[Frankie Teardrop]

RUNAWAY NIGHTMARE - Wow. Just wow. 'Runaway Nightmare' is amazing, and almost indescribable. Well, I can describe what happens in it, but I can't explain it. It makes narrative sense (sort of), but it's a film which lurks on the very threshold of sanity. Two 'worm farmers' are abducted by female cultists who live on a big ranch. The cultists decide to let their prisoners join them in their fight to retrieve some 'platinum' from the mobsters who stitched them up. But really, the whole thing is made up of people wandering about in a house saying and doing bizarre things. A vampire may or may not be involved (and might be just a painting, anyway). Yeah, it's that kind of movie. It took me a good thirty minutes to realise that this was all deliberate - at first it seemed like one of those lopsided gems whose weird charm is the result of total incompetence. There might be an element of that at work here, but 'Runaway Nightmare' is too consistent in tone and too referential (especially to film noir) to be a happy accident. I have to mention David Lynch. A lot of people get the Lynch out when they're trying to describe a strange cinematic atmosphere - it's often a lazy tactic, but I can see why people do it. Anyway, this actually does feel like a lost Lynch movie - it's practically the blueprint for the dislocated noir that characterised his work from Blue Velvet onwards. But this was made years before he started really doing that stuff. I'd put money on him seeing this and 'The Death Wish Club' before he made his post 'Dune' stuff. Anyway, 'Runaway Nightmare' is its own movie and is truly one of a kind. See it! Kudos to 'Vinegar Syndrome' for restoring both its print and its reputation, maybe now it'll become the cult classic it was surely destined to be.