It also stars Al Valetta, Seeska Vandenberg, Georgia Durante, and Jody Lee Olhava, and follows two desert worm ranchers who find themselves caught between a female death cult and the mafia over precious stolen plutonium.

[5][6] Two Death Valley worm wranglers, Ralph (Mike Cartel) and Jason (Al Valetta) secretly watch strangers bury a coffin in an empty ravine.

When the gravediggers leave, Ralph and Jason uncover the shallow grave to find a beautiful woman marked with the name "Fate" (Seeska Vandenberg) unconscious in the box.

The cult boss, Hesperia (Cindy Donlan) tells the men that Fate had been negotiating with a gunrunning cartel to help her sell something priceless (referred to as platinum) on the world market for a fee, but was instead betrayed.

The unfinished second draft of Runaway Nightmare was rushed into production by Mike Cartel[7][8] after having taken over direction of his ailing film project Bitter Heritage[9] in late 1978.

After a horrific three-week schedule,[12] Cartel was unsatisfied with the coverage (while editing himself) and started shooting on weekends with a skeleton crew, cheap Friday-Monday rentals, scratch track sound, staged from his own home studio with movable sets and unpaid or deferment-paid actors while going without insurance or permits.

[3][22][23][24] A film restoration and distribution company, Vinegar Syndrome,[25] approached Cartel in 2013 regarding his possible interest in a modern "director's cut" (without the bizarre nudity) release of Runaway Nightmare in several forms of media.

[30][31][32][33][34][5] Joe Yanick of Diabolique Magazine called the film "an enigma; a sexploitation without the nudity; a rare hybrid quasi-exploitative-horror-comedy-western-noir that has been salvaged from the past [...] let yourself go and have some fun.