Run! Bitch! Run! (2008) Starring Christina DeRosa, Cheryl Lyone & Peter Tahoe Directed by Joseph Guzman Written by Joseph Guzman & Robert James Hayes II

I am sort of in the middle. I feel as though I should really like Zombie a lot, and I do enjoy his work for the most part. But I’ve always felt there was something missing, that one magic ingredient that distinguished competent craft from genius. I know his heart is the right place, but somehow his work lacks real heart.

What the hell does this have to do with Run, Bitch, Run? Run, Bitch, Run, is the movie Rob Zombie was trying to make when he wrote and directed The Devil’s Rejects.

To me, as much fun as it was, The Devil's Rejects seemed to constantly be screaming, “Hey, look! We made a 70s drive-in movie! Isn’t this cool! Listen, we’re using Lynrd Skynrd! It’s the 70s! Get it? Look at my wife’s ass! Don‘t you wish you were me?”

Run, Bitch, Run on the other hand, is the real thing, a genuine rape/revenge movie harkening back to the past that doesn’t try to be anything else and succeeds superbly. Unless I missed a movie somewhere along the line, it’s the best rape/revenge movie since I Spit on Your Grave.

If you’ve never seen a rape/revenge movie (God bless you, you must have taste and morals) they all go like this: normal, innocent woman/women stumble across the path of sleazy, violent thugs, is/are raped and left for dead, then return to kill their attackers. A variation on the theme has the victims dying in the attack with family members carrying out the revenge.

The genre dates back at least as far as The Virgin Spring (1960), directed by, of all people, Ingmar Bergman. In The Virgin Spring, a young girl is raped and killed in the forest and her killers mistakenly take shelter afterwards at her parents’ house. Bad idea. The plot was lifted directly for Last House on the Left (1972), directed by a young Wes Craven. Craven dropped the arty symbolism in favor of gritty documentary style realism and in doing so, created an exploitation masterpiece.

Grindhouse roughies throughout the 1960s had already thoroughly explored the exploitation possibilities of rape or rape/revenge plots, so all Craven did was prove how lucrative the genre could be in a wider market. Rape/revenge movies gave producers the excuse to offer lots of skin, rough sex, and envelope pushing violence - and throughout the 70s these movies played at wholesome drive-ins all over America. Depicting a rape gave filmmakers license to present the sort of hateful anti-woman violence normally reserved for the darkest downtown wack-off theaters, and by making her attackers unredeemable goons, they could fill the third act with shotgun decapitations, limb severings, castrations, or any other gruesome retribution they could dream up.

The formula was so successful and safe that Hollywood even lifted it (Lipstick, Straw Dogs, Deliverance). The sturdiness of the genre also lent itself to feminist interpretations (Ms. .45) or arty pretension (Dogville).

Run, Bitch, Run follows the classic format and discards any distracting affectations. Catholic schoolgirls Catherine and Rebecca are traveling door to door, selling Bibles and wind up knocking on the wrong door. Evil pimp Lobo, perverted assistant pimp Clint, and psycho hooker Marla take their turns tormenting the girls, killing Rebecca and taking Catherine out to the woods to be raped and left for dead. Catherine staggers back to civilization, nude and bloody, collapsing in shock and lapsing into a coma. Catherine awakes, however, in a pissed off mood, slips into a nurses’ uniform, and hit’s the streets to wreak nasty vengeance on all exploiters of women. And a certain psycho hooker.

Every frame of Run, Bitch, Run oozes grime and sleaze. The producers must have driven all over Southern California until they found the perfect shithole, off the beaten path small town, and then spent another day finding every rundown, garbage strewn corner of the town for locations. Even the woods look dirty.

What really surprised me was the quality of the cast. Peter Tahoe as gang leader Lobo is both appealing and nasty while Ivet Corvea as Marla the man-hating psycho hooker is cover your nutsack scary. And Cheryl Lyone carries the difficult part of Catherine with a convincing transformation from innocent to avenger. Even the bit part players are polished professionals.

Run, Bitch, Run, proves that you can make a quality low budget exploitation movie that doesn’t play like a low budget exploitation movie. Film on location, hire good actors, and write a tight, focused script. Don’t wander all over the map trying to pay tribute to your favorite twelve movies or mix five different genres. If you are making a rape/revenge movie, make a good rape/revenge movie. Sneak in a subtle message or sly tribute here and there, but don’t let it distract from the job at hand.

Are you listening Rob?