Run! Bitch Run!

Unnecessary homage.

It's no secret the exploitation genre is a collection of great ideas reworked over and over, and it's for that reason we don't usually review exploitation films from decades later than the 90's, where the last bullets of the genre were shot.Today's entry is the directorial debut of Joseph Guzman, a man who is better known for his second film Nude Nuns With Big Guns which we reviewed some years ago. 

 

Run! Bitch Run! is an attempt to bring back the rape & revenge sub genre which is perhaps the most gruesome film style you can watch even today. In the 70's things were a lot looser in censorship, and creativity, specially in the sexploitation field, was obsessed with displaying the most violent & sleazy side of mankind. The gore genre is nothing compared to movies like I Spit On Your Grave, The Last House On The Left, Thriller: A Cruel Picture, Ms. 45 and a long list of flicks considered as cult items today. Fortunately, for the untrained eye, Run! Bitch Run! it's a lot lighter than some of the previously mentioned films, and it's nowhere near the quality and originality the earlier had. 

 

Good ol' chatolic girls.

Good 0l' pervs.

Speaking of homage, Guzman is neither Quentin Tarantino, nor Robert Rodriguez, so instead of delivering an hour and half of pure tribute vibes, we get the exact opposite: a film that seems forced all the time. Even the great funky guitars from the music score sound as if they were pushed way too far to make us believe this wasn't a 2009 film, but one from the 70's. The whole overall feeling you get from watching this film is that making a B-movie/exploitation film isn't as easy as people usually think, and Guzman cleary took everything for granted when filming this forgettable homage attempt.

 

Anyway, let's set critics aside (remember, you watch it, you decide whether it's good or bad, our opinion is just that, a mere opinion in a world of Mrs know it all) and let's get down to business.

Catholic & loaded!

Get a load of this!

So, Run! Bitch Run! is about two Catholic girls (Cheryl Lyone as Catherine, and Christina Derosa as Rebecca) that sell Bibles  for a living. Predictably enough, they knock on the wrong door and get brought into a world of drugs, violence and prostitution. Soon, it becomes apparent that they probably will not survive, at least in one piece.

The film opens up with three couples fucking, two people taking bong hits and a murder scene. So the first five minutes really set the overall tone for the rest of the film.

The word that describes this film is either "nudity" or "exploitation" because it is both of these and nothing more. Within ten minutes, we see a fully nude Catholic girl, some naked nuns, gratuitous nudity on characters who do not even factor into the plot, and more. The nudity pretty much never stops, and considering this is a sexploitation flick where nudity & sex are supposed to play a key role in the plot, this simply doesn't happen. Everything is gratuitous and just because. Disappointing, cause this can mislead exploitation newcomers into thinking this is what this genre is all about, but believe you me, there's more than meets the eye!

 

A very christian girl.

 

Is that cum on her face?

This is a low budget picture, with the expected video and sound. The closest to any stars this picture has is the kid from Rob Zombie's "Halloween". The budget is not the big problem, though -- it is the plot. We have about 80% "I Spit on Your Grave" (without the graphic content that made this film so disgustingly famous) and 20% "Last House on the Left". There is practically nothing original about this film, aside from maybe the use of a plunger for masturbating.

The acting is below average as expected in the genre. Every actress with starring roles here, never worked in the film industry again and maybe the only thing that made this film known to a certain extent, it's the good publicity it had promising a return to the daring filming of the 70's. 

Poor little girl...

...helpless in the woods.

What makes this film a total meh, is the fact that the revenge sub plot is so brief, that you don't really care about what's happening to our lead heroine anymore. The film has little to no graphic violence, and the whole set of characters offered is one dimensional and due to budget issues (I guess?), they never get any chance for developing their personalities or sort of, explain why they do what they do. 

 

Again, this genre is usually unfairly bashed, but Run! Bitch Run! clearly deserves to be considered an insult to a genre with millions of followers around the world. Movies are not made just because, we expect a story to be told, appealing, or at least,  characters we learn to care about throughout the film's running time. Nothing like that happens here, so if you skip it, you're not missing much. 

 

Sleeping slutty beauty.

C'mon! just one more anal!

Positively, for the film maker, his skills were vastly improved in 2010 with the one film I'd recommend from him: Nude Nuns With Big Guns. Another, rape & revenge film, only this time, nothing was taken for granted and every mistake made in Run! Bitch Run! was properly dealt with in order to deliver a movie that people can actually care about watching. 

Overall, a film that is neither for connoisseurs of the genre nor for newbies, yet this film could be watched by untrained eyes as the rape part is treated very lightly compared to other films from the past, and maybe that's a good thing because rape is just too much. The T & A show is not that good either, so if you've really watched every good exploitation film there is, you may want to try this just for the fun of it. 

Here's the movie trailer:

Dear God No!!!

Bikers are back!

Dear God No! takes place over 24 hours with the nastiest biker gang in cinematic history. We begin with their breakfast at a drive-in (clever, huh?) which consists of mushrooms, cocaine, beer, pot and nun necrophilia. Yep, it's that kind of movie. We follow these scumbags on an adventure that just turns out to be one really bad day for them. Nothing is going right. Strip club shoot em' ups, cops, narcs, mad science, crazy women and Bigfoot! These Georgia boys pride themselves in being the most offensive killers in Dixie and pretty much stay true to their nature despite the supernatural shenanigans thrown their way.

Hell yeah!

The best way to describe this minor masterpiece is imagine if Herschell Gordon Lewis, Russ Meyer and John Waters somehow tricked Roger Corman into bank rolling a collaborative picture. Than said picture was deemed so gory, nasty and offensive that it sat on a shelf collecting dust for 40 years. If the mentioned directors were also rednecks, that would be this film.

Intestines get yanked out, heads constantly lobbed off, etc. It's done with real effects that aren't the best but they aren't cheesy either. They fit the time period of this film. There are some great laugh out loud moments. Most are supplied by the absurdity of the building conflicts. Actor Paul McComiskey is a real stand out as a lecherous old scientist having the worst day of his life. His interactions with the bikers are priceless and provide some of the most memorable lines in the film. 

Killer sluts!

But lead actor Jett Bryant steals this show. He is the essence of cool and you end up rooting for this killer because he is so damn scary cool. He twirls a gun like the greatest western antiheroes from Italy, slaps people around like Dirty Harry and delivers one liners like James Bond. There really isn't anyone other than Bigfoot to identify with because everyone in this thing is evil so I latched on to him. 

That's what I'm talking about.

The Southern locations and authentic score really add some great tension. If you forgot about Deliverance, Dear God No! is sure to remind you that below the Mason Dixon line life is cheap. This movie has an enormous body count. Both with clothes and without. It's packed full of nudity old school grindhouse style. This does it right. Exploitation shouldn't be glossy and stylized. It should ooze creepy and be loads of fun. Dear God No! is a welcome break from the millions of ghost or serial killer torture films flooding cable and DVD shelves. Young fanboys raised on Resident Evil won't get it. If your over 30 than this is the one you have been waiting for since Evil Dead 2. When it comes to the new crop of faux grindhouse (Death Proof, Planet Terror, Hobo With A Shotgun, etc.) this very original film sets the bar high. Recommended. 

Boobs with guns!

Boobs!

Why did it take this long for someone to make a good grindhouse movie? Every single one that has been released over the last couple of years suffers from the same problems of being way to slick to be an accurate representation of grindhouse. DEAR GOD NO! proves you don't need a big budget, cgi, name actors and a giant technical crew to make a modern classic grindhouse film. You just need an understanding of why people cherish grindhouse cinema. I'm happy to report every review on IMDb is accurate. This is the love letter to grindhouse I thought Tarrantino and Rodriquez could deliver but didn't. If DEAR GOD NO! had come out before their GRINDHOUSE double feature we may of been looking at a full blown revival instead of the periodic grindhouse-esque films we get like Machete & HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN. I can not stress enough how authentic and original this film is. Instead of just lifting complete plots it takes hundreds of previous elements and creates something refreshingly new. 

Fire!

Kill'em good Nixon.

Yes, they will murder & rape pregnant gals!

This is not a glossy, over-stylized grindhouse homage like "Hobo With A Shotgun", "Machete", or "Planet Terror". This is the closest thing to an actual Grindhouse film made in this century... Though perhaps it is a little more extreme.

It is shot on 16mm film, there are 31 breasts, all of the effects are practical (i.e. no CGI), and it is fun as hell.

This flick definitely isn't for everybody (there is some extreme stuff in here), but for fans of authentic grindhouse features, bigfoot, bikers, sexploitation, gore, and drug movies; "Dear God No!" is the way to go. 

Here's the amazing movie trailer:

Nude Nuns with Big Guns

Boobs, Blood and Nuns!

Hello there fellow SPAM Alternative avid readers, today I'm pleased to say that the exploitation genre has been out for some fresh air, and ever since Quentin Tarantino & Robert Rodríguez released their Grindhouse double feature (Death Proof & Planet Terror) independent film makers are craving for bringing back the sleazy 70's spirit the best they can, so from today on we will check some interesting 21st century approaches at the genre we love so much: exploitation! 

Enter, Nude Nuns with Big Guns! I mean, the title tells all!

My kind of nurse.

It's been a while since I could forgo the details of a film's plot and just reiterate the title for reference. But that is exactly the shortcut I could take with today's entry Nude Nuns with Big Guns. The film, as directed by Joseph Guzman is about, well, nude nuns with big guns. More specifically, it follows Sister Sarah (Asun Ortega) who after becoming a nun is drugged and forced into a world of crime by the corrupt priests and padres of the clergy (mmm, where have I heard this story before?)

This is how you trasform a young nun into a slut.

But after a near fatal encounter, Sister Sarah receives a message from God, one that tells her to kill every last one of those that exploit drugs, the church or any of the innocent workers of the clergy. Lucky for us, a chance encounter leaves Sister Sarah with a big gun, one big enough to help her do God's work in the most violent and exploitive ways possible. As Sarah sets off to religiously 'off' anyone that looks at her funny, the church hires a bike gang called 'Los Muertos' to track down Sister Sarah and stop her before she brings down the entire drug running operation.

The titty Flicker!

Nude Nuns with Big Guns is undeniably 70's sexploitation brought to us with 2010 orchestrated violence. There are equal parts nudity and violence and there is plenty of each to keep audiences grinning from ear to ear with each new character introduction. Just about every female character but one bares her breasts for the film and I, for one, am a better man because of it. Sister Sarah in particular has no qualms about doing scenes involving full nudity between all her gunslinging and brain blasting. Priests, nuns, bikers, lesbians…no one is safe once this sister straps herself with a sizeable firearm.

There is a semblance of a story in Nude Nuns with Big Guns, but the plot goes in usual directions ensuring that what it lacks in originality as a revenge flick it makes back up in sheer audacious and gratuitous nudity and violence.

Nun Treesome.

Before a good old christian fuck, breakfast is an important meal to start the nuns' day.

Asun Ortega is competent (and evidently confident) in the lead role and everyone involved in the production hams up their part with just enough cheese and lack of seriousness that the film actually works as a watchable piece of exploitation.

Director Joseph Guzman takes a major step forward from his 2009 debut in Run! Bitch Run! While both Run and Nuns are of the same genre that Robert Rodriguez succesfuly tried to capture with 2010's Machete, Guzman has shown a maturity with both the camera and with the promotion of lurid subject matters, so if you consider yourself a connoisseur of the exploitation genre, I guarantee you will find plenty of nostalgia here, at least enough nostalgia to make you say "wow, this movie looks and feels like the real thing". Joseph Guzmán didn't waste any of his exploitation knowledge, in fact I think he took the best elements of his personal favorite genre flicks and mixed them  with the cult cinema clichés we never get tired of. 

Nudity is what drives this movie. Every actress has at least one or two scenes where their boobs are at display for (of course) no reason at all. We do get to see some bush too, you see, sister Sarah is not afraid of anything as God is on her side and by her side all along. 
 

Lesbian Nun Killing Action!

Lesbian Nun Nude Redemption.

Overall, Nude Nuns with Big Guns isn't for everyone, but it is for everyone that reads the title of the film before putting it into the DVD player or downloading through VOD. It is guaranteed to entertain while titillating and it proves that exploitation films are alive and can work given the right exposure and attention. However, the film doesn't an original plot if that's what you're looking for. Instead, the film does deliver plenty of fun paying a fair homage to the 70's exploitation genre, I mean, just think of it, a raped, drugged woman left for dead looking for revenge, doesn't that remind you of many 70's exploitation films?

If classic exploitation is your thing, you have probably already seen this film, and if you haven't now it's the time as the film is fully available on VOD and good old DVD and full HD Blu Ray for your viewing pleasure.

Next entries will take us deep into "Father's Day" & "Dear God No!" probably the 2 most important releases that certify the exploitation genre is back from the grave.

Here's the movie trailer: