Bitch Slap (2010)

Before I review Bitch Slap, a film that claims to be a throwback to the days of sleazy exploitation cinema, let’s pause for a moment and discuss lap dances. Female readers, please bear with me.

There are two kinds of lap dances, you see, each with their own rewards and pitfalls. The first kind of lap dance is the one most often witnessed in Hollywood movies, where the dancer (or “pole technician” if you will) engages in close personal contact with the customer. Flesh is rubbed, sweat intermingles, and blood flows to all the appropriate erogenous zones. While it’s hands down the most physically gratifying, it does come with a few drawbacks. First, you might find yourself arrested if touching the dancer violates any local ordinance and an undercover cop happens to be eyeing you. Second, coming home smelling like perfume is bound to draw at least a few questions from the significant other.

The second type is the air dance. In this version, Ferrari (or whatever your dancer of choice is named) stays a minimum distance away from you while performing her erotic gyrations. There’s plenty of teasing and knowing eye contact going on, but no form of payoff is achieved. You still get your dance, but the word “lap” never enters into the equation.

Bitch Slap is the latter.

The film begins in the desert, with a beautiful and wounded woman–soon to be introduced as Trixie–lying in a burning heap of rubble. She wonders aloud how it all came to this, and the movie promptly launches into the first of innumerable flashbacks.

From there, we’re introduced to our three female leads. In case you’re keeping score at home, they are:

• Hel (Erin Cummings) – A red-headed bombshell and the brains of the trio. Bisexual.
• Trixie (Julia Voth) – A dimwitted-yet-sweet stripper with the power to charm members of both genders with her yummy bod. At one point, golden light even emanates from her nether region like the suitcase from Pulp Fiction. Bisexual.
• Camero (America Olivo) – A pill-popping psycho with an itchy trigger finger and head-turning cleavage. You know she’s the muscle of the trio because she has “Pain” tattooed on her right knuckles. Bisexual or, at the very least, lesbian.

The ladies are searching for something in the sweltering heat of the desert, although the specifics remain cloudy at first. After fishing underworld boss Gage (Michael Hurst from TV’s Hercules) out of their trunk and interrogating him, we also learn that (a) someone may be in pursuit of our heroines, and (b) each woman has secrets of her own. But don’t worry about a lack of exposition, as it’s layered on in excruciating detail between scenes of meaningless gunplay, explosions, and slow-motion gyrations.

Bitch Slap has promise, with the opening credits showing various film clips of women snorting coke, firing guns, brawling, and generally acting like hellcats. “Casting” has even been replaced in the opening by “Casting Couch,” so it’s more than enough to make male viewers sit up and take notice. And did I mention the gun-toting punk with Tourette’s syndrome (William Gregory Lee) and his lollipop-sucking Asian schoolgirl partner, Kinki (Minae Noji)? Or how about the sound effect of a cat meowing when a woman gets punched in the vagina?

But it’s all downhill from there. The weak plot reminds me of a third-grader trying to write a remake of The Usual Suspects and failing miserably, especially with all the attention paid to a legendary underworld figure named Pinky. And while the dialogue was no doubt meant to be campy, it lacks any real semblance of humor. Here are a few examples of what I’m talking about:

• “So long, limp dick.”
• “She’s black hair, blonde box.”
• “Another one of his slutty slop buckets looking to get worked like a rented mule.”
• “Plumbing the depths of cooter-licious.”

And don’t forget about characters who are insulted with such barbs as “Blow White” and “Gland Canyon.” If any of the above sounds clever to you, then knock yourself out. Otherwise, you may wish that screenwriters Rick Jacobson and Eric Gruendemann would head back to Amazon and purchase a few more books on how to compose a cinematic narrative.

To demonstrate that he’s a double-threat when it comes to ruining a film, Rick Jacobson also puts on his directing cap and dazzles the viewer with an orgy of visual effects, slo-mo, and freeze frames. He’s like a kid with a new toy, and he’s going to play with the damned thing until it falls apart. Only cinematographer Stuart Asbjornsen makes it out of this mess unscathed, giving the production a distinctive, sepia-toned appearance that makes Bitch Slap look far better than it deserved.

With such pitiful dialogue to work with, it’s hard to gauge if any of the actors can actually, well, act. Half the cast of Hercules and Xena puts in an appearance, and even stuntwoman Zoe Bell (Xena, Death Proof) gets in on the action. It was nice to see all the familiar faces, but I just wish it had been in something better. The three leads are undoubtedly beautiful, and Olivo is my personal pick as the next Wonder Woman, but there’s not much to hold our interest other than their toned bodies.

And speaking of bodies, that brings me to the biggest problem with Bitch Slap: there’s no nudity to be found among the principle cast members, and only a few seconds in the whole film. This puzzles me, as Olivo has both appeared in Playboy and bared her breasts for last year’s Friday the 13th reboot. Sure, there’s an endless amount of slow motion scenes where women bend over and douse each other with water, but the promotion makes such a big deal out of the film’s wild nature that I couldn’t help but feel cheated. It’s like advertising lap dances and then handing out less-than-spectacular air dances.

If you’re a fan of movie train wrecks, then Bitch Slap may have some morbid appeal. Otherwise, you’re better off searching Wikipedia or IMDB and catching these lovely ladies in something else. And if you’re really serious about exploitation, check out the works of Russ Meyer, a filmmaker who actually delivered what he promised.

(Amazon has loads of exploitation films for purchase, and buying one via our link gives us a small commission. All proceeds go right back into the website, and it doesn’t affect your final price one bit.)