In the 1980s, it seemed as though Joe Dante had arrived as a director. After helming two of B-movie king Roger Corman's more famous productions, Piranha and Rock 'n' Roll High School, Dante went his own way and was soon collaborating with Steven Spielberg. He took the segment after Spielberg on Twilight Zone: The Movie and then directed the hit Amblin Entertainment horror comedy Gremlins. Born just three weeks apart in late 1946, the two filmmakers shared a penchant for suburban family sci-fi fantasy adventures and if Dante wasn't working under Spielberg, like directing two episodes of the mid-'80s anthology TV series "Amazing Stories", then he was channeling him in now fondly recalled but far from blockbuster diversions such as Explorers, Innerspace, and The 'Burbs.

Dante returned to his most iconic and successful universe with 1990's Gremlins 2: The New Batch, but after it underperformed, film offers seemed to dry up for him. Dante then turned to television, aptly serving as creative consultant and directing five episodes of "Eerie, Indiana." That highly-regarded show was cancelled after one season, and following another box office flop, the period ensemble comedy Matinee, Dante would spend the next several years directing TV movies.

The first of these was for Rebel Highway, a series of ten films inspired by 1950s B-movies which aired on Showtime in the summer of 1994. Chances are you neither remember nor know of this project, but it did provide some of the earliest film appearances of a number of actors who today are household names, including Salma Hayek, Renée Zellweger, Adrien Brody, Carla Gugino, Alicia Silverstone, David Arquette, Matt LeBlanc, and Anne Heche. The director pool consisted of accomplished filmmakers (William Friedkin, John Milius, Ralph Bakshi) and promising up-and-comers (most notably, Robert Rodriguez). Each took the title of a forgotten American International Pictures release from the days of drive-ins, getting a $1.3 million budget and a 12-day shooting schedule to either remake them or invent something new befitting the title.

Dante's contribution was Runaway Daughters, a loose remake of a tremendously obscure 1956 film that featured a young Frank Gorshin in a supporting role. Dante's version is set in small-town America in 1957, in the immediate wake of the launch of Sputnik. At the height of Cold War paranoia, the Soviet Union space satellite is being discussed by parents and teenagers alike. It is a topic of discussion which gets two chaste teenagers into trouble, when it leads the way to treeside sexual experimentation that leaves the girl, Mary (Holly Fields), an unusual two weeks late for her period. Her boyfriend Bob (Chris Young) takes the news calmly, but then runs off to San Diego to enlist for a three-year tour in the Army.

Mary and her two best friends, rebellious rich girl Angie (Julie Bowen of "Modern Family") and mousy Laura (Laura Cahn), aren't about to take that blow sitting down. They hatch a plan to drive out to San Diego, so that they can prevent Bob from enlisting. Knowing that they won't be able to do that with their parents' blessing and knowledge, the three girls sneak out in the middle of the night and frame their disappearance as a kidnapping. That gets the attentions of their square parents (played by Dante alums Joe Flaherty, Robert Picardo, Belinda Balaski, Dee Wallace, and, in his penultimate film, Christopher Stone), police officers, and one savvy private investigator (Dante favorite Dick Miller in a scene-stealing role).

The girls struggle their way into crime with their awkward very first car theft. They then run into a suspicious sheriff (Courtney Gains), a pack of Communist haters (John Astin, Rance Howard, and Robert Fieldsteel, with an uncredited Cathy Moriarty as Astin's more sympathetic wife), and some hunters, all of whom put them in danger.

The focal point of the DVD's cover art, both in the movie's 2005 home video debut from Buena Vista Home Entertainment and in next week's reissue from Echo Bridge Home Entertainment, the new distributor of lesser Miramax titles, is Paul Rudd, who plays the medium-sized but memorable role of Jimmy Rusoff, Angie's boyfriend from the other side of the tracks. A rebel in the vein of James Dean, Marlon Brando and the Fonz, Jimmy has a talking action figure's vocabulary, saying two things again and again: "I don't know" and "Don't crowd me." It is a charismatic but clumsy turn by one of today's most trusted actors in comedy cinema, who the slow closing scroll here bills -- in the tradition of young '90s actors -- as "Paul Stephen Rudd."

Less prominently marketed but perhaps more significantly cast are Roger Corman and his wife Julie as the proud, aloof parents of the gangly runaway would-be father. I suspected Corman's cameo meant that at least he, if not his wife, produced this movie or possibly the original, but he did not. Still, Corman's imprint is all over this movie, from the common cast members like Miller and Howard to the nod to the original movie to the tone, turns, and types of eccentric characters. Dante doesn't let Corman's signature camp pervade this feature, but the whole thing is still executed, like Grease, with tongue partly in cheek.

Recognizing the confines and intentions of the Rebel Highway project are integral to softening the disdain you might otherwise hold for this silly little movie. In light of those limitations, though, Dante's modest accomplishments here are almost impressive. It looks like a low-budget '90s production, but it certainly has the feel of a '50s B-movie and not in any snarky or condescending way. So, sure, it's a little stupid and corny, but that's neither entirely unintended nor an insurmountable obstacle to your enjoyment.

VIDEO and AUDIO

As usual, Echo Bridge's case says nothing regarding aspect ratio, but Runaway Daughters is presented in 1.33:1 "full screen" on this DVD, as you suspect it should be. Picture quality, unsurprisingly, isn't all that great. The video is quite soft and faded throughout, not from any obvious stylistic choice but more likely from being a nearly 20-year-old TV movie whose obscurity has stood in the way of appropriate remastering. The Dolby 2.0 soundtrack is passable, with dialogue remaining easily heard and understood but greatly lacking the crispness we nowadays take for granted. In what is sure to disappoint foreign and hearing impaired viewers, Echo Bridge upholds its unfortunate standard practice of foregoing both closed captioning and subtitles. Adding insult to injury, the movie's original DVD had English closed captions and French and Spanish subtitles. It seems like a shame for those transcription and translation efforts to go to waste with subtitle downloading and implementation as prevalent as they are these days.

BONUS FEATURES, MENUS, and PACKAGING

To nobody's surprise, Runaway Daughters is joined by no bonus features. Buena Vista's disc, which carried the Dimension Home Video brand foremost, probably held nothing more than auto-played trailers for other properties, if even that.

If I was authoring the disc, I'd have seen if original ads couldn't be dug up for this and the fellow Rebel Highway productions. It seems like an unbelievable missed opportunity for the studio not to convey this as part of a series of kindred productions. Echo Bridge has inherited at least three of these titles with their acquisition of Miramax's B-library. Jailbreakers, Motorcycle Gang, Reform School Girl, and Dragstrip Girl somehow went with the A-list to Lionsgate, who released them yesterday the overpriced, manufactured-on-demand DVD-R route. Robert Rodriguez's entry, Roadrunners, is apparently scheduled to make its long-awaited Region 1 DVD debut in March, to nobody's awareness or excitement. The other three are still out of print, their next distributor not yet known. Echo Bridge could clearly get more out of their investment just by knowing what they have and making sure it reaches the audience that would care. Presumably, there just isn't anything in the budget for that with these discs churned out in great number and at rock-bottom prices (typically a $6.99 SRP).

The two menu screens simply recycle the packaging artwork and are clearly squeezed from 16:9 to 4:3 to match the feature presentation. That is infinitely more preferred to the other way around.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Runaway Daughters is an interesting curiosity that should be seen by fans of Joe Dante, Roger Corman, Paul Rudd, and Julie Bowen. It's obviously not a great or even good movie, but it is nonetheless fascinating as both a '50s B-movie throwback and a creatively challenging exercise in '90s TV filmmaking. I can't recommend it on entertainment value alone, but I don't regret seeing it and I'm even encouraged to discover other Rebel Highway movies.

Echo Bridge shows little regard for this production, treating it to a barebones presentation comparable to the typical TV movie VHS (which this never received in the US) and I'm sure the original Buena Vista DVD. The price is low enough and the movie obscure enough to forego complaint and just take what you get, which is much more reasonably priced than Lionsgate's DVD-Rs. Maybe Echo Bridge's belief in value bundling will one day yield a set collecting all their Rebel Highway films, probably on a single disc and with a $9.99 list price. Until then, since the prospects of Blu-rays seem remote, this will have to do for those interested.

Support this site when you buy Runaway Daughters now from Amazon.com: