Bitch Slap (2010)
Directed by Rick Jacobson
Written by Rick Jacobson
Starring Julia Voth, Erin Cummings, America Olivo
Release Date January 8th, 2010
Published August 4th, 2010
Checking the credits on Bitch Slap you find all the right credentials for a low budget exploitation flick. The director/producer worked for Roger Corman and Rob Tapert (Xena Warrior Princess) at different times in their careers. The cast includes one actress credited as Dubai Girl in Iron Man and another who starred in something called After Midnight: Life Behind Bars.
Those credits inform you well of what you are getting into in Bitch Slap a low budget girls and guns epic of exploitation badness. Accept it on those terms and enjoy, intellectualize it too much at your peril and disappointment.
Erin Cummings leads the cast of Bitch Slap as Hel, an undercover agent of some sort ostensibly seeking a diamond stash with her criminal cohorts Camero (America Olivo) and Trixie (Julia Voth) but really seeking a dangerous weapon wanted by terrorists. The three have kidnapped an arms dealer (Michael Hurst) and as we join the story they are removing him from the trunk.
The set up is terrific with each of the girls in various forms of fetish wear, high heels and fishnets for Hel, go go dancer mini-dress for Trixie and a ripped up tiny t-shirt and leather boots for Camero. They arrive in the hot, sweaty desert in a black muscle car with Camero packing heat and looking for a fight, Hel with her dominatrix carriage and Trixie perfectly bubble brained.
From there the girls engage in water fights, for no other reason than that there are buckets of water and the ladies look sexy wet and rolling around together, some lesbian groping, did I mention that all three girls are lesbians? And, eventually gunplay and one of the sickest girl on girl fight scenes in film history.
The plot is entirely unimportant, the film sets out to be exploitation and taken at that level it works as camp mindlessness and minor masturbatory fantasy for the teens who find it someday on late night cable. Bitch Slap is everything its creators set out to make and in that it works brilliantly.
One could ask about how exploitation movies fit into a more permissive modern society or, as the Los Angeles Times asked back in January during the film's modest theatrical run, wonder about whether Bitch Slap empowers or merely exploits women but such conversations are unimportant in relation such minor league ridiculousness as Bitch Slap.
The film exist solely as titillation and as such is successful, especially during the film's centerpiece a seemingly endless ultra-violent chick fight that rumbles past exploitation into a sort of fetishistic violence that will either make you laugh or, more disturbingly, turn you on.
I don't know if I was turned on by Bitch Slap, aside from how completely gorgeous the three leads are, but I definitely laughed. Bitch Slap has modest means and modest expectations and exceeds them effortlessly. For fans of Roger Corman, Russ Meyer, Sin City and Quentin Tarentino, Bitch Slap is silly fun, worthy of a rental with friends and lots of beer.
