Review: Run Chrissie Run!

DVD: Run Chrissie Run! (1984)

I have to admit that I wasn’t expecting a low budget ozploitation movie to begin in London, but the opening sequence filmed there sets up the narrative that will follow.

IRA member Michael Riley (Michael Aikens) reneges on killing a man and ends up shooting a fellow IRA member instead, and so he flees to Australia in an attempt to avoid the inevitable backlash against him. Upon arriving in Australia, he rekindles a relationship with Eva (Carmen Duncan) who has a teenage daughter; Chrissie (Annie Jones). In yet another twist of events, it transpires that Eva has a history of being a bad girl herself and Riley wants the 3 of them to run away together with her ill gotten gains.

Eva is not fond of this plan and drives off with Chrissie, leaving Riley behind.

While escaping from Riley, Eva and Chrissie encounter a car full of punks, and a shotgun fuelled fracas begins! Unfortunately for Eva, one of the (now VERY pissed off) punks teams up with the IRA people sent after Riley, and they track Eva and Chrissie to a hotel in an attempt to use them as bait to also get to Riley.

As you can probably deduce from the above synopsis, Run Chrissie Run is a mixed bag both narratively and thematically; with shades of an action movie, a thriller, a Mad Max-esque road movie, and much more.

Everything about Run Chrissie Run is disjointed, from the editing, to the acting and the direction by Chris Langham, who has since had a successful career directing television shows and numerous music videos for Kylie Minogue.

A low budget and periods of insipid dialogue doesn’t make Run Chrissie Run the ozploitation action spectacular that I was expecting from the front cover artwork. However, kudos to Umbrella Entertainment for getting this out there and available to everyone who is intrigued to watch this curiosity from ‘down under’.

Review by Dave (host of 60 Minutes With) from a disc kindly supplied by Umbrella Entertainment.