Mean Dog Blues (1978)

Country and Western songs are forever bewailing the mishaps that befall well-intentioned salt-of-the-earth types, and no down-home predicament is more deserving of a redneck lament than that of Mean Dog Blues (1978). As a favor to an undeserving friend who ran down and injured a fair female child while driving through a rural burg, a hillbilly singer agrees to testify in court that he had been at the wheel. His good-hearted kindness results in being sentenced to five years hard labor at a prison farm. The work is bad enough, but play time can be murder. The foreman enjoys using prisoners as warm-up opponents for his pack of fighting dogs. Escape seems impossible, but it is the only hope for this particular sad refrain to have a happy ending.