Grindhouse cinema
Exploitation films
B-movies
All of the above is what Bitch Slap is: a throwback to the delightfully lurid and vulgar films of yesteryear when a good rack and a bunch of bullets was all you needed on screen.
Three delicious dames are digging in the desert looking for danger. Hel, Camero and Trixie are three boobtastic babes with a plan to rip off the buried treasure of a mob boss, but the more time they spend digging, the more complicated things get.
Writer and director Rick Jacobson (most notably known for his time on The Legends of Hercules) knew what he wanted from this movie and knew how to get it. He wanted to spend a dime but make it look like a million bucks and did so nearly flawlessly.
HOW TO MAKE A MOVIE ON A BUDGET AS I HAVE LEARNED FROM BITCH SLAP
ACTORS
1. Hire whichever professionals you have befriended during your time in the biz (most of the bit parts are played by people who were on the set of Hercules and Xena)
2. When you have to hire someone other than friends, make sure they are unknown. Any past part bigger than a Teen Camper #3 and they may actually know what their time is worth. (Added bonus: being able to claim you "discovered" so and so.)
3. Make sure you cast a bevy of bombshells.
DIRECTOR
1. Do it yourself
WRITER
1. Do it yourself
SETS
1. Greenscreen is your friend but only to a certain extent so make sure you have ...
2. A set in the desert. Why spend money on fake cacti when the earth grows that shit for free?
PRODUCTION
1. Take all that money you saved by hiring no-names, friends, yourself, and by using the scenery God gave you and dump the rest into production values.
I'm serious, aside from the lack of celebrity, there is no real way to tell it apart from a major studio film like Planet Terror or Crank 2, because they have good lighting and REAL cameras. (I swear, the digital camera has been the death of good indie films -- any schmuck with a Best Buy giftcard can get one.) This is the beauty of the modern day B-movie: if something looks tacky, cheap, or fake, it just adds to the overall aesthetic of the feature. In Bitch Slap, you can tell which scenes have scenery done by computer, but you don't much care because it makes the film more fun.
The script is something between Sin City and an episode of the old '60s Batman TV show. It's got the kind of grit you can feel on your teeth but still manages to be silly. The dialogue can get pretty bad, but again, it is supposed to be bad, so why not run with it?
The acting suffers from the same blessing as the writing and cinematography. It's bad, but you knew going in that it wouldn't be good. Still, it is one thing to be a bad actor and another to be a good actor that has convinced you they are a bad actor. It makes their talent hard to gauge but I am willing to give these girls the benefit of the doubt, especially Erin Cummings, who played the red-headed Hel.
If you like big guns, bigger explosions and the biggest breasts, I recommend you watch Bitch Slap.
4 Stars
Also, there is totally a bunch of lesbian scenes
