Bitch Slap

You get a fair idea of what to expect from Bitch Slap from the opening credits which feature a quick montage of badly behaved women in films through the past eight decades including Bloody Mama, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and Coffy.

The premise of bitch slap is very simple: three scantily dressed lesbians meet up in the desert to steal $200 million worth of diamonds from a minor player in the criminal underworld. Of course, nothing goes to plan and the three girls begin bickering, fighting and have to do fend off the law when a deputy comes sniffing around.

The three women are pretty handy at defending themselves and they need every ounce of their self defence capabilities to say together and ward off the numerous members of the criminal fraternity who also have their eyes on the diamonds. Even from the title, you know this film is not going to be highbrow entertainment and it isn't, relishing in the exploitation action genre. The exploitation aesthetic works very well and even goes so far as to cast Lucy Lawless, Renée O'Connor, Kevin Sorbo, and Mike Hurst. These three actors are all based in New Zealand and Rick Jacobson learnt his trade in the land of the long white cloud working on Xena: Warrior Princess and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.

Bitch Slap is set in the here and now but keeps flipping back in time to give the characters back stories and set up some of the relationships and how the whole deal came about. It is clearly influenced by Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and there is a large degree of that film here with the three women in the desert who are all hyper-sexed, violent and lawless. It is not as professionally made as Russ Meyer's camp classic, which was a great example in camera placement and editing, but there is a great deal of skill on show.


If you want a quick slice of exploitation action drama and don't to want to think about events too much this is a film will check all those boxes. The three leads (Julia Voth, Erin Cummings and America Olivo) do a fantastic job with both the dialogue and the physical scenes. The supporting cast are also very good and the press release unsurprisingly picks out Zoe Bell for special mention due to her increasing visibility - she is no longer simply a stunt woman but is Quentin Tarantino's stunt woman of choice and had a role in Death Proof. She is good both on screen in a small role and offscreen, preparing the women for their fight scenes and helping choreograph the action sequences.

Some of the dialogue is quite funny and it keeps that low budget B-movie feel even if the visuals are a lot glossier than the films which it references. All in all, this is a fun and entertaining movie that doesn't require you to think too much just to enjoy the action and the fight scenes, gunplay and numerous cleavage shots! As B-movie schlock goes, it's highly entertaining and knows exactly what it want to be.

The Disc

Extra Features
Aside from the trailer, the only feature is Behind Bitch Slap: Building a Better B-Movie and as it clocks in at 94 minutes, it's unsurprising that there aren't any other special features. It is a lengthy behind-the-scenes piece containing interviews with all of the members of the cast and crew, showing the hardships of filming in the desert which wasn't a gloriously hot and enjoyable shoot, but a hard time for everyone involved due to the high winds and low temperatures; it was not the best time to wear skimpy clothes! You also get footage of the table read, the green screen work and the fight rehearsals. As far as behind the scenes featurettes go, this is a thoroughly revealing and informative offering which puts some of the extra features on big budget films to shame.


The Picture
Bitch Slap has two very different looks with the scenes shot in the desert having a much more rough and ready visual sense than the flashback scenes which were all shot on green screen so have an obvious artificial look. This mix of the real and artificial works very well and the quality is consistently good with plenty of detail and good colour and contrast.

The Sound
The Dolby Digital 5.1 surround track gives you clear dialogue from the centre speaker and wind and music from the surround speakers which are heavily used throughout. I'm not sure if the rear surrounds needed to be as heavily employed as they were; several scenes have sound blaring from behind you throughout but the dialogue is still clear and it does show how loud the environment is supposed to be.


Final Thoughts
Bitch Slap is designed to be an exploitation B-movie so was never going to be recognised as a classic film but I doubt that people will be talking about it in years to come as they do with Russ Meyer's films. Only time will tell whether Rick Jacobson goes on to become a distinguished director or whether he sticks to this kind of film which wouldn't be a bad thing at all. As a debut feature, this is fun, enjoyable and fairly disposable which is what I expected and exactly what I got. It is fairly shallow fare, but there is no denying that it's enjoyable.