RUN, CHRISSIE, RUN! (1984) (Umbrella DVD Review)

RUN, CHRISSIE, RUN! (1984)

Label: Umbrella Entertainment
Region Code: ALL (PAL) 
Rating: M
Duration: 87 Minutes
Audio: English Dolby Digital 
Video: Full Frame (1.33:1) 
Director: Chris Langman
Cast: Annie Jones, Carmen Duncan, Michael Aitkens, Nicholas Eadie, Red Symons

Synopsis: Run, Chrissie, Run! (AKA Money Hunters and Moving Targets) is a thriller about a 15-year-old Chrissie (Annie Jones, Neighbour) and her mother Eve (Carmen Duncan, Turkey Shoot) who must suddenly leave their peaceful, suburban existence and run for their lives. Hounded by an assortment of threatening characters bent on rape, revenge and murder. Chrissie and Eve try to shake off their pursuers in a deadly game of cat and mouse which ends when they realize they must stand and fight. Having learned terrible secrets of her mother's past and the identity of her real father, Chrissie becomes a much wiser young woman as old scores are settled in a final cataclysmic shoot-out! 

This odd slice of ozploitation opens in London where IRA bomber Michael Riley (Michael Aitken) refuses to kill a man when the mark's wife and kid arrive on the scene, refusing to kill a woman and child a scuffle ensues with Riley's associate whom he ends up shooting dead when he refuses to let the hit go. In the aftermath Riley finds himself on the run from the IRA and ends up in Sydney Australia where he tracks down an old flame named Eva (Carmen Duncan) who is now a single-mom with a teenage daughter named Chrissie. The seemingly average mom turns out to have been a German bank robber in her past, and Riley is there to collect a considerable amount of money she has stashed away from her former life as a bank robber. 

Eva wants no part of Riley's plan which involves her and her daughter running off with him, she gives him the slip in a borrowed car with a bag full of cash and a sawed-off shotgun, but has an encounter with a gang of punks in a muscle-car out in the open road. Eva blasts the punk's car with her shotgun and leaves them in the dust, but one of the punks named Toe (Nicholas Eadie) ends up teaming with a assassin named Terrier (Shane Briant) who has been called-in to kill Riley, they track Eva and her daughter down to a hotel in hopes of drawing out Riley. 

This one is a bit all over the place, it has elements of a road movie, a on-the-run thriller, an outback action film and a mob movie, and while it has a few fleeting moments it also tends to drag quite a bit, it's very low energy in it's pacing and editing. Highlights include a brief car chase through an outdoor fruit market and the punks tail-gating Eva and her daughter at high speed which brought to mind a myriad of ozploitation films like Mad Max and Fair Game, but doesn't even come close to garnering the same thrills and energy. The main drawback here it's directed very workmanlike, it lacks the visceral style I've come to expect from better, vintage Aussie exploitation films, so it's a bit of let down. 

Audio/Video: Run, Chrissie, Run! (1984) arrives on all-region PAL formatted DVD from Umbrella Entertainment as part of their Ozploitation Classics line-up, framed in full-frame and looking to have been sourced from a vintage video master, the image is smeary, dark and colors are dull, but overall not too shabby considering the lackluster source, it's also slightly marred by minor video source  flaws. Audio comes by way of an English Dolby Digital 2.0 track, like the video it's limited but serviceable, there are no subtitles.

The single-disc releases comes housed in a clear DVD case with a one-sided sleeve of artwork, the disc itself featuring an excerpt from the same artwork, which featuring an nice illustration of punker Toe and Eva, with Toe looking a bit like Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver. 

Special Features: 
- Original Australian home video trailer

Run, Chrissie, Run! (1984) is a lackluster and disjointed low-budget slice of ozploitation, I'd place it in the lower-tier of only just tolerable outback thrillers, but it was nice to cross another title from the Not Quite Hollywood! watch list.