Jailbait (1993) Trailer
The trailer for Jailbait (1993) an American Crime Thriller produced by Veteran B-Movie producer Donald P. Borchers and directed by Rafal Zielinski. 17 year old Kyle comes to the big city in search of her half-sister Merci. Merci is on the run after being used to set up a murder. The police and the killers both want her.
Watch the movie here:
• C. Thomas Howell & Renee Humphrey in "Jail...
This is an official "Donald P. Borchers Production", presented by my (now defunct) company, Planet Productions Corp.
I had Ed Wood on my mind when I pitched the logline, "A cop on the edge. A girl on the run," for this title. I quickly made a split rights deal, so that I could own this title. Then I needed a script!
Police, like doctors, are not supposed to let their personal feelings get involved with the people they serve. But sometimes there are human feelings so strong that they get in the way of professional rules and regulations.
"Jailbait" (1993) captures the grime, destitute, sleazy streets of Los Angeles perfectly, and you really get a sense of danger and uneasiness as the film goes along. It revolves around the conflict that Detective Lee Teffler (C. Thomas Howell) experiences as he becomes the Knight In Shining Armor to a 17 year old naïve small town Midwestern runaway, Kyle (Renee Humphrey).
Kyle crashes headlong into her first big city in a montage of hyperbolically “real” modern Hollywood witnessed from the window of her Greyhound, in search of her half-sister Merci (Krista Errickson), who Kyle believes to be an aspiring singer.
Merci, has become a Hollywood hooker, as well as a suspect in a murder case, and fugitive on the run after being used to set up a murder of one of her tricks at a seedy motel, a shock value scene in the investigation.
She was seen leaving prior to the shooting, as she was tipped off by a slug of a character, dressed Hawaiian style, who likes to dog for the police. The police and the killers both want her.
Detective Sgt. Teffler (C. Thomas Howell) is flashy and suave and all alone in the world, driven to work ever harder by a deafening loneliness and drifting through life with the careless abandon of a man in search of a purpose.
A suspect that Detective Teffler is investigating in the murder case is Teffler's childhood friend, Roman (David Labiosa). They used to raise hell on the streets together, but Roman has taken a different path from the one chosen by Teffler. Rather than becoming a policeman like Teffler, his boyhood friend has become a cold, creepy, ruthless and sadistic criminal who operates a white slavery ring.
Kyle acts tough on the outside, but she's scared on the inside. Having just arrived at L.A, the crazy metropolis takes hold and sends her spinning into a wasteland of unfettered vice, and she ends up on the streets in a seedy part of Los Angeles not knowing her beauty, and is a pimp magnet. Kyle being a very young girl runs into all kinds of creeps who want to use her and enslave her.
Until renegade cop Sgt. Teffler takes her in. Tracking down the main suspect, Merci, a common hooker who moonlights as a singer in a terrible grunge band, he finds Kyle, the hooker’s little sister who’s been sleeping in the hall of a sketchy apartment building for an undisclosed period of time.
Now he must protect her while trying to stop a white slavery ring from abducting more young girls. Teffler gets tangled with the young girl and the journey is filled with twists and turns with all kinds of shady characters in seedy locales. Since they can’t find her sister, Teffler makes Kyle stay at his house.
The plot thickens and Teffler gets himself involved with a bunch of hoods who are cold blooded and love to kill and torture.
The final showdown between the cop and the high profile pimp is gripping.
Soundtrack Credits:
Fly Down Annie - Performed by Erin Connelly, Dan Hesse, Laura Laird and Blair Banning
Underground L.A. - by Christopher Tyng
Wishin' - Performed by Bill Bergman and John Paruolo
Sinsation Station - Performed by Jonathan Elias, Alex Lasarenko
“I’ve made twenty-one films in my career so far, and I think so highly of this one, I’ve actually put my name on it three times,” says a clearly irritated Donald P. Borchers in a telephone call to the MPAA (which you can hear in full on YouTube). The reason for his chagrin was down to their concerns over the content of his 1993 production, JAILBAIT, and its depiction of teenage girls resorting to sex to survive on the seedy streets of L.A. The board felt that two specific scenes that lingered on sexual acts was justification for a box-office crippling NC-17 rating, but Borchers was seething with anger. “There are major studio films that glamourize the plight of the girl who runs away to Hollywood. You know, [in my film] she doesn’t wake up the middle of Richard Gere’s suite. She wakes up with a guy taking a piss next to her.”
You can listen.to Borchers' telephone call with the MPAA here:
• Donald P. Borchers' telephone calls with t...