some major dramatic moments that leave a definite mark on the viewer. King and Jackson give impressive performances as the mismatched lovers, and they share a compelling chemistry that really drives the narrative forward. A peculiar entry in the unlikely prison telemovie sub-genre, Inmates: A Love Story is an enjoyably terse romance between two very different people.
Availability: Inmates: A Love Story is easy to find online, but it’s unfortunately in pretty average condition.
If you enjoyed this review, check out our other vintage telemovies The Shadow Riders, CHiPs: Roller Disco, Dawn: Portrait Of A Teenage Runaway, Young Love, First Love, Escape From Bogen County, 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.
