Thursday, 27 May 2010

KILLER BITCH - There's no accounting for (bad) taste...

There have been a lot of news features on the Killer Bitch movie, sight unseen, but very few actual reviews of the full film.

First there was the GoreZone 5-star magazine review:

"This is Grand Theft Auto meets I Spit on your Grave... A violent 21st century British pantomime for the MTV generation… A middle finger in your face attitude… This is a must-see… This film is in a league of its own and has to be seen to be believed… You may read this review and think the film sounds vile, disgusting and morally depraved and you’d be wrong - you forgot to add bloody fantastic as well."

Then there was the 1-star review from the News of the World:

"This is the shoddiest excuse for a film I've seen in my life... Highlight, of course, is the Reidernator's much-vaunted sex scene, where he's channelling the passion and intensity of Beethoven (the giant St Bernard)."

Now there is the 4-star review from the AVmaniacs.com website:

"A bad taste ultraviolent black comedy, loaded with cursing, screaming, yelling and a higher body-count than even most films it could be compared to… If sunny nihilism and anti-social behaviour (not to mention blood, biceps, big boobs, and a topless midget!) with a Cockney twist floats your boat, hunt down KILLER BITCH."

If you can get a 5-star review and a 1-star review for the same movie, you know you must have done something right somewhere...

www.killerbitch.co.uk

Thursday, 20 May 2010

KILLER BITCH, crime and Citizen Kane

I was talking to one of the Killer Bitch cast yesterday and (as one who knows) he came out with the legendary line: "I've got no money at the moment and xxxx xxxxxxx ain't got no money either. The bottom's fallen out of Crime."

Has Britain fallen this low? Sir Francis Drake made England great by robbing Spanish ships of their gold and the East India Company built Queen Victoria's glorious British Empire on the heroin trade.

We live in difficult economic times. Or do we? Opinion varies.

A recent report said organised crime caused "an estimated £30 billion a year in social and economic harm" to the UK. I'm not quite sure what "harm" means in this context. Presumably it means there is a £30 billion black economy underpinning the 'legitimate' economy. But it's all guestimates on guestimates. A recent report by the Association of Chief Police Officers claimed the UK underworld economy is now worth around £40 billion a year.

I'm more concerned that fake DVD production is now reckoned to be worth £300 million in the UK. I had vaguely hoped Killer Bitch might be fairly immune to this because I had hoped that the people most likely to rip us off were actually involved in the movie in some way - and therefore highly unlikely to rip us off. I had, however, reckoned without the international nature of modern movie rip-off-dom.

Still, I am filled with hope for the future of Killer Bitch because Michael Deeley, the highly-regarded head of British Lion Films reportedly said, when his company released The Wicker Man in 1973, that it was the worst film he had ever seen. Years later, the equally highly-regarded Cinefantastique magazine devoted at entire issue to The Wicker Man, famously calling it "the Citizen Kane of horror films", while the Los Angeles Times said it was: "Witty & scary! No one who sits through it to the end is likely to find it easy to shake off."

Likewise, no-one who sits through Killer Bitch with an increasingly dropped jaw and open mouth is ever likely to forget it. Bland it is certainly not.

Monday, 10 May 2010

KILLER BITCH No 6 in the Top Ten DVDs

KILLER BITCH was released in the UK and Ireland last week and became No 6 in HMV high street stores’ top-selling DVDs. Some animated family film called Avatar pipped us to the post.


The HMV placing came after Killer BItch was banned by the Asda, Morrisons, Sainsburys and Tesco supermarket chains.. and YouTube also banned the trailer.


iTunes did sell it last week… for two days... then they suddenly withdrew it from sale because their "global policy is not to have extra violence and frontal nudity within the store".


This is a tad surprising because, although Killer BItch is a merry British romp through an OTT plot with OTT characters and OTT violence, it features pantomime violence - really, honestly, how many times have you seen someone killed with a fish or threatened by a topless female dwarf with a large handgun and are these scenes likely to deprave, corrupt, incite copycat killings and topple British cultural values?


This is a description of Willem Dafoe's recent film Antichrist which was passed uncut by the BBFC and sold by iTunes:


"After knocking him unconscious, Gainsbourg bores a hole in Dafoe's leg with a hand drill and bolts him to a grindstone to keep him from escaping. Then, she smashes his scrotum with some sort of blunt object (the moment of impact happens slightly below the frame). We don't actually see his testicles become disengaged from this body, though it's implied. Next, she brings him to a climax with her hands and he ejaculates blood (yes, it's shown). But that's not all! Later, in an extreme closeup — lensed by Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle! — Gainsbourg cuts off her own clitoris with a pair of scissors."


Sadly Killer BItch violence fades into insignificance in comparison to this though I think we may have a chance in the Rocky Horror Show market.


At the Killer Bitch cinema premiere in Mayfair - attended by sundry policemen and surreally with two machine-gun-wielding policemen standing at the end of the street watching the comings-and-goings - Alex Reid’s sex scene was mightily popular. Sections of the audience started imitating his audible grunting and he got a round of applause halfway through the scene. I can see future screenings possibly being attended by people dressed as Alex who join in the fun by inter-acting with what’s on screen.


First there were Rocky Horror Picture Show nights; then Sound of Music nights; can Killer Bitch nights be far behind?


www.killerbitch.co.uk