Bikini Chain Gang (2005)

Directed by Fred Olen Ray
Starring Beverly Lynne. Nicole Sheridan, Belinda Gavin
Unrated
USA

"My mom's in an iron lung. It's a used iron lung. It's like a, it's a one lung iron lung. But it's better than nothing."

Fred Olen Ray is the reigning king, the Grand Poobah, the Superboss of the bikini movie. I suppose he's the reigning king of many micro-genres, really: hookers-with-chainsaws, brain leeches, teenage cavegirls, pre-adolescent Frankensteins, etc. - but the bikini movie is clearly his passion. Not only is the sheer amount of bikini movies he's made impressive (13 and counting), so is all the different directions he's taken girls-in-bikinis, from space (Bikini Girls From the Lost Planet) to the high seas (Bikini Pirates) and even, as we'll see here, to jail.

I should tell you from the outset that this is one of Fred's less involving bikini titles. He didn't really try that hard with this one. The plot is sliver-thin and would not fill three pages in a comic book, never mind a screenplay, so large chunks of screen time are taken up by softcore humping. Softcore sex, in case we have not addressed this topic yet, is what 14 year old boys masturbate to when they can't get their hands on real pornography. At least, that's the role it served in the 80's, when data-mountains of uncut, hardcore porn were not available at our fingertips via the world wide web. So what is all this genital-free fucking doing in a movie lensed in 2005? Padding the running time, clearly.

Speak of the devil: we open with a good ten-minutes of "jailhouse" lesbo groping from Marcy (Cathouse regular Brooke Taylor) and Chilly (porn star Jassie). The fun ends when the monstrous Matron Togar (goofy blonde pornstress Nicole Sheridan in scene-gulping mode) shows up, banishing Chilly back to her cell, but keeping Marcy around to lick her boots. Cut to:

Cheeseball bar scene. Former NFL cheerleader turned late-nite cable cult-star Beverly Lynne is our put-upon heroine, Jessie. She's got a terrible waitressing gig at a divebar owned by a grabby creep, Mr. Arst (Don Donason). One night Arst corners her in the bathroom, demanding a blowjob. When she refuses, they start to scuffle. Meanwhile, at the bar, the Living Dead Bandit - a dude in a black and white wrestling mask - shows up brandishing a gun. He starts gathering up the evening's loot right when Jessie noisily bursts out of the bathroom. He decides to take her hostage, but then a bumbling, donut-chomping detective (Peter Spellos) walks in, and the bandit gets away. But, you know, the detective doesn't want to leave empty handed, so he just takes Jessie, and she ends up getting five years in jail - without a trial - for robbing the bar. Even though it's clear she did not. Justice is swift and cruel in the Bikini World, Jack.

After a bumpy ride in a plain white van, Jessie meets the eccentric warden Kendrick (Jay Richardson) in his office, which just happens to be festooned with props from Fred Olen Ray movies. Being the compassionate (and apparently fun-loving) type, Kendrick has a surprise for Jessie before dumping her into her cell: a short visit with her boyfriend Tommy (porn stud Evan Stone). He even leaves the room so the two can fake-fuck for ten minutes. After the lovin', snarly Togar shows up and drags her to her cell, whispering sweet-nothings in her ear along the way.

"I can be very understanding if you need a soft thigh to cry on," she coos.

Jessie gets tossed into a cell with Taffy Manson (Belinda Gavin), a smeary-eyed, pig-tailed Butch who tells her she's in for killing her boyfriend with a sledgehammer.
"Whoa," says Jessie. "That's rough."
"Yeah," Taffy agrees, "That thing weighed a fuckin' ton."

Later on, Taffy, Chilly, and the guard fuck in the locker room. There's only like seven people in the whole movie, so everybody has to have sex at some point. Also the Living Dead Bandit is lurking around inside the prison, which greatly reduces the guesswork as to his secret identity.

Since the movie is, after all, called Bikini Chain Gang, they do eventually dress the prisoners (all four of them) in bikinis and send them out to break rocks in the hot sun. But when Togar fucks the guard in the white van, the girls decide to make a break for it. Taffy and Jessie escape from the chain gang and take off as fast as two girls in bikinis who are shackled together by the ankles possibly can. They find an empty barn and sneak in. Taffy, being the crafty type, hatches an ingenious plan to unloose them from their ankle-cuffs: she hits them with a rock until they come off. Meanwhile Togar, the warden, and Tommy (now sniffing on the ground like a bloodhound, for some reason) are all hot on their tails.

Leo-the-prison guard (the singularly named Voodoo) shows up and Taffy konks him on the head. She takes his cell phone and goes outside to call a getaway car. She instructs Jessie to keep an eye on Leo, but she ends up soft-fucking him instead, while sheep mewl (or whatever they do) and birds chirp in the background.

Outside, Taffy has a heated conversation on the phone.
"This is very important," she says, "So you're going to want to write this down."
And then she starts ordering a pizza.

Tommy shows up out of nowhere and demands to see Jessie. Taffy walks into the barn with Tommy behind her...except now it's the Living Dead Bandit! Holy smokes. Is Tommy really the bandit? Yes. Yes he is. Tommy's got a diabolical plan to pin all his crimes on Jessie, but will he get away with it, or will Togar show up to save the day/kill them all?

Well, it'll be one or the other, that's for sure. Also, there's pizza.

Watching porn stars attempt to act is always pretty amusing, and that's certainly true here. However, if you yank out the ho-hum soft-sex scenes, the actual movie is only like, 10 minutes long. Maybe I've gone fuckin' crazy, but I'd rather watch another hour's worth of Sheridan's loony Wendy O Williams imitation or Gavin's wisecracking psycho than another phony blowjob scene from Jassie, especially since I can download a real Jassie blowjob clip (and much, much worse) with little to no effort. So I guess what I'm saying here is less sex, more story, please. And that is most certainly a first from me.

Availability: Bikini Chain Gang is available on DVD.

- Ken McIntyre