Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity (1987)

Directed by Ken Dixon
Starring Elizabeth Kaitan, Cindy Beal, Brinke Stevens
Rated R
USA

"Something tells me there's more in this jungle than meets the eye."

First of all, we're going to need to issue an All Points Bulletin for director Ken Dixon. Where could this fever-dream visionary be? Mr. Dixon had his hand in soft-X back in the 70's (Erotic Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, 1975), but is most well-known for a quadrilogy of truly epic clip-comps: The Best of Sex and Violence (1981), Famous T&A (1982), Filmgore (1983), and Zombiethon (1986). All four are must-have collections of best-bits from 70's and 80's grindhouse flicks that anticipated YouTube's only-the-good-parts approach 20 years ahead of their time. Slave Girls was Dixon's only narrative feature of the 80's, and his trail, shockingly, runs cold from there. So if anybody's seen him, please tell him to call/write immediately. Because we have a lot of questions about this one.

Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity arrived smack-dab in the middle of a dizzying wave of post-apoc/space opera/sexploitation mash-ups that blew minds and dampened crotches for much of the mid 80's. Other notable titles in the cycle include Robot Holocaust (1986), Roller Blade (1986), Hell Comes to Frogtown (1987), and Creepozoids (1987). I'm pretty sure every movie in this micro-genre utilized the same Corman knock-off sets and the same leather bikinis, because they all start to blur into one hallucinogenic gang-bang of tits, robots, and laser-blasts after awhile. Slave Girls has all of those in abundance, and may very well be the apex of 80's Leather Bikini Cinema.

The film opens with a hot, big-titted blonde in a leather cave-girl outfit running, barefoot, through some underbrush.

A mutant - he looks like the Gwar dude with an octopus on his head and a hookah attached to his arm - lumbers awkwardly behind her, in not-so-hot pursuit. He shoots purple lasers at her, but is zapped (with blue lasers) by a dude with a crossbow.

Cut to: Slave ship in outer space. Daria (Elizabeth Kaitain) is in some sort of dank pit, chained to the floor. She tugs on her shackles, trying in vain to pull them loose.
"Don't bother," says Tisa (Cindy Beal), the other hot blonde in cavegirl leather chained to the floor, "I've already tried. The only chance we've got is no chance at all."

Determined, Daria eventually yanks her chain right out of the floor, than helps Tisa pull hers out as well. Daria tells her that all they need to do is "reverse the polarity" on the cell's lock, and they can escape. Then they can take over the ship. She's a very industrious slave girl. They reverse the polarity, climb out of the cell, bash the guards with pipes, and goddamn it, they take over the ship and fly the fuck out of there.

A word about Elizabeth Kaitain, before we continue. One of the more memorable shlock-queens of the 80's, Liz was a European import known both for her exquisite beauty and her earnest acting style. It did not matter how stupid the scripts got, she'd play them straight, as if irony was for lesser actresses than herself.

While it is impressive to watch someone act their hearts out, she needn't have bothered. Every film she was in required skimpy outfits that emphasized the almost impossible roundness of her breasts and ass, so who, I ask you, was paying attention to her acting? Still, she gave it her all, and for that - and for the cleavage - she deserves a round of applause. Her last film was the Gary Graver directed Veronica 2030 in 1999. She apparently got married and quit the biz soon after. We miss her. And not just parts of her, either.

Anyway, back to the space madness. The girls zip around space for awhile and then end up in a tractor beam which crash-lands them on a mysterious planet. Daria wakes up on the beach and notices a clunky robot staring at her. She follows him to a castle with animal heads and zebra-skin rugs on the walls.

Zed (Don Scribner), a Christian Bale-looking dude with greased-back hair and tight leather pants dramatically descends a staircase and introduces himself. Tisa's already there, and Zed's got a dinner party planned. Turns out he's got a whole bunch of 'guests' who have 'accidentally' crash-landed on his planet. He gives Daria a slinky black dress to wear, and she cleans up nicely.

They go downstairs and meet the other guests - wiseguy Rik (Carl Horner) and his sister Shala (Brinke Stevens). Shala informs Daria that their ship is being 'worked on', and they won't be able to get off the planet/island/jungle-bound fortress/whatever it is until it's fixed. Zed starts yapping about how awesome hunting is, which creeps everybody out a bit. There's taxidermied animals all over the place, so he apparently does a lot of it. Rik asks Daria if she wants to go for some air. She agrees, and they walk approximately 10 feet to the other side of the room and start gossiping about Zed.

Rik tells Daria that there were originally four people in their group, but that Zed took the pilot and the navigator into the 'trophy room' (a large door that appears to be covered in black contact paper), and they were never seen from again. He also says that he knows the ship has already been fixed, but Zed's lying to them about it, because he wants to keep them around to hunt them.

Everybody retires for the evening, but Daria is woken by sounds of lasers and a man screaming. She hears someone rushing towards her room and picks up a vase to bonk the intruder with, but it turns out to be Rik. He tells her Shala is missing, and he thinks Zed has taken her to the 'trophy room'. They slink downstairs to investigate. While they walk around, a bassoon plays on the soundtrack. You don't hear that everyday.

Despite being the secret, forbidden room, they manage to walk right in and search the joint. There's a bone throne in there and more dead animals on the walls. Tisa's Scooby-Dooing around in there, as well. She's wearing fetching white lingerie at this point. Says she snuck into his room and stole the key, which explains why the door was open. Daria asks what's down an unseen corridor, and Tisa says "He's got an escape hatch stashed back there." Rik wants to jump down it and bail, but Daria won't leave without Shala. They hear Zed coming back from the jungle with his robots, and scurry back upstairs.

Zed's robots dump a bloody sheet on the floor, and Zed picks up a dude's severed head. Tonight's trophy, apparently. Meanwhile Daria starts barking orders for the escape plan, which involves her and Rik going outside and booby-trapping the jungle. Or something. She talks an awful lot, this one.

So, Zed has Shala chained to a wall. Then, as far as I can tell, he strips her, shackles her to a slab, and then rapes her. Afterward, his robot gives him a back massage.

While he enjoys a post forced-coital smoke, he tells his robot to go upstairs and make sure everybody are in their rooms. Tisa intercepts the 'bot and tells him she wants to go skinny-dipping, and he should come watch.

Despite being a robot (and a very femme-sounding one, at that), he cannot resist the allure of a naked Tisa, so he follows her out. While Tisa strips down and frolics on the beach, the other robot shows up and yells at the first one for not following orders.

Meanwhile, Rik and Daria take a little time out to fuck. When they're finished, Rik says he's the happiest guy in the world. Considering he just banged Elizabeth Kaitain in her prime, that sounds about right.

Later on, Rik gets konked on the head by one of the robots, and when he comes to, he's out in the jungle. Zed gives him a gun and tells him that it activates in ten minutes. He has to survive the night in the jungle - with Zed hunting him - to win his freedom. And so off he goes.

Almost immediately, Rik gets caught in a giant spider web, and Zed blasts him with his laser crossbow. And then the robot cuts him up into bite-sized chunks.

At some point later that evening, the girls wake up. They are all in the leather slave girl outfits and chained to the wall. Zed points out his new trophy - Rik's head. This upsets Shala quite a bit.
"There was no need for you to show her that," says Daria.

"We all have different needs," explains Zed. And then he spouts a bunch of gibberish about the meaning of life before getting to his point.
"I intend to hunt you," he hisses.
He lets all three girls loose, and tells them that there's a tower on the other side of the jungle with laser cannons that they can use against them if they can reach them. As they're about to split, he also gives them a warning: "Try not to get lost in the phantom zone."
That's always good advice, really.

Shala wants to just wait in the bushes for Zed to show up so she can stab him, but bossy Daria makes them trudge through the jungle instead. She entrusts Tisa to hold the map. Tisa shoves it into her bikini top, and when Daria asks for it later, Tisa realizes she dropped it somewhere along the way.
"I should have known better," says Diara, staring at Tisa's tiny tits. "I should have just held it myself."
So that was pretty mean.

Jungle hijinks ensue. Poor Shala gets crossbowed to death - does Brinke Stevens ever catch a break in these movies? - and Zed gets a spike through the leg, which at least slows him down. Daria and Tisa make it to the laser-cannon tower and try to figure out how to get in. Daria says something about "the other panel must be adjacent to this one", which made me laugh. Slave girls from outer space say 'adjacent'? Anyway, it works, and they make it inside. When they get in there, there's a lot of smoke, and their voices echo.

"This must be the phantom zone Zed warned us about," Daria points out.
"I get the feeling the normal laws of time and space no longer apply."

Then they both get attacked by dudes in chintzy zombie masks. And then one of those mutant fuckers from the beginning shows up and attacks Tisa.

But by this point, Daria 's got the laser cannon, and all hell breaks loose.

Turns out, though, that the girls aren't so good at wielding laser cannons. Tisa gets caught and nearly raped by Zed back at the castle before Daria shows up wearing armor and a brandishing a shield and sword. Can our plucky, leather-bikini clad warrior-women defeat this evil monster, his robot henchmen, and that mutant dude and blast off this accursed planet/island/b-movie set?


Clearly, that's for me to know and you to find out.

Although there are no truly jaw-dropping scenes in Slave Girls, it is nonetheless a joy to watch from the first frame to the last. Part of this is due to Tom Callaway's cinematography. It's as if he wasn't actually given any direction from Dixon, and so he just naturally follows Katain's mesmerizing ass wherever it wiggles. I can't think of another movie that spends so much time behind the actresses. Carl Dante's score is also amazing, a fully orchestrated wonder full of flittering flutes and flatulent tubas. It's much more ornate than need be, and the sound track is peppered with incessant 'jungle sounds' that appear to be ripped right from an old Tarzan serial. The script is a mouthful, and none of the actors ever quite come to grips with it, especially Hungarian beauty Kaitan, who is forced to spout crazy bullshit about "off-beam quadrants" every five minutes. The mutants and zombies are laughably cheap, the jungle is somebody's backyard, and the space footage is from another film entirely.

In other words, it's awesome.

Availability: Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity is available on DVD.

- Ken McIntyre

Lesbian Vampire Killers (2009)

Directed by Phil Claydon
Starring Matthew Horne, James Corden, Myanna Buring
Rated R
UK

"So, you are dumping me?"
"No. But in a sense, yes."

The title of this film is very open-ended. Are they lesbians, who are also vampires, who kill people? Or people who kill lesbian vampires? Or lesbians who kill vampires? There's a lot of possibilities here. Written by two MTV producers and clearly inspired by Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead, Lesbian Vampire Killers is a whiplash-paced British horror-com, modern in execution but thoroughly entrenched in the old-world horrors of Hammer.

The opening is a CGI-drenched prologue that looks like a parody of the Underworld films. Some time long, long ago, in the enchanted village of Craigwich, wicked, sapphic girl-demon Camilla (Silvia Colloca) steals away Nobleman McLaren's true love. Vowing revenge, he forges a mystical sword to slay her, and they do battle. He deals the death-blow, but before she is sucked into the abyss, Camilla curses the man and the wretched town he lives in: until the last of his bloodline returns, all the women of Craigwich will turn into lesbians vampires upon their 18th birthday. And then she melts.

Fast forward to the present day, where we meet shlubby nice-guy Jimmy (Matthew Horne). He is, in fact, the last of the cursed McLaren line, but he does not know this yet. All he knows is that he cannot catch a break. Judy (Lucy Gaskell), his on-again-off-again girlfriend, has just informed him that they are off again. Depressed, he hits the pub with his chubby funster bud Fletch (James Corden). Fletch has just been sacked from his party clown gig for punching a seven year old in the face.

So he's not having a great day either. Nine beers later, the two friends come to the conclusion that they should take a vacation. Jimmy hurls a wobbly dart at a map on the wall and decides that wherever it lands, they'll go. It hits a tiny town called Craigwich. Neither of them have heard of it, but what the hell.

They decide that hiking is the proper theme for this trip, so they assemble enough gear to make it look official, and head out. A train drops them off at their rural destination, and as they clomp down a muddy road to town, Jimmy gets a call on his cell phone from his tormentor Judy. Since her last stab at true love just blew up in her face, she decides to take Jimmy back - for the 8th time. Fletch is having none of it, and he gleefully smashes Jimmy's phone. This, by the way, is one of the more clever ways I've seen recently to get rid of a cell phone in a horror flick. Beats the old 'no bars' gag.

Fletch is already grousing about their choice of vacation spot, loudly complaining that there's no way there'll be any girls in this town. As if on cue, a gaggle of super-hot, alabaster-skinned lovelies pour out of a stone cottage in sexy slo-mo while Wolfmother's "Woman" (again with this song?) blares away on the soundtrack. They jump into a beat-up old VW bus and zoom off.

Lesbian Vampire Killers - Hello Ladies
by MoviesAboutGirls

It may be the single greatest hot-chicks-in-slow-motion segment I've ever seen.

The fellas head into the local pub expecting to see more buxom young ladies but are greeted instead by a roomful of grizzled old depressives. They accept a free pint and gulp it down in silence.
"I'm a bit afraid that I'm going to get raped," notes Jimmy.

Suddenly, the town's half-mad vicar (Paul McGann) bursts through the door, his beautiful 17 year daughter Rebecca (Emer Kenny) in tow. He attempts to rile the old bastards in the bar up, to convince them an insurgence of some stripe is in order - his daughter will be 18 soon, and so cursed with the lesbo disease - but the locals are having none of it. Then the vicar eyes Jimmy, and lunges at him, accusing him of some sort of devilry. The barkeep pulls him off the panicked tourist and sends the vicar on his way. Then he informs the boys that there's a rooming house down the road where they'll be able to stay the night, free of charge.
"It might be a tight squeeze though," he says. "I sent some beautiful young girls down there a few nights ago."
Jimmy is, of course, ready to bail, but Fletch wants a crack at the van full of teenage fanny, so they decided to stay the night.

They trudge down the road and are lucky enough to run into the vanload of nubiles. There's Lotte (Myanna Buring), the smart and possibly Swedish one, Anke (Louise Dylan), the, umm, red-headed one, Heidi (Tiffany Mulheron), the one-who's-always-sucking-on-a-lollipop, and Trudy (Ashley Mulheron, Tiffany's sister), the perpetually stoned, big-breasted one. Since they're all headed to the same place, the girls invite the fellas to ride along, and they drink beer, smoke weed, and make merry as they wind their way to the cottage.

Meanwhile, Judy shows up at the pub. She's determined, it seems, to get Jimmy back. The barkeep points her in the direction of the cottage, and she storms off. It's a busy night in Craigwich.

Once they get to the cottage, a dance party breaks out. Lotte chats with Jimmy about the ominous portrait of Camilla on the wall. She tells him that's why they've come to Craigwich - they're all history majors studying the myth of Camilla, and what better place than the tiny village that's supposedly cursed by the vampire queen?

At some point, Heidi announces that she has to pee, and heads to the outhouse with Anke and a flashlight. They disappear soon after. Then Trudy excuses herself to take a shower, and is unceremoniously sucked through the bathroom window by some mysterious force.
Lotte and Jimmy head outside to find out what's going on. Fletch would rather have some tea.
"Look, I know something terrible is going on," he whines, "But is there any way we can just ignore it?"

Lotte finds her friends in the woods, making bloody vampire love. Anke attacks Fletch and Lotte stakes her with a gnarled tree branch, causing her to melt into a pile of mucus. The still-breathing members of the party make a run for it.

Heidi cuts them off before they can make it into the cottage, but Fletch manages to knock her head off with a frying pan and they run inside, bolting the door behind them. Lotte starts gathering stake-like hunks of wood to finish off the remaining vamps, but things suddenly get more complicated when a sexed-up, lingerie-clad Judy shows up at the door.


Jimmy lets her in, of course. Not only does this piss Lotte off - she's a virgin, waiting for the right guy, and she's just decided said guy was Jimmy - but, you know, it's never a good idea to invite people in when vampires are about. That's the only way they can get into your house!

So, they've got that to deal with. And then Jimmy accidentally lets the rest of the lesbo-vamps in, as well. Lotte and Jim fall under the vampires' spell and are whisked away to god-knows-where.

Meanwhile, Fletch is in the bathroom jerking off when the vicar bursts in. The two of them fight off the Trudy vamp. When it's all over, all that's left are her breasts implants. The vicar explains to Fletch that they were all sent by the barkeep as food for the vampires, but what the locals did not know is that Jimmy is the last of the cursed bloodline, and that he holds the key to lifting the curse and saving the vicar's daughter before she vamps out at midnight.

Turns out that Jimmy's blood, mixed with a virgin's - i.e. Lotte - will somehow bring back Camilla, and the vicar knows where the ancient sword that can kill her once and for all is buried. Fletch really just wants to go the fuck home, but the vic is insistent, so they bust open the tomb, and Fletch fetches the penis-shaped sword.

Takes him awhile, though, and by the time he's got it, it's already midnight. Sweet little Rebecca ain't sweet no more. So he's got that to deal with.

As you would imagine, Camilla is resurrected, and the ultimate battle between good and evil - or at least an erotically charged, semi-significant regional battle between good and evil - begins. Will Lotte and Jimmy survive, and find true love and happiness together, or will Camilla kill everybody, and rule an empire of gorgeous, wicked, blood-sucking lesbians? Personally, I'd be into the latter, but you know how these kinda movies usually go.

Fast-paced, witty, and with a seemingly endless well of gorgeous women, Lesbian Vampire Killers is sure to become a cult hit. Of course, it does have its problems. For one thing, it shamelessly dips into the Shaun of the Dead well for inspiration. Jimmy and Fletch are carbon copies of Shaun and Ed, and the spastic editing is pure Edgar Wright. Also, for a movie called Lesbian Vampire Killers, there is surprisingly little girl-on-girl action involved. Clearly, the filmmakers were influenced by seminal Sapphic 70's horrors like Vampyros Lesbos and Vampyres, and those films were pretty wall-to-wall in the lesbo love-making department, so why skimp on the skin when you've gone this far?

Still, despite the dearth of softcore sleaze, this is an easy recommendation. Boners will be popped, and funny bones will be tickled. The ending sets things up for a sequel, so let's hope this is not the last we'll see of Shaun...err, Jimmy and company. Lesbian vampires never get old, man. No pun intended.

Link: Official website
Clip: Official trailer!

- Ken McIntyre

Bikini Bloodbath (2006)

Directed by Jonathan Gorman, Thomas Edward Seymour
Starring Leah Ford, Debbie Rochon, Carmine Capobianco
Unrated
USA

"I can't find the fruity shit."

Bikini Bloodbath could, for all intents and purposes, call itself Slumber Party Massacre 4 and get away with it. It's got all the elements: a clutch of attractive high school girls (including one plucky self-starter and one weird-girl-who-nobody-likes), a fetish-y killer, a ridiculous red herring, and, most importantly, shower scenes and an all-girl party. This particular get-together is a bikini-only affair, mostly to justify the title. Also like the '82 film, Bloodbath is a slasher movie and a send-up of the genre at the same time. They're both low budget - although this one could be more accurately labeled 'no budget' - and feature a handful of first-time actors. The difference? Slumber Party Massacre had a little forethought. Bikini Bloodbath is a let's-get-drunk-and-make-a-movie sort of affair.

White Liger - a real band, sorta - blasts away on the soundtrack as our plucky young protagonist Jenny (Leah Ford, sporting an awesome Stephanie Fondue/Cherie Curie/Tegan & Sara-esque girl-mullet) wakes up, shows off her teacup titties, and starts her day. She heads to school where she meets up with her gang of hussies and mean girls. Lucky for us, we meet them all on gym day.

They play volleyball in tight shorts, while their self-hating lesbian gym teacher Miss Johnson (Debbie Rochon) occasionally molests them. They mostly seem to like it though, so no harm done.

After the game (they are all quite terrible at volleyball, by the way), they take a shower and discuss the big party at Jenny's house. All the girls are invited except, of course, for Suzi (the impressively curvy Sheri Bomb), the resident ick-girl. After they towel off, the girls run into the football team. They've heard about the girls' party, and they are unimpressed.
"We're throwing our own party," says one of the jocks. "Guys only. We're gonna have balloons."

By the way, just so you don't get confused, most of the characters in this film wear t-shirts that identify who they are. Rochon's reads "Gym Teacher". Everybody on the football team have "Football Player" shirts. Etc. It's actually very handy. Life would be simpler if we made this mandatory.

Oh yeah, we're supposed to get a bloodbath going, right? There's a mad chef on the loose - with his scraggly orange goatee, he actually looks more like the bass player in a stoner rock band, but whatever - who skulks around the neighborhood, occasionally slicing open a local with his pear-knife. The crazed psycho-chef slashes his way through a succession of victims, including one of the volleyball girls, a cheeseburger-obsessed bum, and then poor, horny Miss Johnson. This is generally accomplished via one of those dimestore retracting knives and what seriously looks like ketchup. Maybe it's funnier that way?

Cut to: Jenny and Sharon (Anna-Karin Eskilsson) buyin' stuff for the party. The girls run into Suzy while they're in the grocery store. She tries to invite herself to their party, but is soundly rebuffed. We so far have no reason why the girls detest her so much. She does have bigger tits than the rest of them. Maybe that's it?

While the girls are unpacking their groceries, they hear a strange noise outside. They go out to investigate, only to find a blood-splattered chef in their backyard. Luckily, it's not the killer, it's just their screwy next door neighbor, Mr. Robinson (Phil Hall). Seems he was making peanut butter and grape jam sandwiches, and things went awry. They shoo him away, but not before he suggests the girls take a shower together. That does sound like a good idea. And that's exactly what they do.

Later on, their friends show up and the girls have an awesome dance party. Aside from Pam's ( Dana Fay Ensalata) spastic moves, I could watch that all day.

The football team, on the other hand, sit around eating ice cream and S'mores and occasionally playing a bit of grab-ass, and Suzy - dressed casually, in skin-tight pink underwear, quietly assembles a jigsaw puzzle at home.


The boy's party quickly descends into what looks like the opening scene of a hardcore gay porn film. The boys' coach, by the way, is none other than the Galactic Gigolo himself, Carmine Capobianco!

Two of the fellas decide that the football party is getting too homoerotic for their tastes - and after reach-around Twister and talk of spin-the-bottle and "Frenching", I can see their point - so they decide to head out and see if they can wrangle some girls.

Meanwhile, after splashing bright pink slushy drinks on one another, the girls all change into bikinis. It's about fuckin' time, man. They slip into a hot tub and talk about blowjobs. Because that's what happens at these things.

Next door, Suzy hears something in the backyard and ends up stumbling into Mr. Robinson's house. She finds his headless torso at his computer desk. Panicking, she bolts out of there, but smacks into the office door and knocks herself out.

And then the dudes have a dance-off. The fat guy even does the Flashdance pull-the-chain ending.

Suzy wakes up in Mr. Robinson's house surrounded by body parts. She rushes over to the girls' house and barges in. Snotty Portia (busty Katie Gil) eyes her blood-soaked classmate and sneers.
"You look like a tampon."
"Can I have some water?" The out-of-breath Suzy asks.
"Yeah, sure. The toilet's in the bathroom."
They are very mean to Suzy.

The killer-chef finds his way into the house and starts picking them off one by one. Sharon grabs a knife and heads out to get help. She also promises to bring back tacos. A first, the remaining members of the party try to figure out a way to escape, but that proves to be too much trouble, so they down a bunch of daiquiris instead.

While all this mayhem is going on, we cut to Sharon, who is at Das Taco, quietly eating a 7-pound burrito in her blood-smeared bikini. The taco joint has a Hitler cut-out on the door, so I'm guessing it's a Nazi Taco place. Which you don't see very often.

So, you know, everybody eventually gets killed. Jenny - who we knew would be the Final Girl from the beginning, because she has the smallest boobs and shortest hair - is left to do battle with the chef in her garage. He's got a couple cleavers, she's got a rake.
"I'm gonna rake the shit outta you, Frenchy", she growls.

By the way, there's a lot of disturbing-looking stuff lying around in that garage. It was clearly not a dressed set, and was shot exactly as it usually looks, but there are literally hundreds of wire racks packed in with what looks like either a tanning bed or a casket. There's a stray wheelchair in there, too, and an old turntable with a warped record wobbling soundlessly away. Crazy.

Jenny rakes him and wanders off. The end. And then, as I fully expected, there's about ten minutes' worth of credits.

So, who was the chef? Dunno. But I bet he's into stoner rock.

It seems sorta senseless to offer criticism of a shot-on-video quickie called Bikini Bloodbath, especially since it did, pretty much, deliver on its promise. However, there is no other excuse for shoddy, Karo-syrup-splashing-on-the-wall special effects at this point except for sheer laziness. You can find budget Savini-esque solutions to your slasher movie problems within ten minutes of surfing You Tube, utilizing junk you've already got lying around the house. Clearly, realism was not Gorman and Seymour's goal, but a few reasonably effective splatter-gags would have gone a long way. The script, too, seemed to waver from witty, self-aware, pop-culture referencing black comedy to juvenile drivel, especially during the seemingly endless football party. Sure, we get the joke - flip the gender around, and you get a much different sort of movie - but that particular point is driven home in about 30 seconds. Taking half the film to prove that slasher movies look like gay porn if they star football players is a tad excessive. Also, Bikini Bloodbath does not star scream queen Debbie Rochon, despite her top-billing and prominent placement on the poster. Rochon's only in the film for 15 or so minutes, and even then, it was clearly a weird period for her. That double-chin was no special effect, man.

Ah, but these are minor quibbles in the big scheme of things, really. The fact is that there's half a dozen bouncy young girls in this movie, and they are either topless or barely clothed for most of it. When it's firing on all cylinders, it's also very funny ("I'll be out in a minute, I just gotta get rid of this boner"), and has the decency, in these busy days, to get in and out in an hour. Also, you can probably masturbate to the dance party scene. The girl's version, anyway.

Bikini Bloodbath proved enough of a success to warrant two sequels: 2008's Bikini Bloodbath Carwash, and 2009's Bikini Bloodbath Christmas. Most of the cast carry over into the other movies, despite being killed in the first one. I dunno about you, but I can't wait to see 'em.

Availability: Bikini Bloodbath is available on DVD.

Link: Bikini Bloodbath website
Clip: Official Trailer!

- Ken McIntyre

Cleopatra 2525 - The Pilot Episode (2000)

Directed by Greg Yaitanes
Starring Gina Torres, Victoria Pratt, Jennifer Sky
Unrated
USA

"Go ahead...make my day."
"....what?"

This show was fucking crazy. A jiggle TV/Sci-fi mash-up about hot pants wearing underworld rebels from the future and a catch-phrase spewing stripper from the past who team up to battle evil robot overlords - who they sometimes also have sex with - Cleopatra 2525 was a unique, audacious, and wholly ludicrous show that, in a good and noble world, would still be airing daily today. Unfortunately, it hit the airwaves just a year before September 11th, 2001, and after Armageddon came to town, nobody was interested in this frothy little cocktail. It sailed off into oblivion after just two seasons.

The brainchild of Evil Dead/Xena, Warrior Princess producer Robert G Tapert and Xena writer RJ Stewart, Cleopatra was shot in New Zealand, on Xena's sets. Its origins stretched back to 1997, when the Xena production team produced a pilot for a show called Amazon High, starring Selma Blair. Amazon High's story involved a modern-day 'valley girl' (Blair), transported back in time to the days of the "Amazon Nation"-whenever the hell that was. That particular concoction doesn't really make much sense, so I can see why they scrapped it and reworked the premise into Cleopatra 2525. I mean, a valley girl in the past? A stripper in the future is way more plausible, man.

Along with some bullshit called Jack of All Trades, Cleopatra 2525 was sold into syndication as an "Action Block" to replace the defunct Hercules series. After its first year, Jack was canceled, so the thirty-minute series was expanded into an hour to flesh out the time-slot. By that time, Cleo had built a healthy head of steam, and generated scores of fan-sites and a startling amount of sexed-up fan fiction. Many examples are still mucking up the internet as we speak. But it was never that easy to find, promotion was weak, and by the time it finally generated some buzz, the death-bell was already ringing. I personally remember seeing scintillating ads for the show, but they were sandwiched between terror alerts and Anthrax updates, so I scarcely noticed. Cleo, we hardly knew ye.

And so, here we are, nearly a decade away from the end of the world, in tech-savvy times with level-heads running the country and economic prosperity just around...well, maybe not around the corner, but possibly up the street Ok, we're broke, but everything's free on the internet, at least, so perhaps it's time to revisit this sexy little nugget of trash-TV to see what we missed out on the first time. I am merely reviewing the 21 minute pilot episode. At this point, I have no idea what happens later on in the series. So keep your spoilers to yourself. Thanks!

As the show opens, we are thrust into a post-industrial netherworld constructed of CGI and cardboard. A hot blonde in tight leather and blue mascara named Sarge (Victoria Pratt) and a gorgeous black chick in booty-shorts named Hel (Gina Torres), along with a bald, buff dude run around their ashy underworld looking for a good place to bust out. They use their laser guns to blow a hole through the roof and pile out into an idyllic field of green grass and warm sun, but their springtime frolic is cut short when a giant flying monster/robot with machine gun arms shows up and starts thrusting suggestively at them.

As said thrusts are accompanied by white-hot space-bullets, a panicked battle takes place. Our heroines manage to blow a chunk off the beast. They snatch it up and dive back underground. Catching their breath, the girls are dismayed to find that their male companion has sustained some damage, but instead of blood and torn flesh, his innards reveal charred metal and torn wires. Turns out he's a robot. An evil robot! Quick, somebody roll the opening credits.

After an awesomely atonal theme song ( a riff on Nebraskan pop duo Zager and Evans' 1969 #1 hit In the Year 2525), performed by Torres, we are back in the thick of it, with Sarge and Hel trading laser blasts with the robot-fiend. The effects are somewhere between Astro Zombies and a Sci-Fi movie-of-the-week, and the sound is obnoxiously loud. I have yet to watch this show in 5.1, but I'm pretty sure if I do, the police will show up shortly after.

Unable to defeat their metallic tormentor, the girls dive headfirst into a deep shaft, where they fall freely at a blinding speed. Luckily, Hel shoots Spiderman-like webs from her wristbands, and she breaks their fall. They duck into a corridor and assess the damage. Seems the robot has somehow trained himself on Sarge's voice, making it almost impossible to avoid him. Worst of all, Sarge has been blasted in her kidney - and she's only got one. If she doesn't get help, fast, she's a goner. By the way, Hel has a voice in her head that tells her what to do. Not sure if it's an actual person buzzing in somehow, or just some sort of Future-phrenia. Time will tell, I suppose.

Hel and a beat-up Sarge limp into a mad scientist lab run by a werewolf and a snake with arms. I know how that sounds, but that's exactly what happens.

The werewolf is doting over a curvy blonde (Jennifer Sky) wrapped in gauze. They just found her. She's been frozen for 500 years, but she's in perfect shape. Wolf and Snakey plan on using her as a sex slave. Hel barters with the wolfman to get Sarge a new kidney. He agrees to help her out for a wooden box. Wood is hard to come by in the future, especially since robot monsters own all the trees. Sarge gets placed into some sort of microwave and gets a new kidney, and while the wolf and the snake wander off to do god knows what, the bandaged blonde starts to wake up.

She immediately checks her tits. They're pretty awesome, so she breathes a sigh of relief. Then she notices where she is, and freaks out, grabbing a gun and threatening to use it - if she can figure out where the trigger is.

The girls ponder whether to just kill her - better than getting raped by a snake with arms - but after the rampaging robot shows back up, they decide to just take her with them.

After a bunch more running around, she informs them that her name is Cleopatra, she's a stripper, and the last thing she remembers, it was 2001, and she was getting a boob job. "Boob job?" Asks a confused Sarge. Turns out that in the future, there are no boob jobs. Good thing all these 25th century girls have naturally big tits. After informing her that she is 500 years in the future and everybody she ever knew is now long dead, the girls fill her in on the current crisis: monster-robots named Baileys have taken over the Earth and forced humans underground. Hel and Sarge are part of a rebel force sworn to reclaim the Earth, governed by the voice in Hel's head. And that's pretty much what's happening in the year 2525.

So, what will our hapless heroine do? What can she do, really? She joins the team. "All for one, and one for all," she says. Hel and Sarge think this is brilliant. They don't have the Three Musketeers in the future. Pretty much everything Cleo says sounds either brilliant or bewildering. And so, the journey begins.

Honestly, I thought this episode was a blast. Hot girls, crazy outfits, an absurd storyline, camp dialogue, shoddy effects, and a wobbly theme song. Who could ask for more? The brief running time is a bummer, but as mentioned, the second season fattened the episodes up and introduced a host of weird subplots and oddball characters. A DVD boxset of the series was released in 2005, and on the basis of this first episode, I'd say it's well-worth seeking out. Boners will most assuredly be popped.

Availability: Cleopatra 2525 is available on DVD.

Link: the unofficial Cleopatra 2525 website!

- Ken McIntyre