Review of Bad Girls from Mars (1990) by Will W — 09 Nov 2011

Some films are born excellent, some films achieve excellence, and some have excellence thrust upon them. Bad Girls From Mars is the beneficiary of excellence by way of mediocrity in its "USA Up-All Night" genre, by birth, achievement and victimization.

The film itself is clearly consieved as a meta-fictional attempt to both engage and alienate an audience with a mock-critique of LA B-movie production. The writing is burdened by both ham-handed attempts at titilations and mediocre attempts at Zucker/Abrams humor that severely misfire, yet strike their mark.

The writer are lucky soldiers, on a mockery of a battlefield. Pay attention closely to the shear absurdity and accidentally absurdist brilliance of the a great many lines and plot developments. Why can't we rhyme? Why don't these deaths bother ANYONE? Is insurance fraud really such a good idea? Did you really think SHE didn't know that you're name was ironic, Richard? He's what one football player? WHO is the only WHAT a girl can trust? Where IS the dog?

A sort of half-consciousness characterizes.

The performances and provides a brilliantly stereo-typed, yet somehow genuine, portrait of characters and life-styles we can only wish existed in the proto-professional fringe movie making culture of Hollywood. If these sort of people actually managed to get movies produced and in-the-can, maybe we could come to appreciate film as a testament to human perserverance and determination. If Saliari can edit Mozart's final work and bring a previously absent sublimity to its final lines, there is proof of inspiration of the muses, and those same goddesses gently guided these god-aweful actors safely to profoundly sublime comic timing-- hackery blessed by the benevolent goddesses of grandiose delivery and incidental comedy. Notice the flawless perversion of the film-maker's reactions to death and dead-bodies. Notice posed tableaux after shocking events. Notice the delightfully subtle and persistent decline in production-value and actor/writer patience. Notice the last line, delivered on a blank-screen, that capitulizes the character's self-evident attitudes toward the movie itself. Notice how we sneak away and escape kidnappers. Notice what does and does not happen to the dog.

Production inconsistencies abound and the film-makers boredom increases with the film's pace and incompetent comic brilliance. Is that trash tucked into his shirt? Is that the same dress she changed into? How is she hanging up there? Why doesn't that sandwich seem to get smaller? Why is there always the same amount of Jack? Why do the sets on the Film-In-A-Film get cheaper everytimewe see them? Will you please stop messing with that scarf? Where is that DAMN DOG?

In brief, this move is a prototype of so-bad-is-good. A light-hearted embrace of raunch and incompetence makes this the height of bad-movie-night hilarity.

WHERE did the dog go? Keep looking. You'll find it.