For the right price, he'll open a jailbird's cage.

James Woods plays "Fast-Walking" Miniver, a strikingly amoral prison guard, in this dark, hard-hitting comedy/drama. When not smoking dope or scaring up customers for Evie (Susan Tyrrell), the proprietor of the local house of prostitution, Fast-Walking tries to keep order in an Oregon prison. Fast-Walking is looking for a big payday so he can quit his job and get into something less stressful, and he thinks he may have found it when William Galliot (Robert Hooks), a black political activist who has just landed behind bars, offers him $50,000 to help him escape. Fast-Walking thinks this sounds fine with him, until he finds out that his cousin Wasco (Tim McIntire) is part of a plot to kill Galliot and wants his help. Fast-Walking's dilemma is intensified by his affair with Wasco's girlfriend, Moke (Kay Lenz). Fast-Walking was written, produced, and directed by James B. Harris, who as a producer helped bring several early Stanley Kubrick films to the screen.


Frank Miniver, aka Fast-Walking, is a corrupt but lovable Oregon State prison guard. Not the most obliging or honest of public servants, he smokes and peddles marijuana and compliments his meager salary by running prostitutes for Mexican laborers out of his cousin Evie's convenience store. At work he is in close contact with his other cousin Wasco who is incarcerated. Wasco is involved in vice operations within the prison and outside of it. He peddles women, narcotics and is looking to get into fraudulent banking operations. He bullies a competitor named Bullet into turning over his in-prison operations to Wasco. An accomplice to Wasco on the outside is an attractive young woman called Moke. She carries on his bidding which means even seducing Fast-Walking with sex. A black political prisoner named Galliot soon arrives at the prison and Wasco plots to have him killed in the racially tense environment. In a clandestine moment Fast-Walking and Galliot conspire to have Galliot sprung from prison. Galliot offers Fast-Walking 50,000 dollars for his efforts and gives him a secret key hidden in his belt buckle that is to a safety deposit box. Wasco eventually learns that little by little Fast-Walking is seducing Moke and that an intense sexual relationship has developed between Moke and 'Fast'. Wasco is jealous, being in prison, and not being in complete control of Moke. So he launches a last effort scheme to have Moke kill Galliot which completely surprises Fast-Walking. Moke shoots Galliot in the chest with high-powered rifle as he nearly gets away dressed as a prison guard.

Release Date: October 12, 1982


Distrib: Pickman Films