User reviews

One of the many insane rules I have for horror/cult movies is: if it stars Ray Milland, just watch it, no matter how bad it is. This crazy philosophy already led me to seeing stuff like "Hydra: The Sea Monster" and "Cruise into Terror", and now it brought me to the utterly obscure "Survival Run".

For starters, I should probably mention the alternative title "Spree", as well as some of the film-covers hinting at a zombie apocalypse or the pandemic spread of an infectious disease, make absolutely NO sense. This is a very simple and straightforward thriller about a bunch of clueless school kids having to battle for survival against weapons and drugs smuggling criminals in the desert.

The mighty Ray Milland plays his familiar role of elderly and relentless SOB with a white suit and walking cane, but admittedly it was rather unusual to see Peter Graves in the role of hardened crook. Graves, Milland, and a smally army of sleazy and sweaty Latino thugs hunt down the teenagers, whose van broke down after a stupid rollover, because they interfere with their dubious activities. The manhunt is quite boring, unfortunately, with a disappointingly low body count and very clichéd situations. The pretty girls keep their clothes on even though they are scantily clad and dancing lewd the entire time, which doesn't exactly make the film more interesting. Peter Graves looks genuinely embarrassed, and righteously so, but Ray Milland starred in "The Thing with Two Heads", so for him "Survival Run" is a masterpiece.

Spree is one of those movies that has fallen through the cracks and landed in cinematic oblivion. The only people who seem to remember Spree are those who found it distasteful or exploitative. The reason for Spree's surprising inability to find a cult following probably has something to do with the fact that the film straddles the no man's land between the mainstream and the video nasty. This is unfortunate because Spree is a good film and, even by today's standards, still packs a punch.

Like many films of the period, the basic set up involves a group of teenagers meeting the wrong people, in the wrong place, at the wrong time. In Spree's case, a group of friends drive into the desert for a weekend away. The film begins tamely enough, with conversations about condoms and a run-in with the police. Spree even has its own hilariously upbeat theme song which admittedly helps give the impression that the film is some kind of demented teen comedy. The tone changes rapidly, however, when their van crashes and they are forced to walk through the desert to find help. Unfortunately the saviours they stumble across are drug dealers, who are none too happy to have witnesses to their business dealings.

From the time the teenagers land in Kandaris' drug camp, the film becomes increasingly tense. The hospitality shown to the group rests on a knife's edge and it becomes glaringly obvious that everything could turn very bad, very quickly - which, of course, it inevitably does. This is the point at which the film briefly enters the horror realm. One of the girls is gang raped and her boyfriend is killed. The others flee into the desert but are pursued by Kandaris. This kind of chase and kill scenario is an old horror favourite and the film manipulates the situation for the most suspense possible. The desert location is beautifully filmed and some of the car and motorbike chase scenes are reminiscent of "Mad Max". The film has a reasonably high body count and the various shoot outs are well choreographed and bloody.

Spree is a very well paced movie. As soon as the action begins, it never lets up. The result is pure entertainment, the likes of which Hollywood inexplicably finds impossible to replicate these days. This film is lean and mean, without crossing over into realm of pure horror. Which is actually the film's biggest problem - it is too tame for horror fans, yet possibly too excessive for viewers who like their teen movies rape and murder free. The biggest surprise is the quality of the acting and directing.

Peter Graves is great as Kandaris. He is menacing without being ridiculous and his helicopter retreat scene is a delight. Ray Milland more than matches it with Graves, as Kandaris' business partner, "the professor". Milland gives the film a huge dose of class and he seems to thoroughly enjoy one of the better roles of his latter career. The teenage actors are adequate without being brilliant, while the actors who play Kandaris' henchmen inject the film with some real bile. Larry Spiegel's direction, particularly of the initial car crash and subsequent chase scenes, is excellent. It's perplexing to learn that he only made one more film after this.

Spree might have been a hard sell back in the glory days of the video nasty. However, given the increasingly lame nature of mainstream horror, the film packs more punch today than it did on release. Spree is the perfect anecdote to the comedy/horror currently being churned out en masse. This movie is definitely worth checking out.

I had the great [mis]fortune to find this on local tv at 3 in the morning this week - and what a treat! At those wee hours of the night, something like this becomes a surreal, dreamlike oddity instead of the bleeding ulcer it would seem in daylight hours. This is a film that is too bad even for MST3K - it makes its own laughs. Your jaw will drop at how absolutely bad - BAD - this things is, and poor Ray Milland is on hand, sleepwalking like Im Ho Tep through this mess. Actually, he just sits in a lawn chair and mumbles much of the time. There is an incredible moment halfway through where the director seems to have gone berserk, asking for all 5 of his protagonists to spout the entire range of tragic pathos: where the film has just had lazy, bad performances, at this point they seem to turn on a dime and try to re-enact scenes from The Trojan Women. It's unbelievable, and I honestly can't figure out how Graves and Milland ended up in it. They were frequently in bad movies, I know, but this is ridiculous! Amateur hour is too good for this, it seems like this was made by a bunch of junior high kids on a weekend. Check it out.

DULL is the word to describe this lost little film made by a studio on poverty row. I'm surprised this had some airplay on TV, but that ain't the point! Boring would be another word to use. Yes, SURVIVAL RUN starts off with a 70s van that is soon going to crash into the deserted wasteland. The lucky teens survive, but fall victim to canyon drug smugglers where they cannot escape alive. Sounds like an exciting thrill, doesn't it? Nope! Not even the action elements would make this any better, which were kinda fun. Like other suspense-action movies of yesteryear, the plot was fair and simple: seeing good win over evil, which has recently become constantly boring this day in age. The lack of superior excitement and a basic plot drowns SURVIVAL RUN into the abyss. Thousands more action films like this one managed to be far better, but this title has easily been dated!

Six horny teenagers decide to spend one weekend on the desert of California.After damaging their van they stumble into a band of drug traffickers camped out in a small valley.The fight for survival begins..."Survival Run" by Larry Spiegel is a pretty enjoyable survival flick that after appearing on VHS vanished into obscurity.The first half of the film is quite cheesy and dull,fortunately the second half is more exciting and mean-spirited.Peter Graves and Ray "Frogs" Milland are playing great villains and there is very impressive motorcycle chase.The characters are badly-written and the soundtrack is spectacularly terrible including ""We are young/ We are free/ Anyone know a better place to be?/ Takin' it easy/ My baby and meeeee...."7 drug traffickers out of 10.