July 7, 2025 • 34 mins
REBEL HIGHWAY (1994)
Episode #4: "Runaway Daughters"
Original Air Date: 12th August, 1994
Jeff and Cheryl cruise down Rebel Highway with Episode #4, "Runaway Daughters."
Teleplay by Charlie Haas
Story by Lou Rusoff and Charlie Haas
Directed by Joe Dante
Starring:
Julie Bowen as Angie Gordon
Holly Fields as Mary Nicholson
Jenny Lewis as Laura Cahn
Paul Stephen Rudd as Jimmy Rusoff
Chris Young as Bob Randolph
Dick Miller as Roy Farrell
Dee Wallace Stone as Mrs. Alex Gordon
Christopher Stone as Mr. Alex Gordon
Robert Picardo as Mr. Ed Cahn
Wendy Schaal as Mrs. Mildred Cahn
Joe Flaherty as Mr. Nicholson
Belinda Balaski as Mrs. Nicholson
Roger Corman as Mr. Randolph
Julie Corman as Mrs. Randolph
Courtney Gains as Deputy 1
Leo Rossi as Deputy 2
John Astin as Fred, Minute Man 1
Dabbs Greer as Gary
Fabian as Mr Rusoff
An Arkoff / Hill / Kutner Production
You can rent Runaway Daughters on Prime Video or Fandango at Home.
Visit our website - https://aippod.com/ and follow the American International Podcast on Letterboxd, Instagram and Threads @aip_pod and on Facebook at facebook.com/AmericanInternationalPodcast
Get your American International Podcast merchandise at our store.
Our open and close includes clips from the following films/trailers: How to Make a Monster (1958), The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1962), I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957), High School Hellcats (1958), Beach Blanket Bingo (1965), The Wild Angels (1966), It Conquered the World (1956), The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), and Female Jungle (1955)
Episode #4: "Runaway Daughters"
Original Air Date: 12th August, 1994
Jeff and Cheryl cruise down Rebel Highway with Episode #4, "Runaway Daughters."
Teleplay by Charlie Haas
Story by Lou Rusoff and Charlie Haas
Directed by Joe Dante
Starring:
Julie Bowen as Angie Gordon
Holly Fields as Mary Nicholson
Jenny Lewis as Laura Cahn
Paul Stephen Rudd as Jimmy Rusoff
Chris Young as Bob Randolph
Dick Miller as Roy Farrell
Dee Wallace Stone as Mrs. Alex Gordon
Christopher Stone as Mr. Alex Gordon
Robert Picardo as Mr. Ed Cahn
Wendy Schaal as Mrs. Mildred Cahn
Joe Flaherty as Mr. Nicholson
Belinda Balaski as Mrs. Nicholson
Roger Corman as Mr. Randolph
Julie Corman as Mrs. Randolph
Courtney Gains as Deputy 1
Leo Rossi as Deputy 2
John Astin as Fred, Minute Man 1
Dabbs Greer as Gary
Fabian as Mr Rusoff
An Arkoff / Hill / Kutner Production
You can rent Runaway Daughters on Prime Video or Fandango at Home.
Visit our website - https://aippod.com/ and follow the American International Podcast on Letterboxd, Instagram and Threads @aip_pod and on Facebook at facebook.com/AmericanInternationalPodcast
Get your American International Podcast merchandise at our store.
Our open and close includes clips from the following films/trailers: How to Make a Monster (1958), The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1962), I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957), High School Hellcats (1958), Beach Blanket Bingo (1965), The Wild Angels (1966), It Conquered the World (1956), The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), and Female Jungle (1955)
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
We're not talking about actors. We mean a real monster. I brought her back. She'll live and I'll get her another body.
(00:07):
I know they're gonna catch me but don't let anyone see me like that! Please, Doctor!
Help me!
Biologically speaking, it's a primary importance that man should want to mate.
Hey, that's right!
You don't get all your kicks from surfing, do you?
We want to be free to ride our machines without being hassled by the man.
And we want to get loaded.
You think you're gonna make a slave of the world? I'll see you in hell first!
(00:33):
The American International Podcast.
Are you ready?
Hi there, this is the American International Podcast. I'm Cheryl Lightfoot.
And I'm Jeff Markin.
And today we're continuing our look at the Showtime series Rebel Highway from 1994.
This episode, Runway Daughters, was episode 4 in the series and was written by Lou Russoff and Charles S. Hass,
(00:54):
directed by Joe Dante and produced by Lou Arkoff, Deber Hill and Willie Kutner.
And we're not gonna list the whole cast but this is the main cast, Julie Bowen as Angie Gordon,
Holly Fields as Mary Nicholson, Jenny Lewis as Laura Cahn, Dick Miller as Roy Farrell,
Paul Rudd as Jimmy Russoff, Chris Young as Bob Randolph, Dee Wallace Stone as Mrs. Alex Gordon,
(01:18):
Christopher Stone as Mr. Alex Gordon.
And also appearing a Robert Picardo as Mr. Ed Cahn, Wendy Schaal as Mrs. Mildred Cahn,
Joe Flaherty as Mr. Nicholson, Belinda Balaski as Mrs. Nicholson, Roger Corman as Mr. Randolph,
Julie Corman as Mrs. Randolph, Fabian as Mr. Russoff, and a special appearance by Samuel Z. Arkoff as a storekeeper.
(01:42):
A lot of this name seemed very familiar, don't they?
Yes, in the cast and the characters.
Well, obviously the cast, but we have last names like Gordon, Nicholson, Cahn, Russoff,
and those are all personnel from the AIP movies of this era.
I thought that was interesting to include all those as kind of Easter eggs for us.
What's kind of a Joe Dante thing? He usually will put Easter eggs of some sort in all of his films.
(02:08):
And in this one, I think he had a chance to play around a lot more.
And there's a lot more going on Easter egg wise than just the names of the characters.
And I think we'll mention a few of those when we talk about the movie.
This is based on Runaway Daughters from 1956.
And we have covered that movie on a previous episode.
So you can always listen to that to find out what happened in that one.
(02:29):
We're going to mention some of the differences between the two movies.
These were never straight remakes and they weren't meant to be.
However, there are a lot of crossover moments between the two films.
And this movie opens with the Neville Brothers singing "Let the Good Times Roll."
This is a new recording from the 1994 soundtrack album.
I thought it was interesting that when the title comes up, it's the exact same font and color that's on the original AIP poster.
(02:53):
Oh wow. You caught that. I didn't catch that.
And Joe Dante does a really good job giving the zeitgeist right here.
We get scenes of like a newsreel.
It's a time capsule of the era.
We see kids getting vaccinations.
Yeah, back when they believed in that stuff.
Let me see Phil, the rocket launches.
McCarthy hearings.
(03:15):
Opening of the 3D film House of Wax.
A little bit of Nixon, a little bit of Fidel Castro.
So we know what's going on in the world at this time.
And then we get our first big Easter egg.
A scene of Michael Landon about to go werewolf on a gymnast in Iowa's a teenage werewolf.
Yeah, we're at the drive-in and we get to watch Iowa's a teenage werewolf.
And the print they're watching is much clearer than the one we had available to us
(03:39):
in the podcast episode.
Yeah, well, we are not going to talk about that movie though.
But yeah, it would have been nice to see it that clear.
But we're not watching the movie.
The characters are watching the movie at the drive-in except they're not really watching.
They're all making out instead.
And the drive-in is run by Joe Flarety as Mary Nicholson's father, Mr. Nicholson.
And I thought it was kind of funny.
(04:00):
He puts a clock up on the screen saying that the concession stand is closing soon.
So if they want to come by for their shrimp rolls, they only have this much time left.
They doesn't take it down either.
It stays up for the whole, at least the rest of the time that we're there.
And this movie has music unlike the original Runaway daughters.
And we hear "Come on, everybody" by Eddie Cochran.
(04:21):
And it turns out Fabian is Jimmy's dad and Jimmy's Paul Rudd.
Yeah, Jimmy has a catchphrase, "Don't crowd me."
Which is when we heard Benny Sal say quite often in the cool and the crazy.
Oh, wow.
So they're cherry picking from the various movies that are going to appear in this series.
And the character above says, "He always knows just what to say."
This movie is really funny.
(04:43):
It has a lot of very deaf comedy touches.
And I wouldn't call the original Runaway daughters funny, although there are some humorous moments in it.
So it seems like here, Jimmy's character is the one getting hassled by his father.
We're in the original.
It's Mary getting attacked by her father.
(05:04):
So I thought that was an interesting twist.
We haven't met all the parents yet, but I also noticed that there are no broken homes here,
except for Jimmy's probably.
We see it has a father and probably doesn't have a mother, and that's why he's a bad seed.
Right, but of the daughters, they all have both parents in the home.
So it changed that a little bit from the original where there were three parents out of the possible six available to guide their children.
(05:28):
So we met Joe Flarety already, but they haven't established that he is Mary's father yet until she goes home
and we meet her parents together.
It's Blinda Blaski plays her mother and Joe Flarety plays her father.
And we learned that they have to finish these shrimp rolls before they go bad if they don't sell them at the theater.
Yeah, that was funny.
And it was cool to see Blinda Blaski again.
The last time we saw her, she was in Bobby Joe in the outlaw, and she got killed there.
(05:51):
It's boiler.
And then we get to see Laura's parents.
She has an overbearing dad and an obsequious mother.
Dad is played by Robert Picardo, and mom is played by Wendy Shaw.
And then we meet Angie's parents, played by Christopher Sone and Dee Wallace Stone.
They seem more like Audrey's parents who would be the lower character in this movie.
They're partiers.
(06:12):
They're not really strict with their daughter, but they're not exactly hands off either.
Angie's Julie Bowen's character.
So she's probably the most rebellious of the three, but her parents are not so bad.
No, but like Audrey's character in the original, Angie seems to want to be parented a little bit.
(06:34):
She tells them right out about her boyfriend.
He's a hood, which isn't true because of the word he would be wearing a tie.
He wears a leather jacket.
Was that making my thug?
They at least seem to care about her, even if they don't really register that she's dating a hood limb now.
And so now we get to the inciting incident in the movie.
Mary's boyfriend is named Bob, just like in the original.
(06:56):
And they're making out under a tree.
Bob wants to go a little further than Mary does at first, but then he starts talking about Sputnik looking up at the sky, wondering if they're looking down on us and just kind of proclaiming how excited he is in the whole space race thing.
And that is, I guess what topples Mary's reservations about sex and they do it under the tree.
(07:18):
So of course Mary is pregnant.
Yeah, and her only choice seems to be to run away. And another thing that's different between this and the original is that all the girls want to run away at the same time, but she's not running away just to run away.
Angie can consider she needs to go and fetch Bob and get him to do the right thing by her.
Did you notice when they're all in the porch, she'll three of them.
(07:39):
They find out Mary's pregnant and she's kind of starting to hyperventilate.
They give her a cigarette to call her a towel.
Yeah.
I really liked Jenny Lewis's character and I only know Jenny Lewis because she's a singer of a band I like called Ryle Kylie.
But to go back to 1994 and she's really quite young here.
I liked the way that she was the voice of reason, but also itching to kind of get away too.
(08:04):
But it's Angie who comes up with a plan wherein they can run away, but not be blamed for it.
They're going to have a cover story.
They're going to fake their own kidnapping. They don't put a lot of detail into this.
They don't need to. We get the idea.
Angie makes a ransom note and range is to have it delivered.
And then the three of them run off their gas steel car, which also happened in the original, but in the original.
(08:25):
We didn't get to see it.
We see the car being stolen here and it's a lot more exciting.
It is. They find a truck that's sitting outside a bar and it's got keys in the ignition.
And they get in and they're going to steal it.
And of course, it won't start right away because cars never start right away on movies.
The owner of the car comes out and sees that they're going to steal his car and then he tries to confront them and they almost run him over, which would have been more fun if they'd done that in the original movie.
(08:52):
But I appreciate that they are giving us more of the running away here.
I want to see the running away. I want a road trip movie.
Well, you pointed out that in the original, it's 65 minutes before they run away.
And this one is 32 minutes in the movie and they're on the run already.
Right. I think that's a much better balance of establishing the before running away and then dealing with the aftermath.
(09:14):
And then we're going to see it's all what happens after they run away from here and out.
Only at the very end do we get some kind of arrival scene.
Well, the next thing that happens is after receiving that ransom note, the private detective is called in.
Yeah, and it's our good friend Dick Miller.
It's Dick Miller. He has his own saxophone theme in this.
But he does get a lot of those private detective noir moments.
(09:39):
We see a light going through the window and then the shadow of his name is cast onto the wall.
And he's got the little desk and the one light burning.
And his name is Ferrell.
And we're going to see a lot of Joe Dante's regulars in this movie when you say.
Oh, of course.
That's kind of how he works.
That's one of his Easter eggs, I think, because he likes to use the same stable of actors.
(10:01):
Right, like D Wallace, Blinibalowski and Christopher Stone and Roger Corman, Robert Picardo and Dick Miller were all in the hailing among other things.
Roger can Julie Corman or Bob's parents.
Right. And they tell her that Bob has run off when she's expecting him to marry her.
So that's the more instigating factor why they decide they have to run away because Bob abandoned her.
(10:25):
Which is the opposite of the original where Bob wanted to marry Mary, even though he was 20 and she was still in high school, which I thought was a terrible idea.
I thought this movie dealt a lot more with the consequences of teenage pregnancy in the 1950s than the original did.
Because her friends kept telling her, well, if he doesn't marry you, your family's going to have to move away.
(10:47):
And when one of the other mothers finds out that her daughter's friend is pregnant, she's like, don't be seen with her.
And I think that was just a little touch of reality in this movie, which is largely kind of can't be.
Yeah, there's a moment before they'd run away where Laura is talking to her mother asking for advice.
So she's talking about her friend who's in this situation.
And Wendy shall plays her mother and she's acting a little distressed because she thinks this is her problem to deal with.
(11:14):
Your friend, right?
Yeah.
No, no, mom, it's really a friend.
And there is relief going over her face when she hears that.
Right, but she also says you can't hang out with her anymore.
Can't be hanging around unwed mothers.
So they run away and then we see, I think a great Easter egg.
They stop at a gas station.
(11:36):
There's stolen car needs gas and the station is called American International Petroleum.
And then speaking of American International, Angie goes to a grocery store to get some supplies.
And the shopkeeper is none other than Samuel Z. Archive, who is the dad of Lou Archive, who produced these.
And this grocery store is called the A&I Market and they use the AI logo that AIP used in the 70s.
(11:58):
So we get both American International logos.
That's pretty cool.
I've just already having so much fun with this movie.
I got a smile on my face the entire time.
I kind of thought this one was made for us.
I think so too.
It's sort of like a thank you to someone who's delved into the AIP catalog the way we have.
A little gift for us.
So yeah, the children of the corn's Courtney Gaines is the sheriff and he immediately clocks Angie doing something wrong.
(12:32):
So he's the first of many law enforcement officers who's going to be on her tail.
We don't see a lot of that in the original.
They're talking about how the cops are after them, but you never really see them encountering the police.
So it's just sort of a threat that keeps them under Tony's control to brother.
We don't have a Tony in this movie.
(12:53):
No, they don't have anywhere to go once they hit San Diego.
Right.
One of them has a brother, but it's not anything like the Tony character in the original.
But we do have a lot of bad guys that they encounter.
Almost no one they come across is on their side except for one person will get to that in a minute.
And pretty much everyone they come across has a gun.
(13:15):
Well, let's explain how they got a gun.
So Courtney Gaines, the county sheriff and his partner, find the girls.
They're camping somewhere.
Lauren wants to take a bath.
So of course she gets naked.
We don't see anything, but they do.
And they are like, oh, oh, oh.
Oh, I just want to say the other deputy who's played by Leo Rossi.
He pulls out the binoculars.
(13:37):
He makes his whole production.
He throws on his sleeves and puts the back.
There's up to his eyes.
And makes the whole production of it's kind of funny.
But then the next part's not funny.
They decide that well, these girls are all alone.
And they are going to rape them.
They only see two of the girls because Laura's gone off to gather wood.
So she's not there.
(13:58):
They park their car down by where the girls were taking their bath.
Fortunately, Angie has seen this until it's married to get out of the water and get dressed.
So she's not naked when they arrive.
But they immediately put the moves on them with the threat of hey, we're cops and you've got to do what we say.
And Angie sees that Laura has come back and Laura's like going to help them.
(14:20):
She's signaling that she's there and ready to help.
Yeah.
So knowing that Laura's got her back, Angie pretends like she's going to go out.
And she pretends like she's going to go along with Courtney Gaines.
It's really gross.
It's just to make out with them.
I don't think Mary knows that Laura is there.
So she's getting--
No, Mary doesn't notice.
Yeah, she's getting nearly raped by the other guy.
And Laura pulls the cops gun out of their car.
(14:43):
It goes off.
She didn't mean to shoot it.
I don't think it goes off.
Oh, because she's her to the ground.
So--
Yeah.
But they hear that.
And then they have to raise their hands and kind of back off.
And they wanted her to give the gun back.
She shoots one tire.
And she shoots the other tire.
And then she shoots out the radio and threatens to shoot them.
If they don't let them get away.
So they'd jump in their car and drive off.
(15:04):
But then these deputies have to try and figure out how they're going to explain this.
Because they're going to be the laughing stock of the police force, deputies force, whatever they are.
Or they can explain that they're going to rape some juveniles.
And see how well that goes over.
Yeah.
That's the other option.
So--
Courtney Gaines' character decides that they need to try and steal a gun.
Because they still need to have a gun.
(15:25):
Because they can't have lost their gun.
Because that makes them look bad.
Oh.
If their own gun shout out their car.
Now we have a scene where the detective played by Dick Miller, Roy Farrell, has all the parents of the girls in the room with him.
And he gives a really funny lecture that, you know, the original tried to insert this cautionary tale for parents in the movie.
(15:48):
Well, Dick Miller just spells it out in a way that is so funny.
It gets pretty dark.
It gets dark, but it's also really amusing.
It really out of place for a movie that's supposedly set in the 50s, which this--
I think this movie does a really good job of time and place.
But he talks about-- well, he brings up a few things.
One, he thinks the kidnapping is fake.
(16:09):
Because they haven't gotten any ransom demands.
This surprises the parents.
Two, he starts criticizing their parenting.
Like, do you ever really talk to your kids?
And what they should be talking about, according to him, is sex, pregnancy, STDs, toys, equipment.
And meanwhile, the parents are all like equipment.
(16:31):
Whips and chains and handcuffs and rubber balls.
And it's just really funny that they kind of took this scene and then just like made it so out there.
I thought this was hilarious and maybe even the highlight of the movie.
And it's a movie that has a lot of highlights.
And then when it ends, Valor Picardos character asks, "What are we going to do?"
(16:52):
And Roy Ferrell says, "We?"
"Well, I'm going to go out and earn my money."
And you can sit here and think about what your kids ran away from.
So it's kind of the same thing we saw in the original, but much better.
So I was thinking we haven't seen enough of Paul Rudd in this movie yet.
And spoiler, I love him.
But anyway, we do get a scene where Jimmy does something.
So he goes over to Angie's house.
(17:13):
He doesn't know that she's missing.
They haven't spoken in a while. They had an argument earlier.
And her dad thinks Jimmy might know where Angie is.
And Jimmy's like, "Isn't Angie here?"
And her dad's like, "No, she's gone. Do you know where she is?"
And of course Jimmy knows nothing.
So he springs into action.
Hey, he calls the radio station and has a dedication sent out so that she can directly hear this on the radio and give him a call.
(17:38):
Well, it's a movie. So of course, she's going to hear it on the radio.
And the song he plays is, "Come on, everybody. Again."
Yeah, there's several songs in the movie, but it's not endless.
So Angie stopped at a pay phone and makes a call to Jimmy.
And they have a talk that's really sweet and also a little dirty.
And then Jimmy decides he's going to join the hunt for Bob.
Once he's found out that Bob callously ran away from his pregnant girlfriend.
(18:02):
So now the girls encounter another set of problems.
It's three hunters in the woods.
And they're not just hunters. And the credits they're called Minutemen.
They're like preppers or militia people. They're big into conspiracy theories.
They're hiding out from the government and the woods or something.
And their convince these three girls are at least socialists if not come yes.
(18:23):
Right. And they're played by John Aston, Rance Howard and Robert Field Steel.
And the girls aren't getting away from them.
But then there's a fourth person there. It's Kathy Moriarty.
She plays Marie. Her name is never given.
She's the closest thing we have to a Dixie character in this version.
Right. And we'll see more of that later.
They were back with Dick Miller continuing his investigation.
(18:44):
He's at the drive in theater now and standing in front of a poster for the 1950s.
He's went away daughters and says they don't make them like they used to.
And they're a posters for A.I.P. films all over the lobby.
I don't know if I've ever seen a drive in theater with a lobby.
But this one has one.
Well, I think it's a concession stand maybe or the office.
I guess that makes sense.
They always have some kind of building.
(19:06):
There's posters for not only one away daughters, but Shake Rattle and Rock,
which was its co-feature right next to it.
And on the opposite wall, there's Rock all night starting Dick Miller.
Jack's trip girl and they could paradise.
Another one with Dick Miller in it.
And that's not a Rebel Highway title.
So the three conspiracy theorists, the Miniman,
leave the girls alone with Marie.
(19:28):
And they tell Marie their story and she decides to let them go
and give them sandwiches.
She is like the Dixie character here.
She's sort of the wise older woman giving them advice on what to do.
And she says, well, I'll just tell him you overpowered me.
But she doesn't make them hit her.
I thought they would at least have to slug her because that's always what you do in the movies.
(19:50):
But they forgot that.
And they stole the sandwiches.
Don't forget that.
Oh, well, she gave them sandwiches, but I guess well, that's the official story.
They stole them.
Oh, right.
And they had the audacity to steal their sandwiches.
So the girls drive away, but then they stop again.
Every time they stop, it's in the woods.
And something bad happens.
And this time they find two other hunters who at first seem fine.
(20:11):
Like they're just going to help them get their loss.
And they're going to help the girls get back to where they were going.
Yeah, and then go off with them.
And it's not too long before they're spotted by the police.
Yeah, this is different cops, not the sheriff's that we saw earlier.
These are like highway patrol.
These look like more competent policemen.
Maybe, but oh, and one of them's Danny Breene.
I don't know if you've ever seen him on like not necessarily a news.
(20:33):
Anyway, they shout out.
Peace.
Let the girls go.
And the girls like, no, no, they're not kidnapping us, but it's too late.
Let us go.
But they're shot.
And the girls run.
And the police still are shooting, even though both men are down.
They continue shooting.
Yeah, when they say all cops are bastards.
They met this.
(20:54):
Well, one of them to sit up and pull out a shotgun and then get shot again.
So.
I mean, they did have guns and they had three teenage girls with them.
So it did look sketchy, but you know, you could ask questions before you start shooting.
Anyway, it is like the one serious moment that has consequences.
Somebody actually dies in this movie.
But it turns out to be an okay thing because.
(21:16):
The subject can be in store.
One of them brings out a newspaper and reads the headlines.
Well, those guys weren't just regular hunters.
They're killers.
They were the mad dog killers.
Yeah, they were killers.
Why did I buy the police?
So it's okay.
But there's another story there.
One of the girls was spotted with the killers.
So they are implicated.
(21:37):
So now the girls know there's a man hunt after them.
So they keep driving and a cop spots them.
And I said, turn on his lights and chase them.
I know that.
That's important because the original had a motorcycle cop chasing them.
Right, right.
So it's motorcycle cop.
So they were speeding or if the plates were wrong or something.
Well, there's are still in a stolen car.
(22:00):
Well, it's not the stolen car.
They traded in the first stolen car for another car at the scrap yard.
Oh, that's right.
We got that dad's career.
Yeah, dad's career.
And so that car is probably not hot.
That car is definitely not hot because he said that was the one plus to that vehicle.
But it's not theirs.
It's a man hunt out for teenage girls that may have been kidnapped or may have run away.
(22:26):
So the cop probably had good reason to stop them or to try to stop them.
But they don't stop.
He doesn't stop them.
They make it all the way to the Navy recruitment center.
And the cop thinks he's pulled them over and they get on the car and just run to the building.
And lo and behold, the person that comes out of that building next is Bob.
Yep.
And boy is he surprised.
(22:47):
He thought he got away scot free.
The cop runs up tells everybody to line up and one of them turns around because we are lined up.
That's all standing one by one on the subway.
And now we have a bit of, I guess, plot convenience because Jimmy pulls up as motorcycle.
All three sets of parents pull up.
So I guess they didn't stop as many times as the girls and that's how they were able to get there exactly as fast in their vehicle.
(23:13):
And Dick Miller comes back.
And detectives with his saxophone theme.
Detective Ferrell is that I really want to go back to 1984 and have a television series spin off of Dick Miller's character and all the escapades all his cases.
Yeah, yeah.
I think that would have been awesome.
That would have been fun.
And so all this left to do is for the girls greet their parents happily.
But Mary has already gone inside.
(23:34):
She needs the restroom.
So she doesn't see the parents come up.
She comes out of the restroom with a huge smile on her face.
You get the whole part where Jimmy is beating the crap.
Oh, sorry.
There's so much happening here.
I was trying to get to the good news.
So yeah, Jimmy throws a punch and socks bob in the mouth.
Mary comes out of the restroom with a huge smile on her face.
(23:57):
And any girl of menstruating age or older will know what that means.
But we don't find out.
She doesn't say it yet.
She comes out to see her parents and they hug.
And then she goes to hug her friends like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because she's not pregnant.
She was wrong.
But that's not good news for Bob.
He's like, no, Bob's on the bus and headed for wherever he's going.
(24:19):
I don't know where.
No, no, he says, I'm going to spend three years in the Arctic Circle.
And Mary goes, we'll have fun.
And Bob is taken away.
Cooting officer puts it on the bus and he rides off with a look of shock on his face.
That was a fun, fun twist on a fun, fun movie over the credits.
That's the original version of the good times role plays and also some sounds from Sputnik.
(24:46):
We see Sputnik.
Sputnik makes a cameo too.
Kind of.
Well, you know what they're going for.
And that's the end.
So there's a tagline for this called they were looking for adventure,
but found trouble instead, which I think kind of undersells the movie.
(25:09):
I think it was a lot more fun than that.
I just think that having the Easter eggs of all the characters names,
the little bits where they throw in both a IP logos and like Dick Miller wasn't going to be in a
Joe Dante movie at the time, but having him in there too.
It just made this whole thing so much fun.
I don't know why this wasn't the first episode release of the series.
Because I think this is a great segue from the original to this new concept.
(25:33):
The remake basically title only remakes, but it's more conceptual than actual remake.
So road racers was the first one.
I think that a more appropriate intro would have been runaway daughters.
And I'm saying that not having seen every single one of the rebel highways yet.
But it's so fun.
It's such a breezy light.
(25:55):
Exciting and period not accurate, but the homage to that period is so on point.
That had I seen that as the first episode of the series, I would have wanted to watch it all of it.
And I think maybe it would have been disappointed with the rest of the series.
I think episode four is a good place for this one.
Well, I found some reviews of this contemporary reviews.
(26:17):
And at least three of them said that this was the best of the bunch and those reviewers.
It's seen at least half of them.
So I will reserve judgment, but I have a feeling that I might feel the same way too once I've seen all of them.
Well, think about Joe Dante's movies.
This one was written by Charles S. Hass, who also wrote the screenplay for Matt and A.
And that was another period piece.
(26:40):
Also an homage to a bygone era.
Right.
With small influences of what was going on politically here, they're talking about Sputnik and that one.
It's the Cuban Missile Crisis.
And maybe it's the same universe, but that means there's two dick millers.
One of the reviews I found said this was a sort of companion piece to Matt and A,
(27:02):
which doesn't mean remake or sequel or anything like that.
It would make a okay double feature.
Yeah, exactly.
A great two pack DVD release.
Well, George Dante is for a long time been my favorite director.
And it's because he has such a love of the genre.
And he puts Easter eggs in almost all of his films, if not all of them.
(27:24):
Yeah, I think that adds to the fun of going to see the movies.
Even when a movie is not a lighthearted fun movie like Howling,
just knowing that there's this care given to the actual experience of watching the movie is something I'm really grateful for when I watch a movie.
And I think that this movie has just been lavished with that kind of care.
(27:45):
Yeah, you might see small things here and there in these films.
If you know what to look for, but these are so blatantly obvious.
And it's on full display.
So even the most unsophisticated movie gore can catch a lot of these.
Yeah, I think well, I don't know if there's still current slang,
but Joe Dante understood the assignment here.
Oh, definitely.
(28:06):
And the screenwriter, I give him credit for the same.
The lines are a little corny, a little cheesy, a little over the top,
but we watched the original recently and they kind of went cornball there too.
And comparing it to the original, I like the original a lot.
But this just was such a great experience that I would say it's better.
(28:28):
But you couldn't have this without the original.
So it's an homage to those kinds of movies, but it's also elevating those.
He used a lot of the same character names, a lot of the same character types.
First names, the last names were all fun.
Well, we've already talked about that.
So he's cherry picking what he's using, but he's also giving his own stamp to the movie.
(28:51):
By not doing a straight up remake.
And I think that was brilliant of them to decide to do it that way.
I don't know if I'm going to keep feeling that way, but I mean,
seeing this one, I definitely approve.
I think as taking the Paul Rudd character added a lot,
even though he didn't have much to do.
Right.
But he's so funny.
His attitude.
(29:12):
Don't crowd me.
He has no reason to have that attitude.
Nothing happens to him to give him such a, but he just couldn't.
But he just cops it just to have a persona, I guess.
And he plays it so well.
He's really deadpan in this.
He doesn't realize that he's parodying something, you know, as a character.
He doesn't realize that he's a rebel and also like everybody else.
(29:36):
I thought his character was very similar to the one he plays in White Hat American Summer.
That's true.
I always think of him from this era, though, as his character in Clueless.
And you know, it couldn't be really more different here than he was there.
Mostly because he looks almost exactly the same.
I mean, we joke that Paul Rudd doesn't age, but he looks like a baby here.
And I think that is one of his first movies.
(29:57):
This came out before Clueless.
So he wasn't really a thing yet.
Clueless was 1995.
No, he's credit as Paul Steven Rudd in this.
Right.
He had some other credits before that.
But from the looks of it, these weren't big roles.
And they weren't big movies or TV shows, whatever they are.
So this might have been his breakout if people had seen it.
(30:19):
But he is utterly delightful here.
Aside from the Joe Dante film regulars, we also mentioned Samuel Z. Archoff making an appearance.
And Fabian plays Jimmy's father.
And kind of playing against Typer.
He's the dad coming down on his son, crowd him.
Roger Claremont seemed to be playing his role as Bob's dad in sort of a cartoonish way.
(30:42):
Like they're just so darn proud of him going after the Ruskies.
I think that was a subtext, at least, of what they were saying.
And in the original, Bob is 20.
And this he's not even 17 yet.
And he's already joining the Navy.
Now, can you even do that even in the 50s?
But anyway, they're letting him be young and not older than Mary,
(31:03):
which I thought was very creepy in the original.
And even I discussed this before we start recording.
Aside from Roy Farrell, which I don't know where that came from,
Bob is just the only name that doesn't have AIP history in it.
Well, I decided Steven Turell, who played Bob in the original,
also played a character called Randolph or Randy in motorcycle gang.
(31:28):
So I was wondering if maybe that came from the two characters of Steve Turell.
Although it would have been cool if they'd called him Turell instead of Randolph.
That's the homage.
Maybe if we ever see Joe Dante again, we can ask him.
Yeah, until I heard you're feeling I'm just going to say that he was named after Steve Turell's characters.
Okay.
So with this series, as we always do, we grade the movie based on a scale where AS Awesome,
(31:52):
I as Intermediate and P.S. Pathetic.
I think I could guess and even risk money on what your grade's going to be.
But tell everybody, Jeff.
Well, runway daughters is a runaway A Awesome.
There's nothing not to enjoy here.
You get clips from an old A.I.P. movie.
You've got all the references. You've got the names.
(32:13):
You've got a pretty tight cast.
It's a lot of fun.
And particularly if you've been doing a deep dive into these films as we have.
It's a love letter to A.I.P. really.
It really is.
And I'm willing to bet that you feel very similar.
I think I've already said in at least 20 different ways how much I enjoy this movie.
It's light, it's breezy, it's fun, it's funny.
(32:36):
And it's just a great poke at the old A.I.P. movies.
Not in a mean way, but in a loving way.
And it takes the original story kind of and makes it so much better.
And it was a good movie to begin with.
But this, I would give it an A plus.
I wanted to give runaway daughters the original in A minus.
(32:58):
Because it was kind of draggy and slow in places.
And they weren't runaways for enough of the movie.
But here they runaways for almost an hour.
And it's a great road trip movie on top of everything else.
So yeah, A plus would watch again.
To find out more about Rebel Highway and the A.I.P. films that influenced it.
You can visit our website aippod.com
(33:21):
You can find posters, trailers and other media for all the films that we reviewed.
You could also message us and give us notes on what we were doing right and wrong on the podcast.
Again, that's aippod.com
And I think that's going to wrap our look at episode four of Rebel Highway, runaway daughters.
For the American International Podcast, I'm Cheryl Lightfoot.
And I'm Jeff Markin.
(33:42):
And we'll meet you at the driving.
Follow the American International Podcast on Instagram and Letterboxd at A.I.P.
underscore pod and on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash American International Podcast.
The American International Podcast is produced and edited by Jeff Markin.
A man whose mind is distorted by hatred.
(34:05):
And Cheryl Lightfoot.
A girl hungry for too many things.
The American International Podcast is part of the Pop Culture Entertainment Network.
[MUSIC]
We're not talking about actors. We mean a real monster. I brought her back. She'll live and I'll get her another body.
(00:07):
I know they're gonna catch me but don't let anyone see me like that! Please, Doctor!
Help me!
Biologically speaking, it's a primary importance that man should want to mate.
Hey, that's right!
You don't get all your kicks from surfing, do you?
We want to be free to ride our machines without being hassled by the man.
And we want to get loaded.
You think you're gonna make a slave of the world? I'll see you in hell first!
(00:33):
The American International Podcast.
Are you ready?
Hi there, this is the American International Podcast. I'm Cheryl Lightfoot.
And I'm Jeff Markin.
And today we're continuing our look at the Showtime series Rebel Highway from 1994.
This episode, Runway Daughters, was episode 4 in the series and was written by Lou Russoff and Charles S. Hass,
(00:54):
directed by Joe Dante and produced by Lou Arkoff, Deber Hill and Willie Kutner.
And we're not gonna list the whole cast but this is the main cast, Julie Bowen as Angie Gordon,
Holly Fields as Mary Nicholson, Jenny Lewis as Laura Cahn, Dick Miller as Roy Farrell,
Paul Rudd as Jimmy Russoff, Chris Young as Bob Randolph, Dee Wallace Stone as Mrs. Alex Gordon,
(01:18):
Christopher Stone as Mr. Alex Gordon.
And also appearing a Robert Picardo as Mr. Ed Cahn, Wendy Schaal as Mrs. Mildred Cahn,
Joe Flaherty as Mr. Nicholson, Belinda Balaski as Mrs. Nicholson, Roger Corman as Mr. Randolph,
Julie Corman as Mrs. Randolph, Fabian as Mr. Russoff, and a special appearance by Samuel Z. Arkoff as a storekeeper.
(01:42):
A lot of this name seemed very familiar, don't they?
Yes, in the cast and the characters.
Well, obviously the cast, but we have last names like Gordon, Nicholson, Cahn, Russoff,
and those are all personnel from the AIP movies of this era.
I thought that was interesting to include all those as kind of Easter eggs for us.
What's kind of a Joe Dante thing? He usually will put Easter eggs of some sort in all of his films.
(02:08):
And in this one, I think he had a chance to play around a lot more.
And there's a lot more going on Easter egg wise than just the names of the characters.
And I think we'll mention a few of those when we talk about the movie.
This is based on Runaway Daughters from 1956.
And we have covered that movie on a previous episode.
So you can always listen to that to find out what happened in that one.
(02:29):
We're going to mention some of the differences between the two movies.
These were never straight remakes and they weren't meant to be.
However, there are a lot of crossover moments between the two films.
And this movie opens with the Neville Brothers singing "Let the Good Times Roll."
This is a new recording from the 1994 soundtrack album.
I thought it was interesting that when the title comes up, it's the exact same font and color that's on the original AIP poster.
(02:53):
Oh wow. You caught that. I didn't catch that.
And Joe Dante does a really good job giving the zeitgeist right here.
We get scenes of like a newsreel.
It's a time capsule of the era.
We see kids getting vaccinations.
Yeah, back when they believed in that stuff.
Let me see Phil, the rocket launches.
McCarthy hearings.
(03:15):
Opening of the 3D film House of Wax.
A little bit of Nixon, a little bit of Fidel Castro.
So we know what's going on in the world at this time.
And then we get our first big Easter egg.
A scene of Michael Landon about to go werewolf on a gymnast in Iowa's a teenage werewolf.
Yeah, we're at the drive-in and we get to watch Iowa's a teenage werewolf.
And the print they're watching is much clearer than the one we had available to us
(03:39):
in the podcast episode.
Yeah, well, we are not going to talk about that movie though.
But yeah, it would have been nice to see it that clear.
But we're not watching the movie.
The characters are watching the movie at the drive-in except they're not really watching.
They're all making out instead.
And the drive-in is run by Joe Flarety as Mary Nicholson's father, Mr. Nicholson.
And I thought it was kind of funny.
(04:00):
He puts a clock up on the screen saying that the concession stand is closing soon.
So if they want to come by for their shrimp rolls, they only have this much time left.
They doesn't take it down either.
It stays up for the whole, at least the rest of the time that we're there.
And this movie has music unlike the original Runaway daughters.
And we hear "Come on, everybody" by Eddie Cochran.
(04:21):
And it turns out Fabian is Jimmy's dad and Jimmy's Paul Rudd.
Yeah, Jimmy has a catchphrase, "Don't crowd me."
Which is when we heard Benny Sal say quite often in the cool and the crazy.
Oh, wow.
So they're cherry picking from the various movies that are going to appear in this series.
And the character above says, "He always knows just what to say."
This movie is really funny.
(04:43):
It has a lot of very deaf comedy touches.
And I wouldn't call the original Runaway daughters funny, although there are some humorous moments in it.
So it seems like here, Jimmy's character is the one getting hassled by his father.
We're in the original.
It's Mary getting attacked by her father.
(05:04):
So I thought that was an interesting twist.
We haven't met all the parents yet, but I also noticed that there are no broken homes here,
except for Jimmy's probably.
We see it has a father and probably doesn't have a mother, and that's why he's a bad seed.
Right, but of the daughters, they all have both parents in the home.
So it changed that a little bit from the original where there were three parents out of the possible six available to guide their children.
(05:28):
So we met Joe Flarety already, but they haven't established that he is Mary's father yet until she goes home
and we meet her parents together.
It's Blinda Blaski plays her mother and Joe Flarety plays her father.
And we learned that they have to finish these shrimp rolls before they go bad if they don't sell them at the theater.
Yeah, that was funny.
And it was cool to see Blinda Blaski again.
The last time we saw her, she was in Bobby Joe in the outlaw, and she got killed there.
(05:51):
It's boiler.
And then we get to see Laura's parents.
She has an overbearing dad and an obsequious mother.
Dad is played by Robert Picardo, and mom is played by Wendy Shaw.
And then we meet Angie's parents, played by Christopher Sone and Dee Wallace Stone.
They seem more like Audrey's parents who would be the lower character in this movie.
They're partiers.
(06:12):
They're not really strict with their daughter, but they're not exactly hands off either.
Angie's Julie Bowen's character.
So she's probably the most rebellious of the three, but her parents are not so bad.
No, but like Audrey's character in the original, Angie seems to want to be parented a little bit.
(06:34):
She tells them right out about her boyfriend.
He's a hood, which isn't true because of the word he would be wearing a tie.
He wears a leather jacket.
Was that making my thug?
They at least seem to care about her, even if they don't really register that she's dating a hood limb now.
And so now we get to the inciting incident in the movie.
Mary's boyfriend is named Bob, just like in the original.
(06:56):
And they're making out under a tree.
Bob wants to go a little further than Mary does at first, but then he starts talking about Sputnik looking up at the sky, wondering if they're looking down on us and just kind of proclaiming how excited he is in the whole space race thing.
And that is, I guess what topples Mary's reservations about sex and they do it under the tree.
(07:18):
So of course Mary is pregnant.
Yeah, and her only choice seems to be to run away. And another thing that's different between this and the original is that all the girls want to run away at the same time, but she's not running away just to run away.
Angie can consider she needs to go and fetch Bob and get him to do the right thing by her.
Did you notice when they're all in the porch, she'll three of them.
(07:39):
They find out Mary's pregnant and she's kind of starting to hyperventilate.
They give her a cigarette to call her a towel.
Yeah.
I really liked Jenny Lewis's character and I only know Jenny Lewis because she's a singer of a band I like called Ryle Kylie.
But to go back to 1994 and she's really quite young here.
I liked the way that she was the voice of reason, but also itching to kind of get away too.
(08:04):
But it's Angie who comes up with a plan wherein they can run away, but not be blamed for it.
They're going to have a cover story.
They're going to fake their own kidnapping. They don't put a lot of detail into this.
They don't need to. We get the idea.
Angie makes a ransom note and range is to have it delivered.
And then the three of them run off their gas steel car, which also happened in the original, but in the original.
(08:25):
We didn't get to see it.
We see the car being stolen here and it's a lot more exciting.
It is. They find a truck that's sitting outside a bar and it's got keys in the ignition.
And they get in and they're going to steal it.
And of course, it won't start right away because cars never start right away on movies.
The owner of the car comes out and sees that they're going to steal his car and then he tries to confront them and they almost run him over, which would have been more fun if they'd done that in the original movie.
(08:52):
But I appreciate that they are giving us more of the running away here.
I want to see the running away. I want a road trip movie.
Well, you pointed out that in the original, it's 65 minutes before they run away.
And this one is 32 minutes in the movie and they're on the run already.
Right. I think that's a much better balance of establishing the before running away and then dealing with the aftermath.
(09:14):
And then we're going to see it's all what happens after they run away from here and out.
Only at the very end do we get some kind of arrival scene.
Well, the next thing that happens is after receiving that ransom note, the private detective is called in.
Yeah, and it's our good friend Dick Miller.
It's Dick Miller. He has his own saxophone theme in this.
But he does get a lot of those private detective noir moments.
(09:39):
We see a light going through the window and then the shadow of his name is cast onto the wall.
And he's got the little desk and the one light burning.
And his name is Ferrell.
And we're going to see a lot of Joe Dante's regulars in this movie when you say.
Oh, of course.
That's kind of how he works.
That's one of his Easter eggs, I think, because he likes to use the same stable of actors.
(10:01):
Right, like D Wallace, Blinibalowski and Christopher Stone and Roger Corman, Robert Picardo and Dick Miller were all in the hailing among other things.
Roger can Julie Corman or Bob's parents.
Right. And they tell her that Bob has run off when she's expecting him to marry her.
So that's the more instigating factor why they decide they have to run away because Bob abandoned her.
(10:25):
Which is the opposite of the original where Bob wanted to marry Mary, even though he was 20 and she was still in high school, which I thought was a terrible idea.
I thought this movie dealt a lot more with the consequences of teenage pregnancy in the 1950s than the original did.
Because her friends kept telling her, well, if he doesn't marry you, your family's going to have to move away.
(10:47):
And when one of the other mothers finds out that her daughter's friend is pregnant, she's like, don't be seen with her.
And I think that was just a little touch of reality in this movie, which is largely kind of can't be.
Yeah, there's a moment before they'd run away where Laura is talking to her mother asking for advice.
So she's talking about her friend who's in this situation.
And Wendy shall plays her mother and she's acting a little distressed because she thinks this is her problem to deal with.
(11:14):
Your friend, right?
Yeah.
No, no, mom, it's really a friend.
And there is relief going over her face when she hears that.
Right, but she also says you can't hang out with her anymore.
Can't be hanging around unwed mothers.
So they run away and then we see, I think a great Easter egg.
They stop at a gas station.
(11:36):
There's stolen car needs gas and the station is called American International Petroleum.
And then speaking of American International, Angie goes to a grocery store to get some supplies.
And the shopkeeper is none other than Samuel Z. Archive, who is the dad of Lou Archive, who produced these.
And this grocery store is called the A&I Market and they use the AI logo that AIP used in the 70s.
(11:58):
So we get both American International logos.
That's pretty cool.
I've just already having so much fun with this movie.
I got a smile on my face the entire time.
I kind of thought this one was made for us.
I think so too.
It's sort of like a thank you to someone who's delved into the AIP catalog the way we have.
A little gift for us.
So yeah, the children of the corn's Courtney Gaines is the sheriff and he immediately clocks Angie doing something wrong.
(12:32):
So he's the first of many law enforcement officers who's going to be on her tail.
We don't see a lot of that in the original.
They're talking about how the cops are after them, but you never really see them encountering the police.
So it's just sort of a threat that keeps them under Tony's control to brother.
We don't have a Tony in this movie.
(12:53):
No, they don't have anywhere to go once they hit San Diego.
Right.
One of them has a brother, but it's not anything like the Tony character in the original.
But we do have a lot of bad guys that they encounter.
Almost no one they come across is on their side except for one person will get to that in a minute.
And pretty much everyone they come across has a gun.
(13:15):
Well, let's explain how they got a gun.
So Courtney Gaines, the county sheriff and his partner, find the girls.
They're camping somewhere.
Lauren wants to take a bath.
So of course she gets naked.
We don't see anything, but they do.
And they are like, oh, oh, oh.
Oh, I just want to say the other deputy who's played by Leo Rossi.
He pulls out the binoculars.
(13:37):
He makes his whole production.
He throws on his sleeves and puts the back.
There's up to his eyes.
And makes the whole production of it's kind of funny.
But then the next part's not funny.
They decide that well, these girls are all alone.
And they are going to rape them.
They only see two of the girls because Laura's gone off to gather wood.
So she's not there.
(13:58):
They park their car down by where the girls were taking their bath.
Fortunately, Angie has seen this until it's married to get out of the water and get dressed.
So she's not naked when they arrive.
But they immediately put the moves on them with the threat of hey, we're cops and you've got to do what we say.
And Angie sees that Laura has come back and Laura's like going to help them.
(14:20):
She's signaling that she's there and ready to help.
Yeah.
So knowing that Laura's got her back, Angie pretends like she's going to go out.
And she pretends like she's going to go along with Courtney Gaines.
It's really gross.
It's just to make out with them.
I don't think Mary knows that Laura is there.
So she's getting--
No, Mary doesn't notice.
Yeah, she's getting nearly raped by the other guy.
And Laura pulls the cops gun out of their car.
(14:43):
It goes off.
She didn't mean to shoot it.
I don't think it goes off.
Oh, because she's her to the ground.
So--
Yeah.
But they hear that.
And then they have to raise their hands and kind of back off.
And they wanted her to give the gun back.
She shoots one tire.
And she shoots the other tire.
And then she shoots out the radio and threatens to shoot them.
If they don't let them get away.
So they'd jump in their car and drive off.
(15:04):
But then these deputies have to try and figure out how they're going to explain this.
Because they're going to be the laughing stock of the police force, deputies force, whatever they are.
Or they can explain that they're going to rape some juveniles.
And see how well that goes over.
Yeah.
That's the other option.
So--
Courtney Gaines' character decides that they need to try and steal a gun.
Because they still need to have a gun.
(15:25):
Because they can't have lost their gun.
Because that makes them look bad.
Oh.
If their own gun shout out their car.
Now we have a scene where the detective played by Dick Miller, Roy Farrell, has all the parents of the girls in the room with him.
And he gives a really funny lecture that, you know, the original tried to insert this cautionary tale for parents in the movie.
(15:48):
Well, Dick Miller just spells it out in a way that is so funny.
It gets pretty dark.
It gets dark, but it's also really amusing.
It really out of place for a movie that's supposedly set in the 50s, which this--
I think this movie does a really good job of time and place.
But he talks about-- well, he brings up a few things.
One, he thinks the kidnapping is fake.
(16:09):
Because they haven't gotten any ransom demands.
This surprises the parents.
Two, he starts criticizing their parenting.
Like, do you ever really talk to your kids?
And what they should be talking about, according to him, is sex, pregnancy, STDs, toys, equipment.
And meanwhile, the parents are all like equipment.
(16:31):
Whips and chains and handcuffs and rubber balls.
And it's just really funny that they kind of took this scene and then just like made it so out there.
I thought this was hilarious and maybe even the highlight of the movie.
And it's a movie that has a lot of highlights.
And then when it ends, Valor Picardos character asks, "What are we going to do?"
(16:52):
And Roy Ferrell says, "We?"
"Well, I'm going to go out and earn my money."
And you can sit here and think about what your kids ran away from.
So it's kind of the same thing we saw in the original, but much better.
So I was thinking we haven't seen enough of Paul Rudd in this movie yet.
And spoiler, I love him.
But anyway, we do get a scene where Jimmy does something.
So he goes over to Angie's house.
(17:13):
He doesn't know that she's missing.
They haven't spoken in a while. They had an argument earlier.
And her dad thinks Jimmy might know where Angie is.
And Jimmy's like, "Isn't Angie here?"
And her dad's like, "No, she's gone. Do you know where she is?"
And of course Jimmy knows nothing.
So he springs into action.
Hey, he calls the radio station and has a dedication sent out so that she can directly hear this on the radio and give him a call.
(17:38):
Well, it's a movie. So of course, she's going to hear it on the radio.
And the song he plays is, "Come on, everybody. Again."
Yeah, there's several songs in the movie, but it's not endless.
So Angie stopped at a pay phone and makes a call to Jimmy.
And they have a talk that's really sweet and also a little dirty.
And then Jimmy decides he's going to join the hunt for Bob.
Once he's found out that Bob callously ran away from his pregnant girlfriend.
(18:02):
So now the girls encounter another set of problems.
It's three hunters in the woods.
And they're not just hunters. And the credits they're called Minutemen.
They're like preppers or militia people. They're big into conspiracy theories.
They're hiding out from the government and the woods or something.
And their convince these three girls are at least socialists if not come yes.
(18:23):
Right. And they're played by John Aston, Rance Howard and Robert Field Steel.
And the girls aren't getting away from them.
But then there's a fourth person there. It's Kathy Moriarty.
She plays Marie. Her name is never given.
She's the closest thing we have to a Dixie character in this version.
Right. And we'll see more of that later.
They were back with Dick Miller continuing his investigation.
(18:44):
He's at the drive in theater now and standing in front of a poster for the 1950s.
He's went away daughters and says they don't make them like they used to.
And they're a posters for A.I.P. films all over the lobby.
I don't know if I've ever seen a drive in theater with a lobby.
But this one has one.
Well, I think it's a concession stand maybe or the office.
I guess that makes sense.
They always have some kind of building.
(19:06):
There's posters for not only one away daughters, but Shake Rattle and Rock,
which was its co-feature right next to it.
And on the opposite wall, there's Rock all night starting Dick Miller.
Jack's trip girl and they could paradise.
Another one with Dick Miller in it.
And that's not a Rebel Highway title.
So the three conspiracy theorists, the Miniman,
leave the girls alone with Marie.
(19:28):
And they tell Marie their story and she decides to let them go
and give them sandwiches.
She is like the Dixie character here.
She's sort of the wise older woman giving them advice on what to do.
And she says, well, I'll just tell him you overpowered me.
But she doesn't make them hit her.
I thought they would at least have to slug her because that's always what you do in the movies.
(19:50):
But they forgot that.
And they stole the sandwiches.
Don't forget that.
Oh, well, she gave them sandwiches, but I guess well, that's the official story.
They stole them.
Oh, right.
And they had the audacity to steal their sandwiches.
So the girls drive away, but then they stop again.
Every time they stop, it's in the woods.
And something bad happens.
And this time they find two other hunters who at first seem fine.
(20:11):
Like they're just going to help them get their loss.
And they're going to help the girls get back to where they were going.
Yeah, and then go off with them.
And it's not too long before they're spotted by the police.
Yeah, this is different cops, not the sheriff's that we saw earlier.
These are like highway patrol.
These look like more competent policemen.
Maybe, but oh, and one of them's Danny Breene.
I don't know if you've ever seen him on like not necessarily a news.
(20:33):
Anyway, they shout out.
Peace.
Let the girls go.
And the girls like, no, no, they're not kidnapping us, but it's too late.
Let us go.
But they're shot.
And the girls run.
And the police still are shooting, even though both men are down.
They continue shooting.
Yeah, when they say all cops are bastards.
They met this.
(20:54):
Well, one of them to sit up and pull out a shotgun and then get shot again.
So.
I mean, they did have guns and they had three teenage girls with them.
So it did look sketchy, but you know, you could ask questions before you start shooting.
Anyway, it is like the one serious moment that has consequences.
Somebody actually dies in this movie.
But it turns out to be an okay thing because.
(21:16):
The subject can be in store.
One of them brings out a newspaper and reads the headlines.
Well, those guys weren't just regular hunters.
They're killers.
They were the mad dog killers.
Yeah, they were killers.
Why did I buy the police?
So it's okay.
But there's another story there.
One of the girls was spotted with the killers.
So they are implicated.
(21:37):
So now the girls know there's a man hunt after them.
So they keep driving and a cop spots them.
And I said, turn on his lights and chase them.
I know that.
That's important because the original had a motorcycle cop chasing them.
Right, right.
So it's motorcycle cop.
So they were speeding or if the plates were wrong or something.
Well, there's are still in a stolen car.
(22:00):
Well, it's not the stolen car.
They traded in the first stolen car for another car at the scrap yard.
Oh, that's right.
We got that dad's career.
Yeah, dad's career.
And so that car is probably not hot.
That car is definitely not hot because he said that was the one plus to that vehicle.
But it's not theirs.
It's a man hunt out for teenage girls that may have been kidnapped or may have run away.
(22:26):
So the cop probably had good reason to stop them or to try to stop them.
But they don't stop.
He doesn't stop them.
They make it all the way to the Navy recruitment center.
And the cop thinks he's pulled them over and they get on the car and just run to the building.
And lo and behold, the person that comes out of that building next is Bob.
Yep.
And boy is he surprised.
(22:47):
He thought he got away scot free.
The cop runs up tells everybody to line up and one of them turns around because we are lined up.
That's all standing one by one on the subway.
And now we have a bit of, I guess, plot convenience because Jimmy pulls up as motorcycle.
All three sets of parents pull up.
So I guess they didn't stop as many times as the girls and that's how they were able to get there exactly as fast in their vehicle.
(23:13):
And Dick Miller comes back.
And detectives with his saxophone theme.
Detective Ferrell is that I really want to go back to 1984 and have a television series spin off of Dick Miller's character and all the escapades all his cases.
Yeah, yeah.
I think that would have been awesome.
That would have been fun.
And so all this left to do is for the girls greet their parents happily.
But Mary has already gone inside.
(23:34):
She needs the restroom.
So she doesn't see the parents come up.
She comes out of the restroom with a huge smile on her face.
You get the whole part where Jimmy is beating the crap.
Oh, sorry.
There's so much happening here.
I was trying to get to the good news.
So yeah, Jimmy throws a punch and socks bob in the mouth.
Mary comes out of the restroom with a huge smile on her face.
(23:57):
And any girl of menstruating age or older will know what that means.
But we don't find out.
She doesn't say it yet.
She comes out to see her parents and they hug.
And then she goes to hug her friends like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because she's not pregnant.
She was wrong.
But that's not good news for Bob.
He's like, no, Bob's on the bus and headed for wherever he's going.
(24:19):
I don't know where.
No, no, he says, I'm going to spend three years in the Arctic Circle.
And Mary goes, we'll have fun.
And Bob is taken away.
Cooting officer puts it on the bus and he rides off with a look of shock on his face.
That was a fun, fun twist on a fun, fun movie over the credits.
That's the original version of the good times role plays and also some sounds from Sputnik.
(24:46):
We see Sputnik.
Sputnik makes a cameo too.
Kind of.
Well, you know what they're going for.
And that's the end.
So there's a tagline for this called they were looking for adventure,
but found trouble instead, which I think kind of undersells the movie.
(25:09):
I think it was a lot more fun than that.
I just think that having the Easter eggs of all the characters names,
the little bits where they throw in both a IP logos and like Dick Miller wasn't going to be in a
Joe Dante movie at the time, but having him in there too.
It just made this whole thing so much fun.
I don't know why this wasn't the first episode release of the series.
Because I think this is a great segue from the original to this new concept.
(25:33):
The remake basically title only remakes, but it's more conceptual than actual remake.
So road racers was the first one.
I think that a more appropriate intro would have been runaway daughters.
And I'm saying that not having seen every single one of the rebel highways yet.
But it's so fun.
It's such a breezy light.
(25:55):
Exciting and period not accurate, but the homage to that period is so on point.
That had I seen that as the first episode of the series, I would have wanted to watch it all of it.
And I think maybe it would have been disappointed with the rest of the series.
I think episode four is a good place for this one.
Well, I found some reviews of this contemporary reviews.
(26:17):
And at least three of them said that this was the best of the bunch and those reviewers.
It's seen at least half of them.
So I will reserve judgment, but I have a feeling that I might feel the same way too once I've seen all of them.
Well, think about Joe Dante's movies.
This one was written by Charles S. Hass, who also wrote the screenplay for Matt and A.
And that was another period piece.
(26:40):
Also an homage to a bygone era.
Right.
With small influences of what was going on politically here, they're talking about Sputnik and that one.
It's the Cuban Missile Crisis.
And maybe it's the same universe, but that means there's two dick millers.
One of the reviews I found said this was a sort of companion piece to Matt and A,
(27:02):
which doesn't mean remake or sequel or anything like that.
It would make a okay double feature.
Yeah, exactly.
A great two pack DVD release.
Well, George Dante is for a long time been my favorite director.
And it's because he has such a love of the genre.
And he puts Easter eggs in almost all of his films, if not all of them.
(27:24):
Yeah, I think that adds to the fun of going to see the movies.
Even when a movie is not a lighthearted fun movie like Howling,
just knowing that there's this care given to the actual experience of watching the movie is something I'm really grateful for when I watch a movie.
And I think that this movie has just been lavished with that kind of care.
(27:45):
Yeah, you might see small things here and there in these films.
If you know what to look for, but these are so blatantly obvious.
And it's on full display.
So even the most unsophisticated movie gore can catch a lot of these.
Yeah, I think well, I don't know if there's still current slang,
but Joe Dante understood the assignment here.
Oh, definitely.
(28:06):
And the screenwriter, I give him credit for the same.
The lines are a little corny, a little cheesy, a little over the top,
but we watched the original recently and they kind of went cornball there too.
And comparing it to the original, I like the original a lot.
But this just was such a great experience that I would say it's better.
(28:28):
But you couldn't have this without the original.
So it's an homage to those kinds of movies, but it's also elevating those.
He used a lot of the same character names, a lot of the same character types.
First names, the last names were all fun.
Well, we've already talked about that.
So he's cherry picking what he's using, but he's also giving his own stamp to the movie.
(28:51):
By not doing a straight up remake.
And I think that was brilliant of them to decide to do it that way.
I don't know if I'm going to keep feeling that way, but I mean,
seeing this one, I definitely approve.
I think as taking the Paul Rudd character added a lot,
even though he didn't have much to do.
Right.
But he's so funny.
His attitude.
(29:12):
Don't crowd me.
He has no reason to have that attitude.
Nothing happens to him to give him such a, but he just couldn't.
But he just cops it just to have a persona, I guess.
And he plays it so well.
He's really deadpan in this.
He doesn't realize that he's parodying something, you know, as a character.
He doesn't realize that he's a rebel and also like everybody else.
(29:36):
I thought his character was very similar to the one he plays in White Hat American Summer.
That's true.
I always think of him from this era, though, as his character in Clueless.
And you know, it couldn't be really more different here than he was there.
Mostly because he looks almost exactly the same.
I mean, we joke that Paul Rudd doesn't age, but he looks like a baby here.
And I think that is one of his first movies.
(29:57):
This came out before Clueless.
So he wasn't really a thing yet.
Clueless was 1995.
No, he's credit as Paul Steven Rudd in this.
Right.
He had some other credits before that.
But from the looks of it, these weren't big roles.
And they weren't big movies or TV shows, whatever they are.
So this might have been his breakout if people had seen it.
(30:19):
But he is utterly delightful here.
Aside from the Joe Dante film regulars, we also mentioned Samuel Z. Archoff making an appearance.
And Fabian plays Jimmy's father.
And kind of playing against Typer.
He's the dad coming down on his son, crowd him.
Roger Claremont seemed to be playing his role as Bob's dad in sort of a cartoonish way.
(30:42):
Like they're just so darn proud of him going after the Ruskies.
I think that was a subtext, at least, of what they were saying.
And in the original, Bob is 20.
And this he's not even 17 yet.
And he's already joining the Navy.
Now, can you even do that even in the 50s?
But anyway, they're letting him be young and not older than Mary,
(31:03):
which I thought was very creepy in the original.
And even I discussed this before we start recording.
Aside from Roy Farrell, which I don't know where that came from,
Bob is just the only name that doesn't have AIP history in it.
Well, I decided Steven Turell, who played Bob in the original,
also played a character called Randolph or Randy in motorcycle gang.
(31:28):
So I was wondering if maybe that came from the two characters of Steve Turell.
Although it would have been cool if they'd called him Turell instead of Randolph.
That's the homage.
Maybe if we ever see Joe Dante again, we can ask him.
Yeah, until I heard you're feeling I'm just going to say that he was named after Steve Turell's characters.
Okay.
So with this series, as we always do, we grade the movie based on a scale where AS Awesome,
(31:52):
I as Intermediate and P.S. Pathetic.
I think I could guess and even risk money on what your grade's going to be.
But tell everybody, Jeff.
Well, runway daughters is a runaway A Awesome.
There's nothing not to enjoy here.
You get clips from an old A.I.P. movie.
You've got all the references. You've got the names.
(32:13):
You've got a pretty tight cast.
It's a lot of fun.
And particularly if you've been doing a deep dive into these films as we have.
It's a love letter to A.I.P. really.
It really is.
And I'm willing to bet that you feel very similar.
I think I've already said in at least 20 different ways how much I enjoy this movie.
It's light, it's breezy, it's fun, it's funny.
(32:36):
And it's just a great poke at the old A.I.P. movies.
Not in a mean way, but in a loving way.
And it takes the original story kind of and makes it so much better.
And it was a good movie to begin with.
But this, I would give it an A plus.
I wanted to give runaway daughters the original in A minus.
(32:58):
Because it was kind of draggy and slow in places.
And they weren't runaways for enough of the movie.
But here they runaways for almost an hour.
And it's a great road trip movie on top of everything else.
So yeah, A plus would watch again.
To find out more about Rebel Highway and the A.I.P. films that influenced it.
You can visit our website aippod.com
(33:21):
You can find posters, trailers and other media for all the films that we reviewed.
You could also message us and give us notes on what we were doing right and wrong on the podcast.
Again, that's aippod.com
And I think that's going to wrap our look at episode four of Rebel Highway, runaway daughters.
For the American International Podcast, I'm Cheryl Lightfoot.
And I'm Jeff Markin.
(33:42):
And we'll meet you at the driving.
Follow the American International Podcast on Instagram and Letterboxd at A.I.P.
underscore pod and on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash American International Podcast.
The American International Podcast is produced and edited by Jeff Markin.
A man whose mind is distorted by hatred.
(34:05):
And Cheryl Lightfoot.
A girl hungry for too many things.
The American International Podcast is part of the Pop Culture Entertainment Network.
[MUSIC]
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.