I happened to pick up this trashy Women on the
Run film by the roadside. I would likely have kept going but for a name that
caught my eye and made me stop. Irene Cara, who I adore. And co-starring
with her is an Oscar winner, Tatum O'Neal. The question has to be asked -
what the hell were they doing in this film? Five years after Fame and two
years after singing Flashdance and here Cara is in a sewer with live rats
all over her. O'Neal was famous for her child roles in Paper Moon, Bad News
Bears, Nickelodeon and Little Darlings and here she is playing a white trash
illiterate prostitute. It must have been good fun for them. A real change
of pace. The shit they go through in one day is pretty amazing and harrowing.
They are both in the dock for sentencing
- Tatum for murder, Cara for calling a cop a honky bastard. At this point
you are thinking, this could turn into a comedy or maybe a Women in Prison
film, but hells bells, two of the other female prisoners kill a guard, steal
a gun and in a frenzied shootout kill a bunch of cops. Our two girls are
hiding, but in the chaos they decide to run for it. Not a good idea since
the cops think they were in on it.
To escape, down into the sewers they go.
Meet the rats, get ripped away by a tidal wave of rancid water and have a
not so smart cop corner them and then light a cigarette. Sewer gas. This
is just the beginning of a very bad day. Of course, it turns into a bonding
film - the white and black girl saving each other through psychopaths, attempted
rape, a firebomb, the mandatory shower scene, being drugged, leaping out
of a tall building and cops after them. I hope they were well paid for this.
I kept hoping Cara would break into a song. She doesn't. Fucking rats.
