Audience Member
Welcome to the meta world of Fred Olen Ray, as Bad Girls from Mars is about a movie called Bad Girls from Mars and all of the many things that go wrong during filming, including actresses being killed off by a masked killer, which as always pleases the Italian side of my DNA.
Even though the producers are making a killing -- wokka wokka -- from insurance payoffs, they keep making the movie and bring in Emanuelle (Edy Williams, the one-time wife of Russ Meyer) from Europe to be the lead. She's out of control the moment she lands in Los Angeles and the killings just keep on happening.
Ray used the sets left over from Roger Corman's The Masque of the Red Death to make Wizards of the Demon Sword. Before the sets were taken down -- a second time -- he wrote (with Equinox screenwriter Mark Thomas McGee) and shot Bad Girls from Mars in the day and $19,000 that he had left.
Corman would have been double proud.
Inspired by Hollywood Boulevard, there are references to Batgirls from Mars and bat symbols throughout the film. That's because Ray was going to hire Adam West and Burt Ward, but they were busy that day.
Literally, that day.
Anyways, it's a movie where Edy Wiliams says, "The smell of garbage turns me into a wild woman!" and Brinke Stevens plays a woman who'll do anything to be a star. I may be projecting a bit, but I always think of Brinke as being the sweetest person, even when she's being the evilest villain in a film. Like I just want to play with her hair, ask how her day was and make sure she's feeling alright. Let other men obsess over sleeping with scream queens. I just want to be supportive.
You know, Gary Graver worked with Orson Welles and Fred Olen Ray. The difference -- among many -- was that Welles worked for decades to complete a film and Ray would knock off a few a month. You determine your success by your own values.
This is also called Emmanuelle Goes to Hollywood because that title sells.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
02/06/23
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Audience Member
horrible i want my hour & 21 minutes back!!!!
Rated 0.5/5 Stars •
Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars
01/21/23
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Audience Member
For a slasher spoof this would be in the so bad its good catogory
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
01/16/23
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Audience Member
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.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
02/06/23
Full Review
don s
Very low budget film. Though billed as a comedy, there is nothing funny about it, and though it tries to be campy it does not succeed. The storyline involves multiple homicides on a movie set. The effects are on par with a low budget B movie film, just what I expected. I'm a Brinke Stevens fan, but the rest of the cast was just so horrible she couldn't bring this up a notch. Even for a B movie this is below average. When compared to other "regular" movies, this is probably one of the worst movies you'll ever see. However, if you are expecting camp, and like lots of nudity, this is a movie for you. B-movie fans should keep their expectations low, and if you are not a B-movie fan you should just stay away because this one won't win you over.
You wrote this on 1/29/09.
Rated 1.5/5 Stars •
Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars
03/31/23
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Audience Member
Trash. Hilarious trash. Bad movie lovers would enjoy this. No one else would.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/03/23
Full Review
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