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This article was published 08/04/2010 (5630 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Bitch Slap

THE best part of this unapologetically lurid modern-day B-movie is the opening credit sequence, which lifts snippets from a dozen or so exploitation movies of the past few decades, including such female-empowerment gems as The Great Texas Dynamite Chase, They Call Her One-Eye and Coffy. Visually sifting through all these tawdry delights, alert viewers will notice a bit from the Russ Meyer classic Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, this movie’s specific progenitor.

It’s about three women, including a cleavage-baring psychotic lesbian, seeking treasure in a godforsaken desert abode. Sound familiar?

Hel (Erin Cummings), clad in a pervert’s notion of “successful businesswoman,” arrives on the scene with luscious, dopey, soft-hearted stripper Trixie (Saskatchewan’s own Julia Voth) and Camero (America Olivo), the aforementioned Sapphic psycho, newly sprung from prison. They’re seeking a fortune in diamonds presumed to be in the possession of the sleazy underworld mastermind Gage (Michael Hurst).

But a series of flashbacks reveals that there’s more to this heist than just diamonds

Director Rick Jacobson, a veteran of the Roger Corman school of quick-and-dirty cinema, amps up that threadbare premise with big firepower and outré green-screen visual effects. In apparent tribute to Meyer, he also photographs women with an unerringly smutty point of view. (In this movie, a beautiful woman exiting a car is treated as a momentous event on par with a black monolith being discovered on the moon.)

Alas, he lacks Meyer’s inspired lunacy. Jacobson has actresses who can actually act, tons of visual effects, good-natured semi-name stars willing to do cameos (including Xena stars Lucy Lawless and Renee O’Connor as a pair of nuns), yet his movie still comes off as more a fanboy tribute to Meyer than a worthy entity unto itself.

The DVD has no extras whatsoever. ‘Ö’Ö1/2

Bullshot

THE likely reason this 1983 Brit comedy didn’t get much attention (and by attention, I mean any kind of theatrical release on this side of the Atlantic) is that it’s a parody of a genre and style presumed dead decades earlier.

The buffoonish, can-do hero Bullshot Crummond (Alan Shearman) is a warped reflection of Bulldog Drummond, a pre-James Bond English sleuth who tracked criminals and rescued damsels in the days when the sun never set on the British Empire and literary heroes could be as racist and chauvinistic as they pleased.

Crummond is called to the aid of lisping blond Rosemary Fenton (Diz White), whose scientist dad has been kidnapped by Crummond’s Second World War nemesis Count Otto van Bruno (Ron House).

The satire is dated too: Crummond’s assertion that a woman should never be allowed to govern a country is a shot at then-PM Margaret Thatcher.

But while the Bulldog Drummond stories may be worthy of abuse, the movie actually succeeds as an entertainment by replicating their charm, with its breathless pace, its outsize characters (watch for bit parts by Billy Connolly and Mel Smith) and its gently naughty humour. ‘Ö’Ö’Ö

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

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