Run Coyote Run (1987)

 

Director: James Bryan

Screenplay: Renee Harmon

Cast: Renee Harmon, Frank Neuhaus

An Abstract Candidate

 

The gods have indeed blessed her body bountifully.

Within the space of two months, I once unintentionally saw Lady Street Fighter (1981) three times, even if just in clip form in other films, as director James Bryan and star/writer/producer Renee Harmon milked that earlier film twice, unintentionally creating two sequels to the previous film with chronological time line differences and reused footage. Revenge of the Lady Street Fighter (1990) is just the entirely the first film again, all the footage with a tiny bit more new context, playing with Harmon's original lead character being followed by a new female character. Run Coyote Run is an unofficial sequel because it follows the premise of the prequel, even if shown onscreen reused footage, and turns it into a new story with the surrealism of pre-existing footage from earlier Harmon productions being incorporated into new scenes. With one little plot difference – the original film being about a tape containing the names of assassins, this about tape with drug smuggler leaders on a similar list – these technically do not co-exist as films in the same world, but it feels truthfully they should. With this film particularly, even if you include the three as a perverse little trilogy in the same world, this makes at times even Godfey Ho, the infamous Hong Kong director who created films from pre-existing and unfinished movies with new footage, look conventional at times.

Harmon is Anna, a female police officer with psychic abilities. Again, as mentioned, this is not intentionally a sequel to Lady Street Fighter, but it is tied to that film's plot, the McGuffin of a master tape of concern here again and Harmon’s original character Linda now re-contextualised with having a sister (who is unintentionally identical) searching for clues to what has happened to her deceased reporter twin. The film, unlike Revenge of Lady Street Fighter, has much more plot and new footage, and in Anna 's search for the truth, people are being silencing by those connected to a criminal cartel, including an evil biker priest who comes off as a joker among the bunch. This in itself, as shot-on-video genre cinema from the late eighties, is goofy, with stock footage of a hospital having to be used to introduce our heroine in her first scene, and a lot of silly dialogue such as the suggesting, despite being a reporter, Linda could not even spell “cat”. A torture scene from the original film is now casually turned into a new one with spliced in footage and voice, but this also leads to the most curious aspect of the film.

It is not just the original Lady Street Fighter which is re-used for footage but also, to compensate for a lack of budget, footage from previous films by Harmon and Bryan is used, specifically Frozen Scream (1975), The Executioner, Part II (1984), and Hell Riders (1984). This is where the Godfrey Ho comparison comes in, with his infamous cycle of ninja movies from the eighties like Ninja Terminator (1985) where new footage with the likes of actor Richard Harris in camouflage ninja outfits was spliced in with existing films he had acquired. In all my Godfrey Ho viewing though, unless deepest cuts may lead to some stranger surprises, he never reused footage from a prequel he made and replayed it with new inserts like what happens with these Harmon films, déjà-vu and the cyclical nature of violence taken here to an absurd depth. The most delirious thing, where Run Coyote Run gets weirder, is realising new actors are being dressed as actors from the old footage so they can connect, like a trick Chilean director Raul Ruiz might have deliberately done in his films with an intentionally alienating effect. Realising very obvious old man makeup on an actor was for a murder scene from Harmon’s Frozen Scream to be spliced in, a seventies film from a different era of cinema with its contrast in celluloid film to a video production, added a new level of weirdness here.  Adding to this is that you can tell the seams, such as with a fight scene on steel steps latter on, or how there is a strange woozy tone to the production even if replaying Lady Street Fighter again.

It did feel like a dream as a result. As a film, Run Coyote Run is a curio only for those who can appreciate these films, which can be said of all the Renee Harmon /James Bryan collaborations I have seen. Coyote though has the advantage that it is a curious attempt at a lower budget genre film which is at the price of a VHS instructional film budget, using a remix technique you use for an artistic plunder phonics-like project but never expect for a production like this. That is not an insult either as, regardless of this being visible, the reused footage done to work around this creating a compelling strangeness within itself. As a result too, the genre burps between occultism, as yes, Harmon is psychic and has flashbacks to Linda’s experience, with horror incorporated by use of the Frozen Screams scenes, with their black hooded murderers evoking a slasher instead and with unexpected gore scenes within what is meant to be an action film.

It emphasises the fascinating with this ultra low budget cinema alongside something I admire, that of trying in spite of obvious handicaps to make a film. Common taste would dictate a lot of this film is (bluntly) "amateurish", from its acting to the contrast in footage types, but for a person like me or Bleeding Skull, a website devoted to this cinema, that is meaningless to the pleasure in them. Bleeding Skull have to be thanked for this film even being known, as they found the film in the trunk of a used car, first releasing the film themselves in a short lived VHS series in 2014¹, before the American Genre Film Archive included it as an extra to Jungle Trap (2016), a larger scale salvage by the website of a lost Harmon/Bryan film they worked with the director on to finally finish.  Standard technical bars presumed to be what makes a good film are alien to a film like Run Coyote Run, where even its rediscovery raises tantalising questions of how it ended up in that trunk in the first place. Instead, the joy of what, without safety barriers, a film can end up as are to be found here for the adventurous.

Abstract Spectrum: Dreamlike/Minimalistic/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low

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1) Bleeding Skull! Video VHS page for Run Coyote Run (BSV-003), written by Joseph A. Ziemba and published for Bleeding Skull on November 28th 2014.