I saw this film under the title "Dirty Harriet", which of course is completely wrong: the heroine is not a cop, but a vigilante (a more appropriate title would have been "Pauline Kersey"!). Anyway, "Sudden Death" is also pretty accurate, as that's exactly what most people who make the mistake of attacking her get in the second half of the film. The script is poor in several ways (the heroine becomes a cold-blooded killer too easily, even her first killing doesn't seem to shake her at all; her targets are also spotted too easily, it's like there is a sex maniac around every NYC street corner; the investigation of a male detective that she befriends feels a lot like padding), and the direction is strictly-by-the-numbers. Former Miss Australia Denise Coward (what an unfortunate name!) is not bad in the lead, but the film is nothing special. *1/2 out of 4.
10 Reviews
Sudden Death Wish: Revenge of the Female
Vomitron_G3 August 2011
A tale from the vile city about rape & revenge. The gorgeous Denise Coward gets brutally raped by two crazed criminals in a stolen taxi. She barely survives. With the police investigation slacking, she decides to go after the criminals herself in true Charles Bronson style. Instead of finding them, she encounters several more sleazeballs that try to rape her. So she blows all of their guts out in slow-motion with dumdum bullets. Then goes home each time, satisfied and relaxing with a mixed Martini on the rocks. Halfway the movie something strange happens with the plot. She shows remorse, throws away her gun, thereby ending her killing spree. But the plot picks up with a police officer, her love-interest (yes, sex scene!), being on the trail of the two initial rapists. Beautiful Denise decides to tag along and brings with her... a shotgun. All this on the tunes of a groovy '80s electronic soundtrack, as if Herbie Hancock was goofing around with a cheap Casio keyboard.
Dumb Dumb Assassin
sol-kay12 October 2009
Warning: Spoilers
(Some Spoilers) Not too convincing revenge movie involving a rape victim taking out her both fury and frustration against the low life criminal scum in New York City.
Flagging down a cab to take her home from work one evening Valerie Wells, Denise Coward, is brutally beaten and raped by the two creeps Wille & Raphael, Jamie Tirelli & Joe Maruzzo, who had just moments before carjacked it. Hospitalized for a week Valerie soon discovers that the police department is either uninterested or doesn't have the manpower to track down her assailants and bring them to justice. With her fiancée Hurbert, Robert Trumbull, now treating her as damaged goods and showing very little interest in finding those who so brutally attacked and raped her Valerie slowly turns to the policeman assigned to her case Det. "Just call me Marty" Cowery, Frank Runyeon.
As things turn out "Marty" seems to be far more interested in getting to know and become friendly with Valerie then in finding her assailants. This has Valerie, a former US Army brat who knows how to handle guns, take matters into her own hands. Going down to North Carolina on vacation Valerie buys herself a sturdy Walter 38 Automatic and with a box full of ammunition and decides to clean up the city of New York of crime Charles Bronson-style! Out on the streets with her .38 Walter Automatic Valerie starts to get to work blowing alway any one who as much tries to, by mistaking her for a hooker, pick her up.
Using dumb dumb bullets to gun down her victims Valerie soon becomes dubbed by the local newspapers as the "Dumb Dumb Killer" who's drugged out and what seems like brain damaged victims turn out to be even dumber then the long extinct Dodo Bird! One good example of those psychos that Valerie puts out of action is this crazed and deranged taxi driver Gerald Orange. Totally nuts and dripping with cheap booze Orange in an attempt to rape Valerie ends up getting blasted by her even when she gave him a chance, with her gun pointed at the crazy nut, to just turn and run!
***SPOILERS*** In the end Marty, you know the detective guy, not only finds out that his now girlfriend Valerie is the mysterious "Dumb Dumb Killer" but who her rapists-Willie & Raphael-are and with the help of Valerie tracks them down in the Wall Street District where they planned their next "Job". The "Job" that Willie & Raphael have in mind is not a rape but the heist of some one million dollars of US Government Securities! As things turned out it was the last "job" that they'll ever pull off. Not only Marty but a shotgun toting Valerie Wells, in the shadow of the now destroyed World Trade Center, made sure of that!
Flagging down a cab to take her home from work one evening Valerie Wells, Denise Coward, is brutally beaten and raped by the two creeps Wille & Raphael, Jamie Tirelli & Joe Maruzzo, who had just moments before carjacked it. Hospitalized for a week Valerie soon discovers that the police department is either uninterested or doesn't have the manpower to track down her assailants and bring them to justice. With her fiancée Hurbert, Robert Trumbull, now treating her as damaged goods and showing very little interest in finding those who so brutally attacked and raped her Valerie slowly turns to the policeman assigned to her case Det. "Just call me Marty" Cowery, Frank Runyeon.
As things turn out "Marty" seems to be far more interested in getting to know and become friendly with Valerie then in finding her assailants. This has Valerie, a former US Army brat who knows how to handle guns, take matters into her own hands. Going down to North Carolina on vacation Valerie buys herself a sturdy Walter 38 Automatic and with a box full of ammunition and decides to clean up the city of New York of crime Charles Bronson-style! Out on the streets with her .38 Walter Automatic Valerie starts to get to work blowing alway any one who as much tries to, by mistaking her for a hooker, pick her up.
Using dumb dumb bullets to gun down her victims Valerie soon becomes dubbed by the local newspapers as the "Dumb Dumb Killer" who's drugged out and what seems like brain damaged victims turn out to be even dumber then the long extinct Dodo Bird! One good example of those psychos that Valerie puts out of action is this crazed and deranged taxi driver Gerald Orange. Totally nuts and dripping with cheap booze Orange in an attempt to rape Valerie ends up getting blasted by her even when she gave him a chance, with her gun pointed at the crazy nut, to just turn and run!
***SPOILERS*** In the end Marty, you know the detective guy, not only finds out that his now girlfriend Valerie is the mysterious "Dumb Dumb Killer" but who her rapists-Willie & Raphael-are and with the help of Valerie tracks them down in the Wall Street District where they planned their next "Job". The "Job" that Willie & Raphael have in mind is not a rape but the heist of some one million dollars of US Government Securities! As things turned out it was the last "job" that they'll ever pull off. Not only Marty but a shotgun toting Valerie Wells, in the shadow of the now destroyed World Trade Center, made sure of that!
Revenge is sweet, no matter how it's gotten.
Vivee28 November 1998
I know that this is an old and campy movie, but the message as a whole rings true even today...if someone gets raped, they want revenge and boy is it sweet when you get it. Look at Sally Fields in "An Eye for an Eye" ----You want it, You get it, You love it!
"Can I see a Walter P32"?
lost-in-limbo6 December 2013
The descriptions of writer / director Sig Shore's harsh, exploitative revenge outing "Sudden Death" being the female version of "Death Wish" and especially "Death Wish 2" is pretty accurate, but in the way it doesn't make it any better. I was somewhat disappointed in this one. I didn't find it to be all that powerful and edgy in conveying the character's torment and the attack scenes less effective because of the protagonist's careless actions of the situations she puts herself into and its choice of music throughout was off putting. Other than the first demoralizing opening attack on the protagonist that transforms her, the rest (involving our victim searching for payback on her attackers, but stumbling across other thugs) felt silly and made the sequences rather cheesy in the execution. Especially the use of slow-motion, but definitely the tacky soundtrack choices. The exercise at times feels unwieldy, but what is has going for it is the use of actual New York locations giving the dreary atmosphere some dirt and grit. It's a grungy look that works. However its grim nature seems to lose out when its came down to the final chase sequence that falls into a generic climatic action cliff-hanger. The performances are one-note. Denise Coward holds her own, but I didn't find her character to be all that well written and there was real disconnect there. The predictable plot is very run-of- the-mill and the unconvincing cop (A brooding Frank Runyeon)/ victim relationship felt like nothing more than filler to the overall picture. It's somewhat unfocused, but it didn't pretend to be anything else then what it set out to be and nor did it shy away from its ugly side.
Hey look, it's Charlene Bronson!
Coventry29 March 2016
Personally, I like it a lot when filmmakers (or their marketers
) include witty and tongue-in-cheek references towards other films in their own tag line, script or dialogs. There's one small but logical condition, though, and that is that the witty reference has to make sense and hints at a suitable title! The mastermind marketers behind this "Sudden Death" clearly weren't so smart
The tag line juicily states "don't mess with this Dirty Harriet!" which obviously refers to Clint Eastwood's character and milestone thriller classic "Dirty Harry", but he was a cop! Admittedly an unorthodox and trigger-happy cop, but a cop that is still on the right side of the law. Lead actress Denise Coward – what a terrible choice of artist name, by the way – depicts a traumatized victim of an unsolved crime who turns into a violent vigilante, so instead they could easily have referred to "Death Wish" by nicknaming the character Paula Kersey or – ha! - Charlene Bronson.
Right apart from this pretty pointless intro rant, I actually haven't got much to say about this "Sudden Death". It's a very derivative, unmemorable and insipid vigilante thriller, like there were far too many of them during the first half of the eighties. It's not even remarkable that the avenging angel is a woman, since there is also Abel Ferrara's phenomenal "Ms. 45". Former miss Australia Denise Coward stars as a hard-working career woman who takes a taxi late one night in order to join her fiancé at a restaurant. Little does she know that the cab was just carjacked by a duo of sneering thugs that promptly rape the poor girl and leave her behind beaten half dead. During a slow recovery at the hospital, her fiancé encourages her to "forget" what happened while the tender macho copper Lowery informs her that the case most likely won't be solved. So what's a poor & frustrated girl to? She buys a Walther- 32, prepares a whole set of dumdum bullets and goes out to roam the streets in search of pervert, rapist pigs. She doesn't have to search very hard or long, although admittedly she poses a bit too flamboyantly as a prostitute to lure her victims. In spite of the vile subject matter, "Sudden Death" is intolerably tedious and slow- paced. The film literally drags itself from one violent execution sequence to the next with only dullness and irritating synthesizer music in between.
Right apart from this pretty pointless intro rant, I actually haven't got much to say about this "Sudden Death". It's a very derivative, unmemorable and insipid vigilante thriller, like there were far too many of them during the first half of the eighties. It's not even remarkable that the avenging angel is a woman, since there is also Abel Ferrara's phenomenal "Ms. 45". Former miss Australia Denise Coward stars as a hard-working career woman who takes a taxi late one night in order to join her fiancé at a restaurant. Little does she know that the cab was just carjacked by a duo of sneering thugs that promptly rape the poor girl and leave her behind beaten half dead. During a slow recovery at the hospital, her fiancé encourages her to "forget" what happened while the tender macho copper Lowery informs her that the case most likely won't be solved. So what's a poor & frustrated girl to? She buys a Walther- 32, prepares a whole set of dumdum bullets and goes out to roam the streets in search of pervert, rapist pigs. She doesn't have to search very hard or long, although admittedly she poses a bit too flamboyantly as a prostitute to lure her victims. In spite of the vile subject matter, "Sudden Death" is intolerably tedious and slow- paced. The film literally drags itself from one violent execution sequence to the next with only dullness and irritating synthesizer music in between.
Sudden Death is a worthy addition to the collection of vigilante/revenge movie fans.
tarbosh2200011 July 2014
Warning: Spoilers
Valarie Wells (Coward) is a successful, upper-class woman living the high life in New York City. She has a great job, a loving fiancé, and all seems to be right with the world. One day, some punks carjack a taxi and go for a joyride. Unwittingly, Valarie hails this anti-Cash Cab and is then raped and beaten by the two thugs. Thankfully, she decides to buy a gun and take the law into her own hands. Because she fashions her own "dumb dumb bullets", she becomes known in the press as "the dumb dumb killer". Detective Marty Lowery (Runyeon) is assigned to her case, but soon becomes personally interested. Will Marty get in the way of Valarie completing her revenge mission? Find out today! A low-budget, NYC-shot Death Wish (1974) clone with the former Miss Australia in the vigilante role? Sign us up! It definitely has a lot of appeal for us, and the movie does deliver what you want. It has good, gritty NYC locations, contrasted with Valarie being a classy, modern woman of the 80's - her clothes and apartment are slick and beautiful, and she even works on one of those one-color computers doing bar graphs. And naturally, she takes an aerobics class. Runyeon as Lowery strongly resembles John Stamos...with a bit of Erik Estrada thrown in for good measure. This Erik Stamos guy slurs a lot of his words and is tough to understand. But that's okay, because one of the main highlights of this film is the music...
The music is by Arthur Baker, and anyone who knows about the synth-heavy productions of the 80's knows his name. He's famous for working with New Order, and, interestingly, snippets of their song Confusion are included on the soundtrack. The electronic, neo-disco sound was huge at the time and really gives the viewer today a sense of time and place. The title song, by Bloodlines, is very catchy and completely in keeping with the spirit of everything. Baker also did the music for Beat Street (1984) and other songs on the soundtrack, such as the one by Freeez, help reinforce that street-level vibe.
Sig Shore, mainly known for being the producer of (and having a cameo in) Super Fly (1972), is the director, and, clearly in a bout of modesty, gave himself the credit "A Sig Shore Movie". You don't often see a director credit written that way. He does a competent job, providing the movie with a nice pace, and it keeps the viewers' interest over the course of its 90-minute running time.
Released on VHS by Vestron, Sudden Death is a worthy addition to the collection of vigilante/revenge movie fans (such as ourselves).
The music is by Arthur Baker, and anyone who knows about the synth-heavy productions of the 80's knows his name. He's famous for working with New Order, and, interestingly, snippets of their song Confusion are included on the soundtrack. The electronic, neo-disco sound was huge at the time and really gives the viewer today a sense of time and place. The title song, by Bloodlines, is very catchy and completely in keeping with the spirit of everything. Baker also did the music for Beat Street (1984) and other songs on the soundtrack, such as the one by Freeez, help reinforce that street-level vibe.
Sig Shore, mainly known for being the producer of (and having a cameo in) Super Fly (1972), is the director, and, clearly in a bout of modesty, gave himself the credit "A Sig Shore Movie". You don't often see a director credit written that way. He does a competent job, providing the movie with a nice pace, and it keeps the viewers' interest over the course of its 90-minute running time.
Released on VHS by Vestron, Sudden Death is a worthy addition to the collection of vigilante/revenge movie fans (such as ourselves).
Makes life in NYC look pretty scary
gnovak-230 May 2005
The film is full of sex and violence and reinforces what George Gerbner and his associates at the University of Pennsylvania claim about fictionalized TV and film violence leading us into a "Mean World Syndrome" perception of reality. New York City comes off looking pretty terrible and the males who inhabit it even worse. They are all thugs and sex-starved beasts who live only to drink and attack women. It's not a pretty place to be. The plot is a mirror image of the Bronson "Death Wish" films, but with a female vigilante who goes out to exact revenge on her rapist attackers. It also parallels "Sudden Impact" very strongly. Hence the title "Sudden Death." Poor acting and uninspired editing, but the film accomplishes its mission: to make us angry and retaliatory and vindictive. It is full of action and punks whom we are happy to see extinguished. Recommended to those who love vigilante movies and can suspend disbelief in many instances during this 90 minute get-even flick.
Weak female vigilante entry
lor_23 February 2023
My review was written in September 1985 after watching the movie at a Midtown Manhattan screening room.
"Sudden Death" is an unimpressive thriller likely to get okay playoff on the action circuit by virtue of its femme vigilante theme. Filmmaker Sig Shore (best-known as producer of the WB hit "Superfly") has put together commercial elements, but directed them flatly.
Denise Coward (a former Miss Australia beauty contest winner), toplines as Valarie Wells, a New York City rape victim who buys a gun, and not unlike the Charles Bronson in "Death Wish" archetype, starts hanging around in sleazy locations. Sure enough, other men try to assault her with fatal results.
Her businessman boyfriend Herbert (Robert Trumbull) is patronizing, thereby alienating her affections which are transferred to the cop on the case. Det. Lowery (Frank Runyeon). Quite improbably, when Lowery discovers she is what the press had dubbed The Dum-Dum Killer (after the lethal bullets she uses), he jumps in bed with her and later successfully covers up her guilt when closing both cases.
Low-budgeter suffers from a paucity of action, with a lengthy final reel foot chase by Lowery after the rapist that is thoroughly unexciting. Coward is a looker, but her impassive, expressionless acting wins little audience sympathy. Runyeon, a tv soap opera star, looks uncomfortable in action scenes.
Though advertised as "the first female vigilante", pic actually suffers by comparison to its more stylish forerunners, "Ms. 45" and "Alley Cat". Tech credits are okay, with an emphasis on exploding blood packs in the various victims.
"Sudden Death" is an unimpressive thriller likely to get okay playoff on the action circuit by virtue of its femme vigilante theme. Filmmaker Sig Shore (best-known as producer of the WB hit "Superfly") has put together commercial elements, but directed them flatly.
Denise Coward (a former Miss Australia beauty contest winner), toplines as Valarie Wells, a New York City rape victim who buys a gun, and not unlike the Charles Bronson in "Death Wish" archetype, starts hanging around in sleazy locations. Sure enough, other men try to assault her with fatal results.
Her businessman boyfriend Herbert (Robert Trumbull) is patronizing, thereby alienating her affections which are transferred to the cop on the case. Det. Lowery (Frank Runyeon). Quite improbably, when Lowery discovers she is what the press had dubbed The Dum-Dum Killer (after the lethal bullets she uses), he jumps in bed with her and later successfully covers up her guilt when closing both cases.
Low-budgeter suffers from a paucity of action, with a lengthy final reel foot chase by Lowery after the rapist that is thoroughly unexciting. Coward is a looker, but her impassive, expressionless acting wins little audience sympathy. Runyeon, a tv soap opera star, looks uncomfortable in action scenes.
Though advertised as "the first female vigilante", pic actually suffers by comparison to its more stylish forerunners, "Ms. 45" and "Alley Cat". Tech credits are okay, with an emphasis on exploding blood packs in the various victims.
Nothing special here
searchanddestroy-15 September 2011
Warning: Spoilers
One more vigilante movie, but far from DEATH WISH, MS 45 or Neill Jordan's BRAVE ONE. In this late film, we watch the scheme of an urban housewife whom husband is killed by thugs and goes on rampage, as Charles Bronson in Michael Winner's most famous film. This movie, starring Jodie Foster, was very interesting because we could assist to a mutation, a gentle, ordinary woman who became a cold blooded killer. The character was very described. And when we watch SUDDEN DEATH, we never find the same scheme. It's a lousy film, certainly made for video release or network airing. The way of filming, the score, actors playing, every thing.
The only good point is when the lead is at the hospital, after the assault she was victim of, her face seems really damaged, in a realistic way. I am sure that in another feature, even a major one, with great stars, this sequence would have not been so close to actual wounds. The making up is here very well done. Surprising for such a corny movie...
But forget the rest of this film. Nothing new, except an acceptable time waster.
The only good point is when the lead is at the hospital, after the assault she was victim of, her face seems really damaged, in a realistic way. I am sure that in another feature, even a major one, with great stars, this sequence would have not been so close to actual wounds. The making up is here very well done. Surprising for such a corny movie...
But forget the rest of this film. Nothing new, except an acceptable time waster.
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