Robot Holocaust (Tim Kincaid, 1986 )

Penetrating the pink mist with a homoerotic panache, humanities last hope for survival in a world controlled by robots is about to saunter down a flight of stairs. While he's taking his time doing that–I've heard sauntering down stairs isn't as easy as it sounds (it takes careful planning and a passing knowledge of proper foot placement)–is it okay if I show two men wrestling with one another in their post-apocalyptic underwear for an inordinate amount of time? Hey, Tim Kincaid. How's it going? Oh, and to answer your question: It's your movie. In other words, you can show as much man-on-man action as you want. You mean to tell me I can have a male character spend the entire film in nothing but a furry loincloth, and not have to worry about feeling the wrath of the straight mafia? What are you nuts? Guys who are purported to be sexually attracted to women love to watch musclebound fellas roll around on the floor together in a veiled attempt to achieve physical dominance over one another. Walk into any room that sports a man, or a group of men, sitting on a couch in front of a television set, and I guarantee the program they're watching on it will feature two scantily clad men breathing in the fetid air swirling around their unshaven taints. Unshackled by the flavourless constraints of heterosexual mediocrity, writer-director Tim Kincaid (Riot on 42nd Street) has finally  been allowed to embrace his three loves: 1) Unbridled masculinity; 2) Sycophantic villainesses; and 3) Man-hating warrior women. You could put wise-cracking robots and parasitic sewer worms on that list as well, but let's just focus on those three for now, as they're the things drive Robot Holocaust, an epic sci-fi adventure film that takes genre filmmaking to a whole new level of epicness. Of course, not before pushing it to the ground and then proceeding to kick the living shit out of it, but I digress. Probing the farthest reaches of his cornhole-adorned imagination, Tim Kincaid pulls out all the stops to bring us his bold vision of the future. Sparing almost every expense you could possibly imagine, the film uses the latest in non-state-of-the-art technology to recreate the robot takeover that is surely to come. And if that means driving around New York City looking for rundown locations that pass the calamity smell test, than so be it.    
 

 

Now, to some, the words, "written and directed by Tim Kincaid," will strike fear in the hearts of the sheepishly lame and the totally not gay. But not me, I'm one of the few people on earth, or in the entire galaxy, for that matter, who "gets" the Tim Kincaid aesthetic. And while Robot Holocaust isn't his best film, it is certainly his most ambitious. Like his European cousins, Bruno Mattei, Jess Franco, and Joe D'Amato, Tim Kincaid doesn't let the fact that he's got a miniscule budget to work with dampen his creative output. If anything, the lack of money only seems to motivate him to try harder as an artist. You really get the sense that a lot of extra effort was put into this project, as every frame seems to have been painstakingly rendered for optimum enjoyment.
 

 

The ambition I just alluded to is obvious right from the start when we quickly discover that Robot Holocaust has a narrator. Yeah, you heard right. This isn't your average cinematic anomaly. No way, man. This puppy is straight-up legit in terms of authenticity. Welcoming us to the last remaining city on New Terra, the narrator informs the audience that the robot rebellion of 33, the year a billion robots rose up against their human masters, is the reason the planet looks like a radioactive wasteland.
 

 

How's humanity doing now, you ask? Well, the robot rebellion hit them pretty hard, but a small group are eking out an existence as airslaves. I don't know, that doesn't sound like much of a life to me. I mean, for starters, the word airslave contains the word "slave." You're right, there's no positive way to spin this, but there are several reasons to remain hopeful. As two airslaves fight to death in a robot sanctioned death match, Neo (Norris Culf) approaches the makeshift arena (a smattering collection of fuel sacks) and blends in with the crowd that has assembled around the two combatants. Under the watchful eye of Torque (Rick Gianasi), a menacing-looking robot, the airslaves continue to pummel one another. However, he doesn't seem to notice that a robot named Klyton (J. Buzz Von Ornsteiner) is picking the pockets of various audience members, which is mostly made up of airslaves. Of course, when he tries to pick Neo's pocket, he is quickly thwarted. And not only that, Neo somehow manages to control Klyton; he is even able to communicate with him telepathically.
 

 

It's obvious from the get-go that Neo isn't an airslave; a point that becomes even clearer when the Dark One, the ruler of the Power Station, turns off the atmosphere and it seems to have zero effect on him. You see, the Dark One, a powerful super-computer who sees all, controls the air the airslaves breath. And whenever the Dark One is displeased with them, he simply switches it off. Yeah, but why doesn't it effect Neo? What makes him so special? He breathes air, doesn't he? The question you really should be asking is why aren't Jorn (Michael Downend) and his daughter Deeja (Nadine Hartstein) falling to ground and gasping for air? 
 

 

Someone who really wants to get to bottom of this atmosphere issue is Valaria (Angelika Jager), the Dark One's shapely, charismatic, fashion forward henchwoman. Trotting onscreen with a thunderous aplomb, Valaria enters the pink mist of the Power Station, and stops to ponder. "Something is wrong, I can sense it," she says to herself. And, for once, she's absolutely right. There is something wrong, and it's transpiring as we speak over at the airslave mines. Chanting "no winner" over and over again, the airslaves are upset that Torque has been instructed by the Dark One to rig the fight between the two airslaves by giving one of them a weapon. In order to prevent an insurrection, the Dark One turns off the atmosphere. Realizing that it would cause suspicion, Jorn tells Deeja to feign air sickness. Yet the fact Jorn seems to have acclimated himself to the poisonous air (he stands unaffected in defiance as the others choke around him) angers the Dark One, who is determined to get to bottom of this.
 

  

As Torque takes Jorn to the Power Station to be questioned in the aptly named "Room of Questions," Neo quickly organizes the others. Utilizing his calm, deliberate way of speaking, Neo convinces Deeja, and two warriors named Bray (George Grey) and Haim (Nicholas Reiner) to join him on his mission to destroy the Dark One. While four humans and one kleptomaniac robot doesn't exactly constitute a rebel force, I'm sure they will make do. Actually, they're gonna have to, as the film's budget probably won't allow them to bring along any extra muscle.

 

 

While traveling through the harsh wilderness that lies between the airslave farm and the Power Station, the rebels spot many mutants lurking in the undergrowth. Horrible as that may sound (there's nothing quite as terrifying as mutants who lurk behind bushes), they're the least of their worries, as the rebels are about to enter the She Zone. The She what? The She Zone: A leafy realm where no man is to be trusted. Stumbling upon a race of female warriors who wear animal print bikinis, the rebels are confronted by their leader Nyla (Jennifer Delora), who demands that Deeja, the lone woman in the rebel alliance, explain why she is consorting with "male scum."
 

 

On top of not trusting them, Nyla dislikes men because they "chatter so." Which is explains why they removed the tongue that used to flap around inside the mouth of the musclebound Kai (Andrew Howarth), the warrior women's primary provider of sperm (to prevent him from running away, they keep him tied to a tree). Anyway, in order to avert an all out war, Haim and Nyla decide to settle their differences the old fashion way. And so, as our pesky narrator informs us, "the battle of the warriors begins." Placing a knife in the ground, the two fight to death. Just when Haim is about to get the best of Nyla, Neo steps in to stop him. While Nyla would prefer death, she accepts Neo's terms; which are: to free Kai and for her to join them in their quest to destroy the Dark One.
 

 

The addition of the He-Man-esque Kai and the headstrong Nyla to the team now means that Neo and his merry band of sword-wielding mouthbreathers are a force to be reckon with. Should the Dark One be quaking in his non-existent boots? Maybe. But you have got to remember, they haven't even reached the Power Station yet. Meaning, they have got to get past the mutants, as you know they're tired of lurking and itching to attack (a cool battle scene between the rebels and the mutants takes place, one where even Deeja gets her stab on); a subterranean corridor filled with hungry sewage worms (a sequence where Neo saves Nyla from being eaten by a sewage worm is quickly turned on its head when Nyla saves Neo from a similar fate seconds later - Nyla is not one to dilly-dally when it comes to paying her debts); the beast of the web, as Klyton calls him, is no picnic, either; dozens of booby traps (in a thrilling scene, Neo helps talk through Kai in disarming a bomb); surveillance drones; guard-bots; and an electrified fence.
 

 

The sound of her black and white heels hitting the cold concrete, her black mesh shawl of villainy gently caressing her ankles as she moves, Valaria wanders the murky halls of the Power Station with a weird mix of confidence and trepidation. She relishes the fact that the Dark One depends on her to carry out his orders, but she also knows that she's expendable. Pushing her luck on an almost daily basis, we run into Valaria just as she's about to push it yet again. Entering the Pleasure Machine, a large orgasm machine bathed in pink mist and supervised by a couple of rejects from La La La Human Steps circa 1987, Valaria disobeys the Dark One with this act of corporeal self-indulgence. Scolded for her insolence (the Pleasure Machine is not a toy, it's meant to reward those who excel at toadying), Valaria responds in the only way she knows how: subservience glazed with a coat of no-nonsense nonchalance. 

       

 

 

Imbuing her character with the temperament that reminded me of a bored French prostitute who has just passed yet another in a long line of AIDS tests, Angelika Jager is indifference personified as Valaria, the coolest henchwoman the holocaust, robot or otherwise, has ever seen. Employing a style of acting that can best be described as detached malevolence, the reason Angelika was probably selected to do the majority of the heavy lifting when it came to delivering the film's adjective and noun-laden dialogue is because she's the only one who could it recite it without conviction. Think about it, most actors, if given the chance to utter lines with a piece of furniture, which is what the Dark One essentially is, would ham it up, Raul Julia in Street Fighter-style. But not Angelika Jager, she approaches the dialogue from a more measured, analytical point-of-view.
 

 

"Yes, Dark One," is Valaria's passive aggressive mantra, and Angelika never fails to deliver it with a saucy aloofness. In fact, it's the only thing she seems to say during the film's early going, as the Dark One is always hounding Valaria to do shit. It's no wonder that she begins to roll her eyes at certain point. You would to if you had this overbearing robot on your shapely ass 24/7; an ass, by the way, that was always ensnared in a pair of lace pantyhose.
 

 

When Valaria experiences an unexpected makeover during the film's final third, was anyone else reminded of that War Amps PSA from the '80s? You know the one: "I'm Astar, a robot. I can put my arm back on. You can't. Play safe." It's all I could think about as chaos reigned throughout the Power Station. In addition to her appearance, Valaria's voice also changes near the end as well. Yet, funny enough, the modulation change didn't affect the pitch of her performance one bit.
 

 

Appealing in almost every way imaginable, in that, it's got chiseled hunks for the gays, thoughtful heroes with sharp cheekbones for the ladies, Jennifer Delora (Bad Girls Dormitory) in furry white boots for the fellas, brash warrior women for the lesbians, clumsy robots for the kids, and deadpan henchwomen who sound like Julie Delpy, if she was a manic depressive, for weirdos like me, Robot Holocaust proves once and for all that all you really need in order to create a fully lived-in universe filled with mutants, sewage worms, and moments of shirtless suspense are some fireworks, about a half dozen sock puppets, and bunch of friends who are willing to run around Central Park swinging swords for very little to no money.
 

 

Call me someone who has spent way too much being tortured by Valaria and her robot goons in The Room of Questions, or someone who isn't afraid to admit that they were strangely turned by Jennifer Delora's extreme form of misandry, but this film had a soothing effect on me. Chalk it up to Angelika Jager's affected way of speaking, the fact that two of the airslaves had Brooklyn accents, or the knowledge that Rick Gianasi, Matt Riker from Mutant Hunt himself, was actually inside that bulky robot costume, but I felt at home in New Terra. In fact, if I could choose to live in any post-apocalyptic universe from popular fiction, it would be Blade Runner (flying cars, replicants that look like Sean Young). But my second choice would definitely be Logan's Run (rapid transit, half-naked Jenny Agutter's delivered straight to your door). What I think I'm trying to say is that I would, after much hand wringing, eventually get around to choosing the Robot Holocaust universe as the place to raise my ungrateful spawn; after all, it's where Valaria lives. I know. Yes, Dark One, indeed.

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Mutant Hunt (Tim Kincaid, 1987)

You know what they say: You can't keep a stretchy-armed cyborg handcuffed to a radiator for long. I don't know who "they" are, or why exactly they're going around saying such nonsensical gobbledygook. But as far as stupid utterances go, this one happens to be soaking in truth sauce. The amount of time you can keep a cyborg handcuffed to a radiator is fleeting at best–and, believe me, I should know, as not a day goes by that I don't find my place of residence infested with drug addled cyborgs. Even though I'm someone whose walls are completely devoid of machetes, cyborgs are still managing to find machete-based ways to break free from their restraints. Isn't it weird how that happens? Anyway, enough about my nonexistent cyborg problems, let's see a show of hands: How many people out there lurking in the darkness knew I was going open with a bit about handcuffed cyborgs? Interesting, hardly anyone. Okay, how many people were shocked that I didn't start off with a woefully misguided yet crotch-pleasing tangent about the forceful manner in which Mary Fahey crosses her shapely legs while sitting on a bed? Really? That many, eh? The reason I began with the whole cyborg handcuffed to a radiator routine—you know, instead my "I'm obsessed with organic materials" one—was because I couldn't get over the fact that the cyborg in question was attempting to cut off its hand in a manner that seemed counterproductive. You see, the cyborg, who's been handcuffed to a radiator during a close-quarter melee by our hero, decides to free itself by chopping off its hand with a machete that wasn't close by (it had to employ the extreme stretch feature of its unshackled cyborg arm to grab the out of reach machete). While it might seem rash to the non-cyborgs in the audience to remove one's own hand like that, to a cyborg, it makes perfect sense, especially when you consider the fact that its cyborg partner in crime was currently enganged in one humdinger of a pickled situation, and needed some swift assistance.

The only problem, and this succinctly sums up the wonky appeal of Mutant Hunt, was the shackled cyborg was cutting at the wrong side of the manacle. It didn't matter in the end, because when the hand is lopped off, the cutting area is clearly located on the other side (the side most commonly associated with extreme handcuff separation). But it did give me something to think about it. Which, I've been told, is somewhat of a rarity when it comes to films that are written and directed by Tim Kincaid (Riot on 42nd Street), the master when it comes to low budget science fiction, horror, women in prison, and gay porn films that are set in New York City. Opening with a shot of the city's iconic skyline at night, the film (which was apparently "too gory for the silver screen" upon its initial release) quickly ushers us into the offices of Inteltrax, a multinational corporation who produce cyborgs, digital alarm clocks, and childos (hands-free dildos for the woman on the go). Of course, I didn't know that right away; silly me thought that "Inteltrax" was the headquarters for the Manhattan chapter of the Front 242 fan club. Sporting sunglasses, black utilitarian jumpsuits, and industrial haircuts, these cyborgs are Delta 7's, and they're the top of the line. What makes these cyborgs so special? Why, they're jacked up on euphorine, that's what, the drug of choice in the twenty-first century. Since the marginally deranged cartoon villain/CEO of Inteltrax, Z (Bill Peterson), needs tons of euphorine to keep his all his cyborgs sufficiently intoxicated, he's stockpiled enough to last a lifetime.

A rival cyborg manufacture named Domina (Stormy Spill), who is upset over the fact that Z is hording the drug all for himself (she's addicted to euphorine). As you would expect, Domina spends most of her waking hours planning his downfall. When two of Inteltrax's employees catch wind of Z's diabolic plan, they make a feeble attempt to stop him. Unfortunately, Dr. Paul Haynes (Mark Umile), the designer of the Delta 7's, is apprehended before he can sound the alarm. On the other hand, his sister, Darla Haynes (Mary Fahey), manages to escape on foot. Pursued by two cyborgs who are shooting lasers at her, Darla runs straight to the sparsely furnished apartment of one Matt Riker (Rick Gianasi), the city's most accomplished mercenary. It's a good thing he lives just down the street from the Inteltrax offices, or else Darla and her little black dress would have been zapped into oblivion.

Following Darla upstairs, the two cyborgs, their skin dripping with yellow slime, enter Matt Riker's apartment. Big mistake, fellas. Standing there in nothing but a pair white underpants (it's nice to know that his genitals are always nestled in practicality), Matt greets the unwelcome house guests with a good old fashion ass kicking. After utilizing almost every weapon at his disposal (what his apartment's decor lacks in visual flair, it more than makes up for it in wall-mounted crossbows, machetes, and unloaded shotguns) to destroy the mutant cyborgs, Matt is probably thinking about celebrating his victory by penetrating his pleasure droid (LisaAnne Baker), the Lois Ayres/Sharon Mitchell/Anne Carlisle/coked up Helen Hunt lookalike, with his workaday penis.

As much as I would love to see you probe the insides of her soft, allegedly synthetic flesh, I'm afraid you are going have to keep it in your pants; which you can put back on, by the way (it's hard to take you seriously while you're wearing nothing but that particular style of underwear). Why can't he, have sex with her, that is? Well, the reason Darla ran to your apartment, and not to one belonging to the thousands of other mercenaries and bounty hunters who live in the neighbourhood, was because you're the best, and she requires your cyborg-stomping expertise.

While Darla is explaining the situation (the cyborgs are sex maniacs who need to kill every six hours) in her usual deadpan manner (the effortlessly seductive Mary Fahey is the best when it comes to recitng ridiculous dialogue in a dispassionate, "I don't really want to be in this movie," sort of way), the pleasure droid chimes in by asking, "Who would want to get robots high?" Excellent question. In fact, her question was so excellent, that it caused me to dispute Matt's post-mortal assertion that the attractive blonde in his bed was merely a "pleasure droid." I'm no rocket scientist when it comes to pleasure droids, but if there's one thing I know about pleasure droids, it's they're not exactly known for their inquisitiveness. Their sole purpose is to serve the needs of their owner, not to ask pertinent questions regarding the drug habits of sex-crazed cyborgs.

Suddenly, just as Darla was regaling us with tales of the "space shuttle sex murders," another slimy cyborg bursts into Matt Riker's apartment. The pleasure droid, for some strange reason, starts to scream (she didn't make a sound during the previous encounter with the cyborgs). This alerts the cyborg, who, without hesitation, picks up the pleasure droid, and proceeds to throw her out the window. She protests this action by screaming louder and kicking her legs, which are now dangling from a blue nightie. But it's all for naught, as her body crashes to the pavement below. Sure, it looked there was a pool of egg yolk-coloured brain matter (all cybernetic organisms in this particular universe have yellow blood) congealing on the ground near her head as she lay in the street, but that mess could have easily been left there by some lame as fuck news reporter trying to prove how hot it was by frying an egg on the sidewalk. In other words, I'm not fully convinced LeeAnne Baker was a pleasure droid. My theory is that the reason Matt Riker told Darla she was a pleasure droid was to mask the pain he was feeling over her death (keeping your emotions in check is one of the keys to being a successful mercenary).

Let it go, man. Pleasure droid or not, she's gone. But I thought LeeAnne Baker was going to be Matt Riker's plucky blonde sidekick. "But I thought LeeAnne Baker was going to be..." Ugh. Stop being such a baby. It's not going to happen. Try focusing your energy instead on Darla, or, better yet, check out the next scene. Itching to assemble a team (yep, even the best mutant cyborg hunter in the business needs help on occasion), Matt Riker heads down to Club Inferno to meet a colleague named Elaine (Taunie Vrenon), a bounty hunter/private ops/dancer of the seven veils (she moonlights as a dancer), and enlists her in the fight against Z's rogue cyborgs.

After eavesdropping on a conversation that took place between Darla, Matt Riker, and Elaine (she was sitting on the bar stool next to Elaine), Domina calls up Z on her mobile communications device, and uses what she overheard as a bargaining chip to acquire a freakishly large amount of euphorine. Why does she need so much euphorine? Is her habit that bad? Don't be naive, Romina is working on her own cyborg project, and needs the euphorine for a project she's been working on. Developing a "Delta 8," Domina hopes to unveil her bandaged creation at Z's warehouse during the film's action-packed finale.

You'll notice I said, "mobile communication device," well, that's because futuristic gadgets are quite plentiful in the Mutant Hunt universe. Along with cell phones, the film has tablet computers, a global positioning system that helps locate mutant cyborgs, and bluetooth technology. Most of these gadgets come courtesy of Johnny Felix (Ron Reynaldi), a bounty hunter whose sneakers allow him to run as fast as a cheetah. This unique ability enables him to come to the rescue of Elaine when she finds herself face-to-face with one of Z's Delta 7's in a dark alley behind Club Inferno. Luckily for her, the nonexistent length of her black heterosexual mini-dress is what permits her to run fast. It's too bad she doesn't own a pair of cheetah shoes–or maybe she does, but didn't want to wear them tonight because they didn't really go with her heterosexual mini-dress. Either way, Elaine is somewhat embarrassed by the fact that she had to be rescued like a damsel-in-distress ("I hate it when men save me"). Sure, it sounds like someone's a tad ungrateful. But you have got to remember, she's a highly trained bounty hunter, just like, Matt Riker and Felix.

Admiring the cut of her Klaus Nomi-friendly shoulder pads in the mirror (her rival, Z, obviously shops at the same store), Domina is chatting with her personal assistant, a Delta 6 named Hydro (Doug Devos). While she's complimenting him for his loyal service over years (to which Hydro responds with the often repeated line, "Thank you, Domina), I couldn't help but notice that Domina and Hydro had an interesting rapport whenever they appeared onscreen together. It's not a sexual thing, either. You could just tell that they had a deep respect for one another. Which, I've been told, is a rare occurrence when it comes to the majority of master-slave relationships.

Regrouping at Matt Riker's apartment, Johnny Felix gives the team an impromptu demonstration of his latest gadgets; the coolest being a time delayed explosive device. Feeling more or less upstaged by this glorified appliance symposium, Darla tries to draw everyone's attention away from Felix's newfangled gizmos by crossing and uncrossing her legs three times in quick succession. Judging by the bemused expressions on their faces, I don't think they noticed the leg crossing cabaret that was transpiring right before their very eyes (bunch of non-leg cross noticing ingrates). I know this won't bring her any solace, but I knew exactly what Darla was up to the moment she sat down and implemented her first cross.

Not one to be outdone when it comes to flashing some knee skin, Elaine, who is still wearing her heterosexual mini-dress, invites Matt Riker to her apartment to "talk about old times." Standing near a giant shelf containing hundreds of books (girl, you have got to be kidding? there's no way you have read all those books), Elaine reminds Matt Riker of that crazy night they spent in at the Sri Lankan Hilton, and, before you know it, they're filling each other up with globs of buggy wuggy. Oh, Matt Riker. You're such a slut. The body of the pleasure droid isn't even cold, yet, here you are, making it with some floozy who thinks her legs are just as sexy as the ones attached to Mary Fahey's supple frame. Hell, Elaine doesn't even know how to sit with her legs crossed. Fucktard.

I don't why I'm taking all my frustration out on Elaine, when it's Matt Riker's fault the pleasure droid is dead and that Darla's leg crossing theatrics bore no erectile fruit. At any rate, while Felix and Matt Riker battle cyborgs (or "jellyheads," as Felix likes to call them) up in Spanish Harlem and on the Lower East Side, Elaine takes off her heterosexual mini-dress and heads down to the waterfront to search for large quantities of eurphorine with her trusty euphorine detector. The sight of Taunie Vrenon wearing a grey jumpsuit and red high heel boots standing with the city's skyline in the background, her red hair blowing in the wind, is the film's defining Elaine moment.

If you think about it, there would be no Janice from Friends, Lady Starlight, Frank the Entertainer in a Basement Affair, or even Fran Fine if it wasn't for Stormy Spill's subdued performance as Domina, the undisputed queen when it comes to scheming without the aid of pants. Oh, and don't let her thick Queens, New York accent fool you, Domina could careless about kosher grade pastrami or her reputed timeshare in Muskoka, it's cyborgs that scratch her delicate itch; that, and an ear full of euphorine. With the pleasure droid out of commission, Elaine searching the waterfront for euphorine, and Matt Riker off fighting cyborgs (like in Bad Girls Dormitory, the fight scenes do go on a tad too long), it only makes sense that my two favourite Mutant Hunt characters would inadvertently battle it out at Z's super-secret euphorine factory. Finally ready to unleash her Delta 8 to an unsuspecting public, Domina is shocked to find an equally pantless Darla waiting to greet her creation with a laser pistol.

I don't want to start any controversy, but I've heard that some jellyheads (on top of being Felix's nickname for cyborgs, it's the unofficial monicker for the worldwide network of Mutant Hunt fans) were mildly disappointed by the film's anticlimactic ending. What they fail to realize is that, to these characters, hunting mutants is an everyday part of life. Saving the world on a regular basis is what they do, and I thought Tim Kincaid captured that nonchalance perfectly. In addition, I thought the film had a lot to say about the ho-hum nature of twenty-first century heroism. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go light a candle in honour of a dead pleasure droid.

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This tedious slab of overstated nonsense is dedicated to LeeAnne Baker, Mary Fahey, Stormy Spill, Taunie Vrenon, and, of course, Thomas Duke, a man who knows exactly what's going on in my alley, and isn't afraid to tell me when he's come across something that might be up it.

...

Bad Girls Dormitory (Tim Kincaid, 1986)

When I first caught a glimpse of the giant wall fitted with barbed wire that surrounded the correctional facility at the centre of this deft love letter to female captivity, my initial reaction was: Damn, someone clearly doesn't want anyone living behind it to escape. However, after spending a few moments inside the inadequately run dormitory for wayward girls, I've come to the conclusion that the concrete and barbed wire wasn't there to keep the girls from breaking out, it was there to keep me from breaking in. Now, I've seen my fair share of films over the past couple of months that sport incarcerated ladies under duress, but none of them have featured as many potential life partners as Bad Girls Dormitory does, the overpriced root beer of women in prison flicks. One-by-one, I would fall deeply in love with their gruff exteriors, can-do spirit, and murderous gusto–and, not to mention, their feathered hair, parched lips, and the ease in which they were able to dance to the music of Man Parrish in an enclosed space. The only logical explanation I can come up with is that all the girls were from New York City. Sure, one of them was playing a fresh off the bus small town girl. But even then, I think she was from Staten Island. (I'm no authority on the subject, but her curly hairdo was definitely styled somewhere within the five boroughs.) While I worshiped the girls for their brash, big city attitudes, I was mildly horrified when it came time to unveil the uniform the girls at this unnamed dormitory (which seemed more like a prison, than an actual "dormitory") will be wearing for the duration of this awe-inspiring motion picture. Suddenly, the girls appear onscreen, and low and behold, their lower extremities sheathed in a pair of blue jeans and the upper part of their torso is adorned with a no-nonsense white t-shirt. In other words, the girls are being forced to dress like that asshole from that ketchup commercial that was inexplicably popular twenty years ago. (Oh, and, just for the record, I'm a big fan of that commercial.) Oh, and when I say, "a pair of blue jeans," I don't mean, "jean shorts." What I'm talking about are your run-of-the-mill blue jeans (the kind your mom wears when she's pulling weeds in the garden).

Did I let the fact that I was a tad underwhelmed by the ho-hum nature of the uniforms the girls had to wear in this movie undermine my enjoyment? What are you fucking kidding? If anything, it actually enhanced my enjoyment. You see, writer-director Tim Kincaid (Riot on 42nd Street) is an artist, and like any artist, he knows how to turn something that is bland and uninspiring into something that will uplift and arouse greatness in others. The blue jeans and the white t-shirts were like a blank canvas, and Mr. Kincaid's imagination was the paint. In a stroke of genius, he allowed each inmate to tinker with the structural makeup of their white t-shirt. Some simply rolled up the sleeves, while others just cut them off all together. I don't want to overstate this, but I think the decision to let the girls to endow their t-shirts with individual characteristics was one of the greatest in film history.

In the spirit of transparency, some of the t-shirts were already sleeveless (i.e. they were manufactured as such). But for the most part, the girls did add personal touches to their shirts. I guess when you first enter the dormitory you're given a choice between a t-shirt with sleeves or a t-shirt without sleeves; what you do with after it's been handed to you is entirely up to the person wearing it. One girl who wisely chose to go sleeveless was Paige (Natalie O'Connell), as her ample bosom would have suffocated underneath all that excess t-shirt fabric. Anyway, mere seconds after arriving at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, Paige finds her ample bosom in a degrading situation. Hoping to make some money as a model, Paige is suddenly topless in the office of a sleazy pornographer. Just as she was about to be violated by a naked man named Roland (Harve Soto), the operation is busted by some prudish vice cops. And Paige is, you guessed it, sent to a juvenile detention centre run by Miss Madison (Marita), a stylish Colombian woman.

Earlier that day, in another sketchy part of town, Marina (Teresa Farley) is left holding a bag of cocaine in a ramshackle room on the third floor of a condemned building. Is she shocked when her boyfriend Paco (Jeffrey Iorio) and a female drug dealer wearing a leopard print fingerless gloves bail on her when the cops arrive. Actually, I bet she wasn't surprised at all when the spiky-haired drug dealer (her vest was leopard print as well) took off when things started to get out of hand, but she was definitely hurt by Paco's actions. (Why, Paco? Why?) You could totally tell, as she stood there in her black, mesh tank-top, that she didn't expect to be left in the lurch like that.

In the crazy, mixed up world of Bad Girls Dormitory, there's no time to ask Paco why he bolted or explain to the cops that I'm a simple country girl from Staten Island, because, before you know it, Marina, Paige, and another girl, who we'll later come to know as Eula (Renata Cobbs), are listening to Dr. DeMarco (Dan Barclay) and the lovely Nurse Stevens (Rebecca Rothbaum) lay down the ground rules as they prepare to administer a full body search. Telling them to "lean over," the doctor begins his examination. I wonder if he found anything? I doubt it. In fact, I have a nagging suspicion that the whole ordeal was just an excuse for Dr. DeMarco, and, yes, Nurse Stevens, to get a sneak peak at the latest line of underage undercarriages to hit the dormitory, as both of them, as we'll soon find out, are unabashed when it comes to idolizing the vaginal plateaus of others.

Meanwhile, Miss Madison, who obviously does not share the orificial obsessions of her pussy-starved staff, is giving Ron (Rick Gianasi), a handsome social worker, a tour of her first-class correctional facility (well, in her mind, it's "first-class"). Informing her that he'll find his own way out after the tour is over, Ron starts poking his head around the place. The first place he pokes his head is the basement, but all he finds down there is Jen (Jane Donadio), a shy, virginal redhead smoking weed. However, he hits pay dirt with the next place he pokes his head when stumbles upon some young ladies showering. Lathering her taut body with enough soap to clean a small Guatemalan family, Tim Kincaid's camera is in love with LeeAnne Baker (a.k.a. the reputed pleasure droid from Mutant Hunt). Playing an inmate with short hair, LeeAnne's unnamed character is a pro when it comes to washing her perky frame in front of her bratty peers. Strangely enough, Ron's not interested in the svelte brunette from Necropolis, no, his lustful gaze is focused squarely on Lori (Carey Zuris), an equally slender woman with dirty blonde hair. Unlike the other so-called "grown ups" who work in this hellhole, Don's perverted leering is tinged with an air of sadness. Staring at one another for quite some time, Lori, who's too depressed to bother to wash herself with any zest whatsoever, eventually tires of his empathetic leering and curtly asks him, "Seen enough?"

Feminine chaos is best way to describe what transpires next, as we're ushered into the dorm's mess hall. A veritable cornucopia of charming tough chicks, the cafeteria is awash with cigarettes, soda pop, plastic utensils, chocolate bars, white t-shirts, big hair, and, of course, the sound of Man Parrish's expertly programmed sequencers and drum machines. Now, I should warn you, people who are unaccustomed to seeing this many attractive women gathered together in a small space might want to look away during this sequence. As for the rest of us, let's dig in.

The mess hall scene is probably the most important in the entire film, as it introduces us to all women we'll be spending next eighty or so minutes with. Having already been introduced to the so-called "fresh meat," this section of the film gives us an opportunity to meet the dormitory's more hardened residents. And you can't get any more hardened than Lisa (Jennifer Delora) and Rebel (Donna Eskra), two gals who take bullying to new and exciting places. Eyeballing Lori almost immediately, Lisa stakes her claim by telling her she has pretty eyes. However, she's distracted when she discovers that Barb (Frances Raines) is cutting Jen's meat. The "Red" of the Bad Girls Dormitory universe, the excessively blonde Valeska (Charmagne Eckert), the dormitory's most alluring "guest," tells Paige, Marina, and Eula that she's the girl to talk to if you need anything (whether it be a nail-laden baseball bat or a slightly used box of tampons), because she's got "connections."

Even more eyeballing takes place when we encounter Dottie (Kate McCamy), a shock-haired cauldron of bewitching unpleasantness who takes exception with the fact that Deke (Parri Shahmanesh), a butch lesbian, and her bubble-headed gal pal Lenka (Cathryn Bissell), are giving her the stink-eye. I'm guessing the reason behind their stink-laden stares might have had something to do with Dottie's plastic fork-themed attempt to flirt with McCoy (Bill Peterson), a guard/rapist who works at the dormitory. At any rate, employing an undercooked hot dog to help accentuate the overall impact of her hand gestures, Dottie tells them point blank, "Don't make me get up. If I do, I'll be twisting some tits." After she finished uttering that line, I couldn't help but notice that I was starting to develop strong feelings toward her. As this was happening, I began to think to myself: Try not to get too attached, you never know which of these girls is going to die horribly.

Luckily, we only see Dottie two more times after her verbal spat with Deke and Lenke, as the more I thought about her, the more I wanted to swoop in and rescue her from this banal existence. After lights out, we see Dottie, who I didn't recognize at first, screaming, "Shut up, you stupid fruitcake" to a disruptive individual in another bunk; her brash demeanour reminded me of Antonia Basilotta (a.k.a. Toni Basil), as I could totally picture the famed actress, singer, choreographer, and all around fabulous person telling someone to be quiet in this manner. Her final appearance takes place during visiting hours in the mess hall when she is briefly seen talking to her boyfriend. Well, "talking" is a bit of a stretch, as he says, "Hey, baby," to which Dottie responds, "You motherfuckin' scumbag!" I'm no expert when it comes to inner workings of the human brain, but I think Dottie even realized that "motherfuckin' scumbag" might have been way harsh. But then again, her assessment could have been right on the money. Hey, maybe he was a "motherfuckin' scumbag." Who knows.

Okay, with Dottie out of the picture, who am I supposed to obsess over now? I liked the transition Paige makes in the film, as she goes from being a naive bumpkin with large breasts to a savvy sex pot...with large breasts. The way she slumped in her chair, opened a couple of buttons on her button-fly jeans, and told Dr. DeMarco, "I'm a whore," in response to his question, "Why are you here"? was, I'll admit, pretty bad ass. Yet, I still found her to be too soft. No, I like my bad girls to be always hard.

How 'bout Rebel? Oooh, I loved her. She was complex, horny as fuck, scrappy (she picks a fight with Marina in the mess hall after mail call), and always full of surprises. Choosing a sleeveless top to express herself, Rebel is essentially Lisa's big haired sidekick (one who gets told to "shut her hole" on occasion), but she wasn't a mindless sycophant. Far from it. Her decision to help Gloria (Sherry Hoard), a girl who is trying to hide her pregnancy from Miss Madison and the guards, was very out of character. (You would think that Dr. DeMarco and Nurse Stevens would have noticed that Gloria was pregnant–you know, with them being on the cusp of the medical profession and all. But I doubt they took their jobs seriously. In fact, I bet the only reason they worked there was to capitalize on the abundance of cheap heroin and guilt-free poontang.)

While the unexpected kindness she displays was a nice touch, the Rebel I prefer is the one who's constantly craving sex and facilitating the murder of her friend's rivals. The best examples of the former come when she finishes appeasing the carnal desires Dr. DeMarco and Nurse Stevens with the mollifying moistness of the throbbing fissure festering between her legs. Sapped of their strength, Rebel takes advantage of their post-coital lethargy by ridiculing them. My personal favourite was the way she told the doctor he was the "worst lay" she's ever had while simultaneously flipping her hair with her hand (the best after sex hair flip I've seen all year). Actually, telling Nurse Stevens, "I don't want a bitch, I want a man," while she smoothed out the creases in her white pantyhose was pretty great as well.

In terms of facilitating murder? Hmm, I'd say the look on Rebel's face when Lisa dispatches one of her rivals in the basement with piano wire was the best example of this specific character trait. Oh, and if the nonchalant look on the Rebel's face while Lisa murdered her rival reminded you of the equally nonchalant mug the luminous Laurie-Ann Gill wears in the music videos for Nudimension's "Amour Programmé" and "Living On Video" by Trans-X, then we share the same brain.

In one of the film's more bizarre scenes, Rebel agrees to escort Gloria to the bathroom (she is suffering from morning sickness). However, instead of helping her, she winds up getting sidetracked when the opportunity to have sex with a male guard (Mark Umile) comes along. The back and forth between the two, as Rebel fucks and Gloria pukes, was memorable because it's set to the music of Man Parrish, the electro pioneer behind such classics as "Hip Hop Be Bop (Don't Stop)" and "Boogie Down (Bronx)." The result is a strangely musical scene, where Gloria's repetitious cry, "Rebel, I need you," and Rebel's reply, "Just a minute...I'm coming," come across as lyrics when paired with Man's beats and synthesizers.

If the scene with Rebel and Gloria was the most bizarre, the mess hall sequence set to "Hose Me Down" by Man Parish and Beth Rudetsky was definitely the most awesome. Determining that the girls need to blow off some steam after the recent rape-induced suicide of one of their own (permitting male guards to work at a girls dormitory was a questionable decision), Miss Madison chaperones what has to be the greatest mess hall dance party scene in the history of cinema. Since she allows their boyfriends to attend, the scene suddenly becomes veritable haze of headbands, tank-tops with Japanese writing on them, Jheri curl, faint facial hair, studded bracelets, Polo cologne, and fingerless gloves. The way their break dancing duds combined with the residual new wave and punk styles that were still prevalent at the time was quite the eyeopener (the gap between masculinity and femininity was virtually nonexistent). Anyway, not only do we get to see LeeAnne Baker dance, we also get a glimpse into how shoddily run the dormitory actually is (while Miss Madison is overseeing the dance party, drugs are being sold and guards are groping girls right under her nose).

Judging by her pushy nature, you knew she was doomed the moment she started boasting to the new fish about her talents when it came to acquiring smuggled goods (which, as everyone knows, is Lisa's racket). But you got to give up to the gorgeous Charmagne Eckert for being so delectable as Valeska, the slenderest slice of womanly excellence to ever stalk the grimy halls of a girls dormitory. Sporting a natural gift for self-promotion, and, not to mention, the most lickable thorax in the known universe, Valeska's downfall may have been rapid, but her knack for laughing at the misfortunes of others was downright adorable.

Since they probably didn't shoot enough material to qualify as a feature length film, someone decided to include three drawn-out fight scenes to pad things out. And since Jennifer Delora (Frankenhooker) is a black belt in judo, why not have her fight one of the female guards? Sure, the rivalry between Lisa and a guard named Harper (Rachel Hancock) isn't really explained (I guess they just don't like each other), but their brawl in the girls' sleeping quarters was still pretty great. However, midway through their rematch in the basement, I couldn't help but notice that I was starting feel a tad sluggish. It got so bad, that I almost fell into a coma when another extended fight scene breaks out between a male guard and Marina's boyfriend. The fact that this fight occurs immediately after Lisa and Harper's second dust-up had ended was just plain egregious. In spite of that, I'm happy to report that Tim Kincaid's first non-gay porn foray into the lube-free realm of exploitation cinema is a smashing success.

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