For almost four decades, Roger Corman's various production companies have functioned as a sort of minor league for filmmakers, a place for newcomers to get their start and for washed-up veterans to end their careers in employed obscurity. But some actors, including David Carradine, spend much of their careers acting in Corman's movies, some of which are cult classics (Death Race 2000, Boxcar Bertha) but most of which practically define the word adequate. Carradine stars in Macon County Jail as a stoic, hardened convict who helps a framed L.A. woman (a pre-comeback Ally Sheedy) escape from the titular establishment, a Southern hellhole manned by Sheriff Charles Napier and his rapist son. Macon County Jail is a remake of 1976's Jackson County Jail, which Corman also produced. The original film is now considered a minor cult classic, but its Southern-fried premise nevertheless seems a bit outdated, a relic of a time when drive-in movies were a viable market rather than a fondly regarded symbol of a simpler past. Macon County Jail gets off to a rough start, complete with a few badly dubbed scenes and an unconvincing prologue involving Sheedy's departure from L.A. But things pick up with the arrival of Carradine, who lends his weary convict a convincing air of tough, unsentimental resignation. The film never really transcends its exploitative origins, but it's far from the Rock 'n' Roll High School Forever-like travesty it could have been.