The Last House on the Left meets Ms. 45 in this tawdry tale of murder, rape and revenge that sees Catholic schoolgirls Rebecca and Catherine (Christina DeRosa and Cheryl Lyone) witness the murder of a hooker by local pimp Lobo (Peter Tahoe). Taken captive by the killer and his skeezy low-life gang, the girls are subjected to a harrowing ordeal of physical abuse, before Catherine is shot in the head, and Lyone is raped and left for dead in the woods.
Waking in hospital, having been found wandering naked and delirious by a passerby, Lyone hops out of bed, borrows a tight fitting nurse's outfit, grabs herself a shotgun, and goes looking for revenge.
'Run! Bitch Run!' is a frustrating exercise in exploitation pastiche from first time director Joseph Guzman, a man so focused on scoring 'cool points' by taking his sensationalist content to the nth degree that he completely disregards realism, pacing, and originality in the process; as Quentin Tarantino has clearly illustrated with his last few films, achieving that authentic grind-house feel is a lot harder than one might imagine, and it takes a lot more than regurgitating themes pilfered from the classics and overwhelming your audience with excess to succeed.
I guess that Guzman's heart is in the right place, but his misguided attempt at 'out-sleazing' his contemporaries seriously backfires, turning his intended tribute into something closely resembling a parody. Despite (un)healthy doses of sex and violence, a suitably grainy look, and an undeniably cool (but rather over-used) soundtrack, 'Run! Bitch Run!' never ever feels like the 'Real McCoy', but rather comes across as a cartoonish mockery of all that we enjoy about the genre.
Another big problem is the imbalance of the whole project, with plenty of the film devoted to non-essential scenes that do nothing to propel the narrative forward, but not nearly enough time spared for the retribution aspect of the story, which for me is the most satisfying part of any rape/revenger. After much build up, the vengeance is short, but not all that sweet, with very little in the way of truly disturbing violence (more gore please!) and only chief bad-guy Lobo getting anything like the nasty treatment he deserves—a machete repeatedly shoved up his ass!
Guzman's next project is the niftily monickered 'Nude Nuns with Big Guns', but the director should be warned—coming up with a cool title is the easy part...
Waking in hospital, having been found wandering naked and delirious by a passerby, Lyone hops out of bed, borrows a tight fitting nurse's outfit, grabs herself a shotgun, and goes looking for revenge.
'Run! Bitch Run!' is a frustrating exercise in exploitation pastiche from first time director Joseph Guzman, a man so focused on scoring 'cool points' by taking his sensationalist content to the nth degree that he completely disregards realism, pacing, and originality in the process; as Quentin Tarantino has clearly illustrated with his last few films, achieving that authentic grind-house feel is a lot harder than one might imagine, and it takes a lot more than regurgitating themes pilfered from the classics and overwhelming your audience with excess to succeed.
I guess that Guzman's heart is in the right place, but his misguided attempt at 'out-sleazing' his contemporaries seriously backfires, turning his intended tribute into something closely resembling a parody. Despite (un)healthy doses of sex and violence, a suitably grainy look, and an undeniably cool (but rather over-used) soundtrack, 'Run! Bitch Run!' never ever feels like the 'Real McCoy', but rather comes across as a cartoonish mockery of all that we enjoy about the genre.
Another big problem is the imbalance of the whole project, with plenty of the film devoted to non-essential scenes that do nothing to propel the narrative forward, but not nearly enough time spared for the retribution aspect of the story, which for me is the most satisfying part of any rape/revenger. After much build up, the vengeance is short, but not all that sweet, with very little in the way of truly disturbing violence (more gore please!) and only chief bad-guy Lobo getting anything like the nasty treatment he deserves—a machete repeatedly shoved up his ass!
Guzman's next project is the niftily monickered 'Nude Nuns with Big Guns', but the director should be warned—coming up with a cool title is the easy part...