Run! Bitch Run! (2009)

When it was announced that Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez would be teaming up to produce an action packed double feature of mayhem, gore and sleaze, fanboys went apeshit, speculating who would do what, which director's segment would be better, and generally getting worked up into a Y-front moistening frenzy.  DVD distributors, seeing this golden opportunity, dug deep into the vaults and pulled out every possible forgotten piece of Z-grade trash ever committed to celluloid - and often having the most tenuous of connections to the "exploitation" genre - and marketed them as "GRINDHOUSE", the word often appearing in big, bold letters on the box, dwarfing the film's actual title.  You may not have noticed it, but for followers of the horror/cult/sleaze world, it was kind of a big deal.

It has now been nearly three years since the Tarantino/Rodriguez "collabo", and it's safe to say that "grindhouse" has "jumped the shark", has had all the life sucked out of its wheezing corpse.  So, you can imagine my surprise when this turned up on the shelves of the FBE last week.  A new (non-Nick Zedd) film still mining the exploitation genre...

Run! Bitch Run! is a low-budget exploitation film in the truest sense of the word.  Blood, boobs and bad acting are all on display here.  The story has two barely legal Catholic schoolgirls (names forgotten, doesn't matter) on the road hawking bibles for their school.  One is fun-loving and wants to forget their mission from god and go dance; the other is straight-laced and insists that they must sell all the bibles in order to get back to school sooner.  Well, after one pointless scene too many (in which that hideous kid that plays Michael Myers aged 8 in Rob Zombie's Halloween reboot shows up), our two Little Red Riding Hoods stumble across the domain of local pimp, murderer, and dope dealer (can you have one without the other two?) Lobo Loco, or Loco Lobo - whatever, CRAZY WOLF! - who has just finished shooting one of his charges in the neck after she tried to steal some of his powduh.  The girls are brought inside by LL's stuttering sidekick and the party-girl is promptly stripped and raped.  Then LL and the stutterer and another of LL's "employees" with overt lesbo-leanings take goodie two shoes into the woods and play a perverted game of hide and seek, in which she is allowed about 30 seconds to run (during which the nasty three shout the titular phrase on repeat), after which LL chases her down and, if caught, will rape her.  OF COURSE he catches her, proceeds to rape, then one-ups himself by having his way with her via the butt of his hunting knife, leaving her covered in blood, barely alive and numb to the prospect of living.  Like an affair in an elevator, wrong on a number of levels.  LL returns to the other two, starts getting frisky with the dyke and sends the stutterer to finish off our poor heroine.  Well, he gets to her and strips her, but upon seeing her rosary, becomes mesmerized, a time she uses to escape - but OH SHIT! she slips and falls down a hill, bludgeoning her head on a rock.  JAYZUS, someone remind this girl not to buy a lottery ticket.  Stutterer leaves her there, assuming she's dead, and returns to LL with the news that he killed her...Later, now, she wakes up, naked in a daze, and the "film"makers spend far too much time showing her stumbling around in the woods - seriously close to 5 minutes of fades and cuts of her blundering through the forest, nude, natch.  I guess she is found(?) by some good Samaritan, because next we see of her, she's in the hospital - oh WAIT! - there was a scene of a car approaching someone lying on the road - guess that was her.  So a kindly (and might I add buxom) young nurse cares for her, but she wakes up, steals a nurse's uni and a scalpel, and goes on the hunt.  Long story short - she tracks down Stutterer at a dive bar and blows him away while he's taking a shit; goes back to LL's to find the hooker and, after a brief struggle, stabs her through the hand(!) and then cuts off her head; then she confronts LL, who we see in flagrante delicto with THE NURSE! and our heroine takes an 18-inch machete and stabs LL right in the ol' asshole.  Repeatedly.  Then she walks out to her car and puts a gun to her head, pulls that trigger, and...scene!  PHEW!  Breathe...

While I was watching the film, I couldn't believe how bad it was.  Full disclosure: I did watch half of the thing on 2x fast forward, so I probably missed much of the director's intended subtlety.  Thing is, I keep thinking about it a day later, and I think that's because here is a rare example of an actual exploitation film.  This isn't a sheep in wolf's clothing Hollywood production, but an honest to goodness exploiter that wears its immense debts to such classics of the small but potent "raped female revenge" subgenre like I Spit On Your Grave (aka Day of the Woman), Last House on the Left (kinda), Ms .45, and Thriller: A Cruel Picture proudly on its sleeve.  However, mimicking those great pictures does not a good film make, and RBR is far from a good film.  It wasn't even particularly entertaining.  But I am happy to see that straight-up (not send-up) versions of these films are being made.  I probably wouldn't recommend this to anyone, but I can't say that I feel cheated for having watched it - it produced this post, didn't it?  The closest thing we have to "pornography" in the shop, and the only other person who I can see giving this a look is the east end's living legend (in his own mind) and fellow degenerate Daul Dozhke.  HEY YOU MANZZZZ!!!!!

In a way, the DVD is the perfect format for these types of films; in the 70s, the "grindhouse" cinemas that lined NYC's 42nd St (and more than a few on our very own Yonge St.) were the perfect venue for midnight wanderers, compulsive masturbators, casual whores, exploding hobos and lovers of the fiendish images projected onto the screen.  Today, those same social groups find themselves with nary a theatre to pass out/shit themselves/get drunk or stoned in after midnight, and are forced back into their cardboard boxes where they are conveniently greeted by a stack of DVDs bearing labels like Severin, Blue Underground, Code Red, and RBR's publisher, Vicious Circle Films.  It is the small screen that is the present day grindhouse, and as sad as it is that we can no longer enjoy these wonderful films in the stately (if shabby) movie houses of yore, it sure is nice to be able to find a seat that isn't lacquered in bodily fluids.  Someone else's, that is.