Vitals

Tommy Lee Jones as Coley Blake, laconic career criminal

Southwestern United States, Summer 1976

Film: Jackson County Jail
Release Date: April 11, 1976
Director: Michael Miller
Costume Designer: Cornelia McNamara

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

The grindhouse cult classic Jackson County Jail was released fifty years ago today, starring Tommy Lee Jones, Yvette Mimieux, and the late Robert Carradine, who died earlier this year at age 71. While hardly the best known of any of its stars’ filmographies, Jackson County Jail developed a cult following in the decades since its 1976 release—including by director Quentin Tarantino, who screened it for his inaugural film festival in Austin.

The movie follows advertising executive Dinah Hunter (Mimieux), driving across the country to take a new job in New York after leaving her deadbeat husband back in L.A. Her troubles begin early after the hitchhiking hustler Bobby Ray (Carradine) and his pregnant, pill-popping girlfriend Lola (Nancy Noble) steal her AMC Pacer at gunpoint, leaving her stranded in the titular Jackson County—likely somewhere in the southwest, between Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and Utah.

She seeks help from local bartender Dan Oldum (Britt Leach), but this also demolishes her luck as the creepy taxidermist Dan tries to sexually assault her… resulting in her arrest when a good ol’ boy deputy happens into the bar. Dinah is placed into a cell opposite to the taciturn Texan crook Coley Blake (Jones), who recently capped his extensive rap sheet by reportedly killing a man who caught him stealing melons.

After a crude, disturbed deputy Hobie (Fredric Cook) assaults her in her cell, Dinah reaches her breaking point and beats the man to death. Realizing the extent of the trouble this would get her into, Coley intervenes (“you can quit hittin’ him, he’s done”) and unlocks their cells to lam out together.

Coley: Drop out, go under, no way they’ll never find you.
Dinah: I’ll be hunted the rest of my life!
Coley: By who? Where you been livin’, on Mars? There’s half a million killers walkin’ loose around the country, the police don’t have any time to look for ’em. You drop out and go under, and you’ll be alright.
Dinah: Is that what you’re gonna do? Go under?
Coley: I been under all my life.

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What’d He Wear?

Despite the likely heat of a southwest summer, Coley is pulled into the Jackson County lockup sporting a well-worn brown leather jacket. Aged, weathered, and broken in to a soft patina, the jacket features the same cropped waist-length cut and asymmetrical front zip of a classic Schott-style motorcycle jacket, but with considerably simplified details with only a slanted jetted pocket visible over the left chest.

The action is set over the 4th of July weekend, culminating with Coley and Dinah chased through the fictional small town of Fallsburg during an Independence Day parade aligning with the American bicentennial celebration. Especially once he sheds his jacket, Coley embodies all-American imagery in his muted red shirt, blue jeans, and white socks and white-detailed shoes.

Coley’s “red” shirt is a long-sleeved henley made from a faded coral cotton, styled with a long satin-finished placket that closes the top of the shirt with three white plastic two-hole buttons.

Coley’s light-blue denim jeans were likely de-baged by the costume department, but the curved shape of the two front pockets and hint of a “lazy S” stitch across the two back pockets suggest zip-fly Lee 101 Rider jeans, worn without a belt through the loops.

Coley wears canvas high-top basketball shoes with white rubber outsoles and toe-caps in a style popularized by (but not exclusive to) Converse Chuck Taylor All-Stars and P.F. Flyers, though Tommy Lee Jones appears to be wearing neither of these as his screen-worn sneakers lack both models’ signature ankle badging. Coley’s shoes have either black or dark-blue cotton canvas uppers with contrasting flat white woven laces pulled through five or six sets of eyelets. He also wears plain white ribbed cotton or cotton-blend tube socks.

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The Truck

Coley steals a blue 1972 Chevrolet C-20 Fleetside pickup truck from the county jail, detailed with off-center white and red racing stripes across the top of the cab and hood to reinforce the American iconography. Both he and Dinah demonstrate some talent behind the wheel, pushing what sounds like a V8 under the hood.

Chevy and GMC introduced the medium-duty C/K trucks for the 1960 model year. 1972 was the last year of the “Action Line” second generation that began in ’67. The variety and displacement of available engines grew over this period, with 1972 C/K trucks offering a pair of inline-six engines, two small-block V8s, and a “Turbo-Jet 400” big-block V8 that actually measured 402 cubic inches and generated 300 horsepower.

Continuing the same drop-center ladder frame as the original C/K trucks, “Action Line” pickup trucks were offered in a trio of wheelbases: a short-box 115-inch wheelbase, long-box 127-inch wheelbase, and extended 133-inch wheelbase for the rear-fendered Stepside and Longhorn pickups. The fenderless C-20 Fleetside in Jackson County Jail is built on a 127-inch wheelbase with a 98″ bed, designated as the CS/CE20934 series.

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The Gun

As Coley leads Dinah on their escape from the Jackson County Jail, he breaks into the sheriff’s gun cabinet to steal the blued Colt Python revolver that he wields throughout their subsequent spree. This premium American double-action revolver was introduced in 1955, initially only with the full six-inch barrel seen on Coley’s Python until 2.5″, 4″, and 8″ offerings were added to the lineup over its original 65-year manufacturing timeline.

Built on Colt’s large I-frame, the Python’s distinctive appearance includes a full barrel underlug and ventilated upper rib, the latter originally suggested by Colt factory superintendent Al Gunther. This revolver has maintained a strong reputation for their accuracy, reliability, and smooth trigger pull.

As suggested by its appearance in the Jackson County sheriff’s office on screen, the Colt Python was quickly adopted by American law enforcement agencies across the latter half of the 20th century until higher-capacity semi-automatic pistols generally eclipsed revolvers for police usage.

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What to Imbibe

Dinah finds a pint of Southern Comfort that Coley drinks straight from the bottle before Dinah herself has a shot. Though some people (including me in high school) have erroneously described SoCo as “whiskey”, it’s actually a whiskey-based liqueur with fruit and spice accents.

The recipe dates to 1874, when the young Irish-American bartender Martin Wilkes Heron developed a concoction of bourbon, vanilla, lemon, cinnamon, cloves, cherries, and oranges that he initially called “Cuffs and Buttons” until he moved to Memphis, where he patented and bottled it under its current name: Southern Comfort.

This bucolic branding was reinforced by the monochromatic rendering of Alfred Waud’s A Home on the Mississippi added to the label when production resumed after Prohibition, and it remained there until 2010 when the plantation was swapped out for a more generic appearance. By this point, more than just the label had changed, as the amount of whiskey in its formula had declined sometime during the mid-20th century before it was purchased by Brown-Forman in 1979.

Through Brown-Forman’s ownership, the whiskey content in Southern Comfort had declined to a mere flavorant against the neutral rectified spirit at its base. Upon the brand’s acquisition by Sazerac Company in 2016, whiskey was restored as Southern Comfort’s base spirit—bringing it closer to Heron’s original product.

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How to Get the Look

At the wheel of a red and white-striped blue Chevy truck in his leather jacket and faded henley with a classic Colt revolver in his jeans, Coley Blake builds a grimy red-white-and-blue iconography that reframes him as a violent distortion of the American archetype.

• Dark-brown leather simplified motorcycle jacket with asymmetrical front zip and slanted chest pocket
• Faded coral cotton long-sleeved henley with three-button satin-finished top placket
• Light-blue denim jeans with five-pocket layout, belt loops, and zip fly
• Black canvas high-top basketball shoes with white rubber toe-caps and outsoles and flat white woven laces
• White ribbed cotton tube socks

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Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie. It ends with Tommy Lee Jones running into a public parade to escape the clutches of law enforcement, but—unlike Jones’ own Deputy U.S. Marshal Gerard two decades later in The Fugitive, the Fallsburg cops fire wantonly at the retreating Coley, despite the scores of 4th of July revelers around him.

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The Quote

I was born dead.