Run! Bitch Run! (2009)
Review by Jude Felton
The rape/revenge sub-genre is a strange beast, one that has always courted controversy. Movies such as I Spit on Your Grave (review), Ms.45 and Thriller: They Call Her One Eye (review), from the 70s and 80s, up to more recent efforts such as Torched or the big budget remake of The Last House on the Left (review). Are they purely exploitation? Or do they somehow bring a sense of empowerment with the inevitable revenge? Well, that’s not really for me to say, as I think each person takes away something different from each movie they watch. I’ll just try and stick to whether the movie is good or bad, or neither as the case may be.
All that rambling brings me to director Joseph Guzman’s addition to this controversial little corner of cinema. With a title like Run! Bitch Run! it will have already grabbed your attention, the title coming from one of the less pleasant scenes in the movie. That’s actually saying something because there aren’t too many scenes that you could tag the word pleasant onto, being as though this another nasty little movie brought to us by Vicious Circle Films. The same company that also gave us the charming Hanger (review).
Run! Bitch Run! doesn’t mess about either. Right off the bat they screen is awash with drugs, nudity, blood, nuns, more nudity and violence, as we are welcomed to the seedy whorehouse/drug den of the rather despicable Lobo. He’s a rather unsavory character who comes into play far more a little later on when Catherine (Cheryl Lyone) and Rebecca (Christina DeRosa), our main characters, happen across this pit of depravity.
Catherine and Rebecca are Catholic School girls who are traveling about trying to sell Bibles door to door. Catherine takes this all very seriously, whereas Rebecca is a more happy-go-lucky kind of character. After being directed towards the town of Moseley, by a charming local with a wicked turn of phrase, they find no joy in their attempts to make any sales. They even fall foul of a local boy (Daeg Faerch in a small cameo), who makes off with what little money they do have. However, things don’t really take a turn for the horrific until they visit Lobo’s residence. Before they even try to make a sale they witness a murder, and then things go downhill from there. The first sentence of this review tells you all you need to know on where this movie is going, and from here on in it isn’t easy viewing.
Run! Bitch Run! is for the most part a very good movie, it’s well made and well acted. The scenes that are supposed to shock you will no doubt do that, and when it comes to the revenge part I can see it being cheered on. On occasion I found the seemingly constant fading in and out of scenes a little distracting, and the middle section seemed a little drawn out for my liking. On top of this I found that a couple of the characters that pop up appeared to be there just to get killed. Of course,that’s nothing we haven’t seen before in a horror/exploitation movie.
The movie starts of in a very Tarantino-esque style, with the music being very reminiscent of some of his movies, in particular Planet Terror. The dialogue is crisp, and at times quite amusing. Then it changes into a sort of bastard hybrid of I Spit on Your Grave and Thriller: They Call Her One Eye, with the whole tone of the picture changing as you can well imagine. It’s a downbeat flick and rightly so. I would have like to have known how certain characters became so proficient with firearms, but then I can’t have everything can I?
Overall Run! Bitch Run! is a very decent modern day entry into this seedy little sub-genre. It isn’t something that hasn’t been done before, like in some of the movies I have previously mentioned, but it does appear to be made with a good deal of passion from those involved and it does show on the screen. Run! Bitch Run! is violent, nasty and will leave a bad taste in your mouth, and that is exactly what it is supposed to do. I enjoyed the movie, but I do appreciate that it won’t be too everybody’s taste.
Order it on Amazon
Watch the trailer (NSFW):
Popularity: 7% [?]
[ ‹‹ Edges of Darkness (2009) Gory Gear: Dance Party Massacre – Season Three ›› ]
2006 2007 2008 2009 awesome 80s bad movies Best of bloody book review boring brutal campy creepy disturbing Fatally Yours film festival fun ghosts gore haunted horror comedy Horror Literature humorous independent insanity interview low-budget madness monsters murders News psychological release info revenge sequel serial killer short film slasher supernatural unique vampires violent Women in Horror Worst of Zombies