In
Robin Bougie’s ‘adults only guide to history’s sickest and sexiest movies’ Cinema Sewer it describes the highlight
of this film as being when a baby is chucked out of a high rise apartment block
by its mother! What it doesn’t describe is that when the baby spatters on the
walkway below it covers a female passer-by with blood and guts – all graphically
shot in colour. And in another scene -
just to piss of the animal lovers - a dog is stabbed because the woman living
opposite the dogs owner, who had made fun of the woman because of her size, has
paid to have the dog killed!
As you can imagine this very black satire is
not a movie that would suit everyone’s taste. What we have on the surface is a
hardworking New York housewife Hazel Aiken (Carol Baker) who runs a facial hair
removal business from her home. But because she is responsible for looking
after a large collection of misfits, sorry relatives, she supplements her
income by running a female hit squad who carry out killing other more morally
upstanding killers won’t touch - such as babies, young autistic children and not
forgetting dogs. But Hazel’s life isn’t all sweetness and light making hairy
women more beautiful and managing her good-looking squad of young female
assassins, she has to pay off the local detective and to make matters worse a good looking young male killer turns up on
her doorstep looking for work.
Andy Warhol’s
Bad
(1977) was the last film produced by Warhol before his death in 1987. It was
made at his Factory Film Studio in New York City and was directed by Jed
Johnson who was initially hired by Warhol to sweep floors at the studio. He
became Andy’s live-in lover for twelve years and was killed in 1996 when TWA
Flight 800 exploded shortly after take off killing all 230 passengers and crew.
The
film's cast includes not only Baker but Susan Tyrrell who won a Best Supporting
Actress Award as Hazel Aiken’s sister-in-law Mary, Cyrinda Foxe as RC, Cyrinda who
had an affair with David Bowie and appeared in his video The Jean Genie sadly had to rely on charity to find
somewhere to stay when she was dying in 2002. The Italian actress Stefania
Casini plays another of the female hit squad PG and those familiar with
American TV will recognise LT the male member of the hit squad as Perry King.
In a small part as the owner of the unfortunate canine we find Lawrence Tierney
who has made a career out of playing mobsters including Joe Cabot in Reservoir Dogs (1992). Mike Bloomfield provided the music for the
movie.
Cheezy
Flicks is a company in Portland Oregon USA who have created a collection of
films expressly for the promotion of some of the ‘cheeziest’ films released on
DVD. To meet this criterion a movie has to be a terrible B-Movie, a classic
horror, sci-fi, sword and
sandal or possible a euro-trash classic typically involving things like
horrible acting, an abysmal story line, and the worst set props possible. I do
not think that Andy Warhol’s Bad
actually qualifies under these criteria but would like to thank the company for
giving us the opportunity to enjoy such rare movies.
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