Run If You Can

i have always enjoyed this little movie since i first rented it over a decade ago. it is not just standard d.t.v. dreck, it has a few things to recommend it. there are two fine performances by martin landau and jerry van dyke, they do not just phone it in, especially not landau. the twist about how it may be possible for the young woman to be picking up the murder feeds is interesting. and the murders themselves are sufficiently sleazy to satisfy. the director is a woman who produced "song of norway" one of the greatest bad musicals of all time, and she keeps things hopping along. rent the tape, grab some munchies, and it will be a fun hour and a half if you look at it as the quirky little flick that it is.

Kim Page is a college student whose house sitting for one of her parent's friends, and this house is a wealthy looking villa. Watching TV one-night the picture changes to a couple having sex. Then suddenly the man suffocates the lady and wraps her up in a plastic bag. Then it goes back to old movie she was watching. Thinking nothing much of it at first, this changes when it seems to happen every night with a different lady being killed. Kim starts to believe she's going crazy, because no one else seems to get the signal. However at the same time there is a killer within the area who is disposing of his victims the same way.

This low-budget late 80s psychotic serial killer feature is an unfairly forgotten staple (nice video artwork too), as the concept driving it is an innovative, offbeat one and the lead actress Yvette Nipar chips in with a strong, capable performance. It's on the cheap and that shows up quite noticeably, in somewhat of a made for TV feel. However this one can be quite sleazy and nasty, although never too graphic. Some sequences (namely the transmission scenes) do have a raw, unnerving edge to them and that relies heavily on the film's one-note novelty. The way the deaths are staged, is that you catch a glimpse on the TV and that's it. You begin to share the protagonist's confusion and frustration… in what she is seeing and trying to convince those around what she saw.

It's a real slow build-up, constructing the situation (bringing in characters), setting the tone and finally making it a real dangerous predicament. At times repetitive, but only within the last half-hour does the story really become threatening and suspenseful when the killer targets our heroine. He's quite secondary in the first half. This little cat and mouse game in the villa (which really does bestow atmosphere) is effectively done with its rousing thrills and the final few frames is perfectly realised with a neat closing. The script doesn't bother much with selling red herrings, they are there but it's foreseeable and by the end we are kept pretty much in the dark with even more questions.

The cast also features the likes of Martin Landau and Jerry Van Dyke as the detectives on the case; both committing themselves to the roles fully and the chemistry between the two were always amusingly hearty --- where the humour comes off. The rest of the performances feel amateurish, but never harmful. Director Virginia L Stone's low-scale direction is a confident display (although there's constant use of wide shots), where her focus is on the performances and developing the plot with well timed jolts. The score is overstated, but during the darker/tension laced moments it remained unsettling.

"Run if you Can" wasn't what I was expecting, but it turned out to be interesting little low-rent b-grade straight-to-video thriller.

This was pretty disappointing. The cover on the video looks cool, but the movie itself is standard, sleazy, and pretty dull, dealing with a sicko psycho killer killing nude women in LA and somehow their deaths are broadcast on television. Soon, he begins to terrorize a young girl named Kim, and well, you can pretty much figure out how things will end up. Predictable, sometimes boring, not really recommended. Lots of nudity. However, there is one scene near the climax that made me jump out of my socks ("I'm gonna kill you NOW!"). If you have the spare 2 bucks, rent it some night, just don't expect anything special.

Law student Kim (Yvette Nipar) is house sitting alone in a mansion in Beverly Hills. Things get screwy when the satellite dish starts picking up what appear to be snuff films. They appear to be the work of a serial killer imaginatively labeled "The Lady Killer" by the press. Things get worse when Kim sees her best friend killed during a transmission and two cops (Martin Landau and Jerry Van Dyke!) are assigned to the case. This is pretty routine stuff from director/co-writer Virginia L. Stone, who handles it all very blandly. In fact the scariest thing about the film is that the house has carpeting in the kitchen. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the movie is that Landau and Van Dyke have substantial roles and aren't pulling a Cameron Mitchell. Every male character outside of the cops is a red herring, but when the killer is finally revealed I had to go back and find the scene where they are introduced. There is also a twist at the end that was probably the whole impetus for the film being made.

I wonder if Andrew L. Stone also worked on this film along with his wife (this film's director) and his son (the composer) The husband and wife Stone team made a series of tough crime films for many years until his interest in Music wiped out his career.

Some of the energy of those films still exists in this--made for video thriller that does have some thrills.

There is relatively little violence but a fair amount of topless 80's style women. That is exploitative but otherwise this film builds and the final darkened house chase scene with masked killer is creepy and effective. Script has some good twists but solid production and very effective music by (the always good) Christopher L. Stone helps greatly.

Lamest aspect of the film is the title which has very little to do with the movie, something dealing with the subject of seeing murders on your TV and not knowing it would be better.

Landau, and the until recently still busy leading lady, give good performances. Landau especially who, during this straight to video period of his career, usually gave overblown performances in each progressively bad film, but he's very good here and his cop partner Van Dyke gives a good "side kick" performance.

Again the final 20 minutes is pretty exciting and creepy, and there are some hot 80s gals both alive and getting killed to keep you from fast forwarding.

If, at the time, 80s DTV (named direct to video) this seemed rather routine it is way above the current (lack of standards) that apply to direct to DVD thrillers and horror movies. Makes you wish for the good old days of the first video boom. In truth there were many bad films then and straight to video directors like Fred Olen Ray, J.R. Bookwalter, David DeCoteau who made you nervous to "push play" on a straight to video film. These guys in fact helped kill the video boom. But this is a large notch above that type of thing and ages well. Be nice, though probably unlikely, to see this remastered on DVD.

When will the B movie of the 80s and on be written about and watched again. Will they ever get the attention the early B films have. And how many of them are lost forever now?