Pullin' a Runaway Train

When I was a wee young-un in the '80s, I remember watching all sorts of "family fare" about the rough-and-tumble adventures of ass-stomping kids (or mice) who run away from home to find a better life, like The Journey of Natty Gann (1985), An American Tail (1986), and My Side of the Mountain (1969). These movies make it look like parents and guardians are nothing more than a drag on the free spirit of youth. It's a damn shame, then, that I wasn't a kid in the '70s, when the boob tube was bubbling with lurid tales of young runaways who sunk into lives of prostitution and drugs. Thank the gods, then, for DVD and video, for a second chance to see . . .

Jan Brady (nee Eve Plumb) playing a fifteen-year-old runaway-cum-hooker in the made-for-TV movie Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway (1976)! For a double-dose of "runaway" references, we get to see Jan plying her wares to the tune of "Cherry Bomb" by the Runaways (Joan Jett and Lita Ford's band). Since this was made for broadcast TV, there's not much gratuitous skin, but once again: Jan Brady as a hooker! (Too bad it wasn't Marcia; I always thought she was kind of a slut.) Plus, there's a midget in the first few minutes.

But not even Eve Plumb (plus midget) can hold a candle to Linda Blair, who makes everyone's heads spin 'round and 'round in Born Innocent (1974), another gritty girl-on-the-run tale made for the tube. Just one year after barfing on a priest's face, Miss Blair found herself with hell to pay when a group of mean, nasty reform-school girls attacked her. This controversial scene was cut from repeat airings but can be found intact on the DVD. Linda doesn't get naked here, but she shows assets a-plenty in her even more titillating '80s body of work, including Savage Streets (1984) and Red Heat (1985).

The banner annum 1974 also brought us another over-the-top runaway tale, this time to the big screen. John Waters's Female Trouble (1974) serves as a warning to parents everywhere who refuse to buy their daughters cha-cha heels for Christmas--the girls could run away from home, get pregnant, become mass murderers, or scariest of all, end up like Divine. Truly frightening.

The '80s and '90s were fine decades for movies about teenage runaways on the big screen (where gritty equals titty!), as well. These flicks all seem to share a common theme--staying at home with your drunken, abusive, and/or incestuous father/stepfather really sucks, but it's nowhere near as bad as the pimps/drifters/Satanists/etc. you end up with when you run away.

Natty Gann was smart--she had a big bad wolf to protect her, which probably would have kept Reese Witherspoon out of so much trouble in the Little Red Riding Hood-inspired Freeway (1996). Reese plays fifteen-year-old Vanessa, the foul little spawn of a prostitute mom and a crack-smoking, child-molesting dad. When her car breaks down en route to her grandmother's house, "I-5 Killer" Kiefer Sutherland comes to her rescue. Once she escapes (by shooting him four times), Reese ends up in a lesbo-filled juvie center. Even Amanda Plummer shows up as a trashy slut. There are no good peeks at Reese's pups here, but she's great as a trash-talking toughie.

Writer/director Matthew Bright (Squeezit Henderson in Richard Elfman's 1980 milestone midnight movie skinstravaganza Forbidden Zone) reprised his demented vision of killer hookers on the run three years later in Freeway II: Confessions of a Trickbaby (1999), where ebony lovely Maria Celedonio (Picture: 1) repeatedly gets down, dirty, and naked and even hops into a lesbo shower scene with co-star Natasha Lyonne (when it comes time to wash the blood off from their killing sprees!). The girls eventually make it to Mexico, where they end up living with a transsexual nun who runs a kiddie-porn business from his/her torture dungeon. At least running away makes your life more interesting.

In John A. Russo's thriller Midnight (1982), Melanie Verlin plays Nancy, who runs away from her incestuous, drunk stepfather only to end up kidnapped by a psychotic, backwoods family who drinks blood and worships Satan (along with their mother's corpse). Nancy soon finds herself locked in a dog cage with another girl as they both wait to be sacrificed to Satan at midnight on Easter Sunday.

For a more nudity-filled snuff-o-rama, check out The Art of Dying (1991), in which a dementedly murderous independent filmmaker lures young Hollywood teenage runaways into new careers as real-life, on-camera murder victims. Kathleen Kinmont gets naked repeatedly as she humps her police-detective boyfriend. One of the movie's more memorable scenes involves Kathleen humping her boy-toy in the bath, as her orgasmic shrieks perfectly sync up with the death-cries of T.C. Warner as she takes a Psycho-style stabbing in the shower (in a separate bathroom, of course).

The runaway flick that probably takes the cake, at least as far as plot weirdness is concerned, is A. Dean Bell's What Alice Found (2003). Here we have New Hampshire runaway Alice (Emily Grace), who gets annoyed with her ass-patting boss, steals her money, and takes off for Miami. Her car breaks down (as all runaways' cars do), and she gets picked up by a trashy southern couple who run a truck-stop whorehouse out of their RV. It's an art-house flick, so there's not a whole lot of luridness going on, but we do get a nice full-frontal shot of Emily as she strips down for a heaping helping of hopped-up big-rigger splooge.

OTHER HONORABLE MENTIONS

P.K. and the Kid (1987)
Molly Ringwald plays P.K., who runs away from her sexually abusive stepfather and takes off with a world-champion arm wrestler. Molly doesn't get naked, but Leigh Hamilton does!

Streets (1990)
Christina Applegate (Picture: 1 - 2) gets nearly naked as a runaway-turned-heroin-addict L.A. prostitute who sometimes eats roadkill while on the run from a psycho cop who likes to kill streetwalkers.

Ripe (1996)
There's almost-legal skin from Monica Keena (Picture: 1 - 2), who doesn't get naked but trots around in a see-through gown. Monica becomes interested in sex, and her sister (Daisy Eagan) is drawn to violence after their abusive parents are killed in a car crash and the twins are taken in by a drifter.

Streetwalkin' (1985)
Melissa Leo (Picture: 1) bares all as Cookie, who brings her brother along with her to New York when they run away from mom. Melissa ends up as a prostitute and runs into a topless-dancing Samantha Fox along the way.




Related Links: