Some go to Blackpool for the rock, some go to get their rocks off...and allegedly many of the establishments on Cookson Street cater to the latter. Since I'm only a cowardly shutterbug though, I'll point you in the direction of this 2019 report from the field- by a frank and dedicated individual- for an idea of what goes on behind closed doors.
Who was ‘Bos’?, a question that has haunted me since I
encountered his film Precious Jewels several years ago, its one little mystery
that the British sex film just won’t give up.
A product of the early videotape era, the Bos oeuvre extends to at least
four features- Chow Down, A Drive to Ecstasy, High Voltage: Volume 1 (1981) and
finally 1982’s Precious Jewels, the most widely distributed of Bos’ slim
filmography, and the only Bos movie I’ve ever managed to see.
Along with Kenneth F. Rowles’ The Perils of Mandy
(1982), Precious Jewels represents a brief period where it seemed as if the
British sex film could transfer over to the video market while continuing to be
shot on film. As well as take advantage
of the unregulated nature of early video by pushing screen kinkiness much
further than was allowed on the censor controlled big screen. In reality though, another early VHS title
Death Shock (1981) offered a more accurate picture of British sexploitation’s
future, what with its step down to being cheaply shot on videotape and the
‘play it safe’ option of showing little but soft, vanilla sex.
While The Perils of Mandy adopted a cheeky, sub-Carry On tone for its parade of spankings, cat fights and schoolgirl fetishism, Precious Jewels is comparatively dead-serious and no-frills in its approach to BDSM. Doing little to disguise the fact that bondage and rape were the twin obsessions of its understandably pseudonymous director. It is tempting to speculate whether ‘BOS’ was less a clipped version of someone’s real name, and more intended as a sexual abbreviation, like B.T.K. Given the nature of Precious Jewels, Bondage...Orientated...Sadism, would be the perfect explanation for the B.O.S name.
Minimalist in the extreme, and utilising only one location, three cast members and no soundtrack music, Precious Jewels is centred around two high spirited lesbians Jacky (Kathy Green) and Anne (Amanda Blackburn) who enjoy alternating the dom/sub roles. After some brief, peaceful shots of Jacky dipping her hand into the water of her swimming pool, Anne sets the vicious ball rolling by pushing the bikini-clad Jacky into the pool. It’s not long before the resourceful Jacky gets her own back by dropping ice cubes down Anne’s pants. That’s done it!!! Anne fumes “you cow...you cow”, an insult that only a Cockney accent can truly do justice to. The playfully sadistic atmosphere between the two women escalates as Anne chases Jacky around the house. Soon Jacky is cornered in their bedroom where she gets tied to the bed, spanked and menaced with scissors by Ann, who uses them to cut Jacky’s panties off.
Unwittingly stumbling onto the explosive situation is door-to-door salesman Mike (‘Gypsy’ Dave Cooper) who has been tasked with selling dresses to the two women by the clothing club that they both belong to. Temporarily putting on airs and graces, Anne releases Jacky from the bedroom restraints and the two women exchange small talk with Mike, before much dressing and undressing in their bedroom while Mike knocks back coffee. Their subsequent front room fashion show for Mike gets cut short by his embarrassing admission “I’m bursting for a pee, where’s the room”.
Despite the muscular Mike not being Jacky’s type, Anne has eyes on making him a heterosexual addition to their S&M love nest, confronting Mike outside the toilet with the come-on of “Hey Mike, wanna have some fun”. For ‘fun’, read ‘rape’, as Mike and Anne form a sexual tag-team against Jacky, dragging her back to the bedroom where she is tied spread eagled to the bed and then raped by Mike. Jacky’s threats and protests “Anne, I’m gonna pay you back for this” and “leave my tits alone” count for nothing with sexual berserker Mike or her own vengeful lover.
In an unorthodox twist on the rape/revenge genre, Jacky
strikes up an allegiance with her rapist, talking Mike into turning her loose
and then sending the ever rape ready Mike after Anne. “Now you’re gonna see what it’s like to be
raped” demands Jacky, as Anne is bent over a dinner table, tied up, spanked
with a cane and then raped from behind by Mike.
The rest of the film is a prolonged make-out session between Mike and
Jacky, intercut with muffled protests from Anne, still tied to the table, who
has been gagged with a wooden spoon. “Do
you think you’ll be able to control her now” asks Mike. “No, but that’s half the fun” beams Jacky. Precious Jewels has a perfectly circular
ending with Anne once again charging after Jacky and shouting “you cow...you
cow”.
The director of Precious Jewels might have chosen to
exist under a cloud of anonymity, but two of his stars had slightly higher
profiles, and were both known quantities in UK porn. Most of Kathy Green’s fifteen minutes of fame
revolved around her being an ex-lover of Mary Millington, a status she cashed
in on by hooking up with creep to end all creeps John M. East, appearing in his
sociopathic tribute films Mary Millington’s True Blue Confessions (1980) and
Mary Millington’s World Striptease Extravaganza (1981). The fact that Green would buddy up to a
character like East tells you everything you need to know about her. Green had first shown flashes of malevolence
in World Striptease Extravaganza, where her character isn’t above offering
sexual favours to one of the judges of a striptease contest, in order to take
home the prize. “Oh fuck, I’ve got to
win this bloody prize” Green complains in voiceover “I think I deserve it after
that fantastic blowjob I gave him last night”.
In Precious Jewels, Green proves deft at both taking it and dishing it
out. She’s a wrastlin’, fighin’ wildcat
when restrained and brutalised by Mike and Ann, as well as an impressively mean
bitch when she is able to turn the tables.
Here, Green more than lives up to her real life reputation as a
mercenary minded, tough cookie.
On account of both Cooper and Kathy Green’s
connections to David Sullivan’s film and publishing empire, some have speculated
that Sullivan himself may have had a hand in Precious Jewels. However, the idea of this being a David
Sullivan joint seems extremely unlikely, given that the savvy Sullivan always
self-consciously avoided the subject of S&M, knowing that it had the potential
to attract much negative police and legal attention. On the other hand the
universally unknown ‘Bos’ comes across as a far more reckless, extremist
character, the type who follows their own fetishistic path regardless of how
much trouble it gets them into.
The bare bones plot synopsis that accompanied the
video releases of Precious Jewels (yes, it was issued three different times on
VHS) does feel slightly at odds with the film itself. “They were playing harmless games- then he
arrived- they told him each other’s secrets- that was their mistake- he used
those secrets to further his own fantasies”.
It is a summary that tends to give Cooper’s character the status of
psychological ringmaster, pitting the two women off against each other. Whereas in the film, Mike the door-to-door
salesman never really comes across as anything other than a clueless pawn, that
the two women use against each other.
The impression you get is that there is a degree of unspoken consent
going on between the two women all along, and that even the rapes are just a
part of their S&M role play.
Something that goes over the head of their invited guest, after all...characters
played by Gypsy Dave Cooper weren’t exactly renowned for their intelligence or
perception. Obsessive as Precious Jewels
is when it comes to bondage and sexual assault, it is noticeably indifferent
when it comes to sex itself...well consensual sex anyway. In the land of Bos, there is actually greater
emphasis placed on foreplay than the sex it is leading up to. Bos was clearly a firm believer in the erotic
power of wandering hands. Unless you’ve
seen the film itself, you wouldn’t believe how much of Precious Jewels consists
of Kathy Green and Gypsy Dave fumbling about on a staircase...in a
bathroom...in the bedroom, curiously making little headway with getting each
others’ clothes off. The regular sex in
Precious Jewels just tends to drone on, and the film only really feels alive
when it is depicting bondage, spankings and rape, leaving little doubt as to where
the director’s head was at. Precious
Jewels might have one foot in the British sex film’s past, with the everyday
job of its male character leading to sexual escapades, but it is also the closest
Britain has ever come to replicating the heavy-duty, American roughies of Phil
Prince and Zebedy Colt.
In Britain, Precious Jewels was the type of film that
could have only seen the light of day during the pre-cert video era. Back then the only precaution Bos took was to
slap the ridiculous disclaimer “keep out of childrens reach” onto the video
releases of his films. As if anyone remotely
sane would consider a video featuring a bound, topless woman being menaced by
scissors, on its front cover as family friendly viewing...even if its lead
actor had once appeared in a Disney movie.
All the good sense in the world would suggest this film stood little
chance of being passed by the censor after the video recordings act, yet
following four years of silence since making the film Bos resurfaced to submit
the film to the BBFC in 1986. Could
there have been an easier way of throwing money away than submitting an S&M
fixated film –one that blurred the line between consensual or unconsensual sex-
to the BBFC in 1986. Needless to say the
British censor was having none of it, banning the film outright. Bos and his companies ‘J.P Films’ and ‘Tansy
Films’ have never been heard from since.
The fact that he submitted Precious Jewels to the BBFC, rather than the
other, seemingly more palatable films he made, only adds to the mystery of Bos.
An example of the British sex film slipping into darkness, just before the censorship axe fell on videotape. Precious Jewels is a Valentine’s Day Card to taboo sex, sent by an anonymous, mono-named, admirer.
Gerard Daly, the Dublin property magnate turned movie mogul, who was responsible for the mind boggling 'Sonny Capone- The Irish Godfather' (2020) is back with another offer you can't refuse. This time Daly tackles the topic of sex doll robots with V 1200 (2021) a featurette length mixture of sci-fi, horror and crude humour. Daly's Sonny Capone co-star Gary Byrne plays Kane, a henpecked fecker with a slob wife and no sex life, both of which drives him to visit the high rise offices of Dr Banners (Daly himself) a smarmy, coke snorting inventor who hopes to make it rich by selling bikini clad robots to needy, sexually desperate men. "Trust me the curtains match the drapes" says Dr Banners, pimpin' the bots "it's a win-win for you Kane". One erection gag later and Kane has fallen head over heels for sexpot sexbot Judy, but the bawdiness turns to bloodshed when his wife returns home and meets hubby's automaton girlfriend for the first time.
Were
it not for the contemporary issues of A.I and sexbots, V 1200 would have been
right at home in the good old, bad old days of the British sex comedy. Where
with a bit of added nudity it would have no doubt been sent out as a
'supporting feature' and helped fill Daly's pockets with Eady money. Frenzied
mugging for the camera (the woman playing Dr Banners' assistant lifts the
prize) and kids' party level robot impersonations are the order of the day
here. As is self promotion with Daly filling the cast out with family members
and even taking the mic to do some rapping on the soundtrack. The term 'larger
than life character' tends to get thrown around like confetti at a wedding
these days, but Daly truly earns that accolade what with this, Sonny Capone and
his music career aspirations (the cover version of Mud's 'Lonely this Christmas'
on his YouTube channel will leave you speechless). V 1200 doesn't quite match
the lunacy of Sonny Capone. Then again, that film had 90 minutes to pummel you
with violence, nudity and tastelessness while this seems to be a work in
progress. It's described as 'final, finished version 1.1' on Youtube. So maybe
Daly is fiendishly toiling away on a feature length version, hopefully he'll
remember to wipe that piece of dirt from the camera lens if he does.
How could I resist tackling what at the time was
considered one of the worst British films ever made, in the words of Freddie
Mercury “I consider it a challenge before the whole human race and I ain’t
gonna lose”. When it came to courting
controversy, Killer Bitch was an enfant terrible that rode a wave of bad
publicity during 2010. Rarely out of the
tabloids back then, the British press condemned Killer Bitch as –among other
things- ‘a sick movie’, ‘stomach churning’, ‘sick and wrong’ while promising
their readership a film full of ‘extreme violence and red hot sex’. It’s a film that does its best to live up to
its disreputable image, wanna see a topless dwarf being thrown off a building,
a guy having his cock cut off with an axe, or a brief detour into hardcore
porn? Then that’s Killer Bitch’s idea of a good time too. While the number of shootings, expletives,
and bare breasts in the film proves difficult to keep count of. Well, difficult, but not impossible. If you want to jump to the final tallies,
there are 420 expletives, 7 pair of breasts, and 60 shootings in the film.
Killer Bitch is as if someone had fallen hopelessly in
love with Crank (2006) and its sequel Crank: High Voltage (2009) then jumped head
first into making their own gender reversed, Cockney version. Over compensating for its comparatively
shoestring budget by amplifying the level of screen crudity to near ear-drum
shattering decibels. Killer Bitch begins
in a jarring manner, with an explicit sex scene involving porn stars Cindy Behr
and true Brit legend Ben Dover. The
latter largely dispenses of his cheeky chappie routine here, in favour of
playing the severe older man card- cue lots of spitting, strangling and
slapping from Mr Dover. The sex in the
scene is for real, yet while the filmmakers attempt to shoot it as softcore, a
combination of Dover’s instantly recognisable visage, Behr’s fake orgasm
grandstanding, and a few, carelessly left in penetration shots all conspire to
give the game away. The sex turns
terminal when Behr repeatedly plunges a dagger into Dover at the moment of
orgasm, leaving her laughing hysterical with her boobs now covered in blood
while Dover expires underneath her. It’s an explosive mixture of sexual fury,
violent death and blood fetishism worthy of ‘Evil Come, Evil Go’ or Derek
Ford’s ‘Sex Express’, although in all likelihood the opening scene of Basic Instinct
was what was being emulated here.
Leaving the audience to piece together how that relates to anything else in the film (good luck) Killer Bitch then introduces us to the actual protagonist, Yvette (Yvette Rowland) the owner of a glamour model agency, who is contemplating suicide after the death of her boyfriend, who had his throat cut by a balaclava clad assassin. Prevented from slashing her wrists by a contract killer, who then tries to kill her, only to himself be killed by yet another contract killer...the dazed and confused Yvette is whisked away to the headquarters of an unnamed, shadowy organisation. There Yvette is strong-armed into turning assassin. She is forced into agreeing to take out five of their enemies, under the threat that failure to do so will result in her work colleagues, friends and family being assassinated by one of their professional killers. While Killer Bitch is the type of movie that yells at you for not leaving your brain at the door, it is difficult not to grabble with the logic behind the organisation’s actions. After all why entrust the task of taking out their most feared adversaries to a squeamish, hopelessly out of her depth civilian. While simultaneously sending a cold-blooded assassin out on the comparatively ‘shooting fish in a barrel’ task of killing off people who work for a glamour model agency.
This punch-drunk premise however is the
narrative push that propels Miss Yvette into a nightmarish, gonzo journey into
London’s crime netherworld, with many real-life figures from that realm showing
up to play exaggerated versions of themselves.
Enter bald headed, rubber faced, media savvy ex-gangster Dave Courtney,
playing bald headed, rubber faced, media savvy ex-gangster Dave Courtney. Since his name is first on her kill list,
Yvette has to infiltrate Courtney’s real-life pad ‘Camelot Castle’, a show
shopping shine to himself and new money.
Killer Bitch gives you the grand tour of Chez Courtney, which is
cluttered with so many mementos of his criminal career –framed firearms, police
helmets, truncheons- that it rivals the family’s abode in The Texas Chainsaw
Massacre. Courtney is introduced telling
sex jokes, shooting the breeze with fellow ex-crims like Roy ‘Pretty Boy’ Shaw,
before sneaking off to get a blowjob from a female party goer. Miss Yvette catches Courtney with his pants
down, apologetically pulls a gun on him, then in her oh so polite, middle class
way explains “look I’ve never done this before, it’s nothing personal, but if I
don’t do this they’ll kill everyone”.
Naturally Courtney soon wrestles that firearm away
from her, and ends up doing the streak, chasing Yvette around his house without
his pants on, rampaging past his party guests with his dick flapping
about. Dave Courtney- naked as nature
intended. The joker in Killer Bitch’s
pack of ex-crim castings, whatever else can be said of Courtney, the man was
clearly game for anything, including this universally unwanted piece of
exhibitionism.
The making of Killer Bitch hit its first, but certainly
not last, hurdle when Courtney was unable to complete his scenes in the movie,
having been arrested and charged with possession of a firearm in July
2009. What with Courtney out of the
picture, his screen villainy is deputised to two henchmen, who drag Yvette off
in a car and get into an argument over whether they should “blow her tits off”
or suck her toes. Implausibly- given she
has just pulled a gun on, and threatened to kill their boss- they instead
decide to just drop her off by the Thames, letting her off with a slapped wrist
and effectively telling her not to try that sort of thing again, young lady.
After failing to take out Courtney, Yvette finds
herself in hot water with the organisation, who vengefully send a contract
killer (played by ex-football hooligan Jason Marriner) out to murder the
glamour models that Yvette employs. Presumably
the makers of Killer Bitch had connections with Babestation, the TV phone sex
channel in which topless models badger punters into calling premium rate phone numbers
then talk dirty to them. Killer Bitch’s
casting call extends beyond former criminals to Babestation models, with
several of the channel’s then reigning queens of dirty talk –Angel Harte,
Camila Quance and Hannah Claydon- showing up in the movie. Many of these gals, like Claydon, had simultaneous
careers as nude models in The Sunday Sport, a kindred spirit to this movie if
ever there was one. Casting that guarantied
Killer Bitch some free publicity in The Sport, one of few periodicals to come
out in support of the film “a hardnosed gangster film that takes no
prisoners”.
Killer Bitch gives you a freebie look at the big boobs
that have left many a poor boy with an expensive phone bill. Essentially Killer Bitch shows these girls at
their day jobs, posing topless for photographers and talking to punters over
the phone. Then throws in the novelty
value of seeing them try their hand at acting, when Mr Jason barges into the
photo sessions, shoots the photographers, issues demands for blowjobs, but then
loses his composure and shoots the girls too.
Killer Bitch never tires of throwing stage blood over the breasts of
second string glamour models.
Babestation models deliver dialogue like they are
still manning the phone sex lines “oh you’re such a pervert, ugghh, fucking
weirdo, you’re sick” yells one at Mr Jason when he demands to see some skin,
words she has probably said to put-down loving guys over the phone a hundred
times over. Jason Marriner isn’t
remotely convincing as a hitman, but in fairness Killer Bitch makes little
attempt to present him as anything other than himself, an ex-football hooligan
with a mouth like a sewer and the personality of a Video Nasty. As with the other ex-crims in the cast, you
get the impression that Marriner is strictly here for a lark. A chance to run around with a shooter and
ogle a few glamour girls (or ‘treacle’ as Marriner likes to call the ladies),
rather than any serious acting ambitions.
Out of all the characters in Killer Bitch, Marriner’s is the one who is
the biggest mouthpiece for it’s funny,
but sick in the head sense of humour. “There’s
two sides to me, and one of my sides is off my fucking head...but as you’ve got
a great pair of tits I’m gonna give you one chance” he tells Hannah Claydon,
before deciding whether she lives or dies based on her ability to answer
football trivia questions.
In another scene Marriner gets blown by another
Babestation babe, only for her to come up for air and tell him “you fat cunt, I’d
rather be chewing my toe nails”. He then
shoots her dead, which doesn’t deter him from blowing his load in her mouth,
Killer Bitch’s idea of light humour. Marriner
frequently breaks character to throw in references to his real life legal
woes. “There’s two fucking things I
don’t like in life, one is being filmed by an undercover reporter, the second
is being called a fat cunt” alluding to the 1999 BBC investigation into the
Chelsea Head Hunters football hooligan firm which sent Marriner to jail, but birthed
his career as a minor celebrity.
Not every male character in the movie is hell-bent on
snuffing out the ladies. Yvette buddies
up with Alex (Alex Reid) a cage fighter who is also caught up in the
organisation’s machinations. Alex pops
in and out of the film, occasionally acting as the braun to Yvette’s brains,
and helps her cross off more names from her list. Next up on the kill list is unlicensed boxing
champ Norman Buckland, giving a berserk tour-de-force, and one of the most
intense displays of rage you’re ever likely to see on film. Miss Yvette and Mr Alex catch up with
Buckland in his natural surroundings, an unlicensed fight at a farmyard
shed. Buckland is pummelling all and
sundry, egged on by a mob of fans and their pit bulls. Mr Alex takes to the ring, he is the younger
of the two and looks in good shape, but this counts for little. Buckland instantly wipes the floor with Alex,
whilst unleashing an incredible, stream of consciousness series of insults “I’ll
rip your eyes out and stick ‘em up your fucking arse”. Not even the audience is safe, with Buckland
breaking the fourth wall, yelling straight at us “I’m the guv’nor...who’s the
guv’nor...I’m the guv’nor” till he is hoarse.
By rights, the DVD release of Killer Bitch should have come with a free
pair of earplugs just to get you through Buckland’s scene. So caught up in the role is Buckland that he
even lifts up a breeze block and drops it down on his head, in a completely
unscripted, improvised moment of madness.
Not all cast members were quite as committed to the movie. Famously, the film’s intended male lead Alex Reid, an ex-cage fighter, cross dresser and flash in the pan ‘celebrity’- balked at completing the film, walking away after shooting only a handful of scenes. A turn of events that caused the production to shut down for a month, leading to script re-writes and bad blood between Reid and the filmmakers, who publically accused Reid of having “no bottle, no principles and no talent”. Unsurprisingly Reid pulled a no-show at the movie’s premiere in Mayfair, and was replaced on the red carpet by a cardboard cut out of himself...however it’s unlikely anybody noticed the difference. The bad blood spills on over into the film itself, with an obvious jibe at its absent star and his off-screen fetish. When Yvette is asked by a sexually needy guy if she knows any cross dressers, she replies “well, yeah as a matter of fact, I do actually, oh...but if you book him he’s unlikely to show up”....meow!!!
For it’s would be male lead, Killer Bitch was a hot
potato that turned into a stink bomb.
The News of the World tabloid effectively branded Reid a brute and a
pervert for appearing in the film, claiming that in one scene he “sickeningly
forces the girlfriend of a man he has killed to have full sex twice in a
wood”. Which caused Reid to hit back in
a rival tabloid “I just wish that people would realise that scene is a love
scene”. That scene might fall short is
being a sickening rape, but it isn’t exactly what you’d call a love scene
either. Alex and Yvette squabble, he throttles
her and takes her over his shoulder, only for her to melt in his arms over this
show of male dominance and ends up having consensual sex with him. Hyped in the press as the film’s most controversial
scene, it turns out to instead be the most unintentionally hilarious. Students of bad sex on film might point to
the pool scene in Showgirls as the Mount Rushmore of erotic awfulness but
Killer Bitch surely deserves to be thought of as the British equivalent. As a screen lover Alex Reid makes a great
cage fighter. Reid approaches a movie
sex scene like he was still in the ring, pinning down his opponent and strenuously
hollering “yeah, yeah, fuck, yeah”. Reid
thrashes about like a bear caught in a mantrap, when he sucks face with Yvette
it’s like watching a starving dog tucking into the first decent meal it has had
in over a week. This was to be Alex
Reid’s parting gift to the acting world.
After Killer Bitch, Reid never appeared in a movie again, and largely
disappeared from public view. Only
briefly resurfacing in April 2021, when he was jailed for eight weeks for contempt
of court.
Reid’s departure left a square jawed hole in Killer Bitch, one that was filled by another, unrelated Mr. Reid....WBC Boxer Robin Reid. Basically playing an amplified, Liverpudlian version of Mr. Alex, the second Mr Reid charges into the film with all the ferocity of a paratrooper, delivering dialogue like it was entirely written in block capitals. In his best moment in the film, Reid kills an opponent then victoriously proclaims “and that’s why I’m still THE FUCKING KILLIN’ MACHINE”. Equally memorable is another boxing legend Joe Egan, once called “the toughest white man on the planet” by Mike Tyson, a quote that is used in the film itself. Cast as ‘Big Joe- the armed robber’, Egan enters the film by throttling an elderly, charity collector and stealing his incontinence pad, which is then thrown in the direction of a hapless passerby. Apropos of nothing, Big Joe and his gun toting goons are suddenly involved in a Mexican standoff with a topless, cocaine addicted, dwarf who ends up pleading “I’ve got nothing to do with this, I’ve got panto at the end of the year”.
What you remember the most about Big Joe’s
scenes is his infectious catchphrase “there’s no point in you then”, which he
dishes out just before shooting adversaries, friends and just about anyone who
pisses him off...which tends to be everyone.
To watch Killer Bitch is to hear “there’s no point in you then”
replaying in your head for a long time afterwards, it may well even haunt you
till your dying day. The Curse of Killer
Bitch.
Killer Bitch remains the biggest claim to fame, if not the magnum opus of its director Liam Galvin, a showbiz knockabout since the 1970s. Originally an actor, in a sign of things to come, one of Galvin’s earliest roles was a bit part in the notoriously violent and frequently suppressed Patrick Mower TV series ‘Target’. During the 1980s and 1990s, Galvin was a regular on children’s TV appearing in such innocuous fare as Playdays and Bodger and Badger, under the stage name Ricky Diamond. As a documentary filmmaker all of Galvin’s obsessions were hyper-masculine ones. Through his ‘Gangster Videos’ label Galvin released a slew of self-explanatory docs –IBA Boxing, Roy Shaw Fight School, The Krays: Geordie Connection, Dave Courtney’s Dodgy DVD- presumably striking up the kind of friendships and associations that explains Killer Bitch’s revolving door of ex-crims and sporting world tough guys. Killer Bitch presents people like Norman Buckland and Joe Egan with the respect and reverence of end-of-level bosses in a video game. The film was also Galvin’s stab at making a star out of Miss Yvette, who as well as being an actress, singer and TV presenter was also the co-owner of Galvin’s (now dissolved) Gangster Videos company.
Dressed in rock chick attire of
denim jeans and a leather jacket, bearing a slight resemblance to Kate Bush but
giving off more of an Eileen Daly vibe in terms of screen presence. Yvette Rowland might not give Judi Dench or
Helen Mirren any sleepless nights when it comes to acting, but wins your
respect for the sheer amount of indignities the film throws her way. Yvette is continually terrorised by human pit
bulls, thrown over the shoulders of brutes, tied up, gagged, repeatedly
threatened with rape and called a ‘cant’ so many times that word was probably
ringing in her ears throughout the entire shoot. For its leading lady, Killer Bitch must have
felt less like an acting assignment and more of an obstacle course. A very post-watershed version of ‘Treasure
Hunt’ with Yvette in the Anneka Rice role and likeminded ass-fixated camerawork
whenever Miss Yvette runs from A to B.
Killer Bitch might now epitomize everything that modern
culture has turned its back on, but back in 2010 Rowland and Galvin were a
couple with their finger on the pulse.
In its own accidental way, Killer Bitch is quite the era defining
film. Killer Bitch came out of a time of
Lad’s Mags, where a cottage industry of books and documentaries had sprung up
around the public’s fascination with East End criminality, where reality TV had
brought about the glorification of non-entities like Alex Reid, and where
tabloids like The News of the World and The Sunday Sport –both of whom helped
with Killer Bitch’s difficult birth- dominated the weekend newsstands. Sleaze was an integral part of British
culture in 2010, and Killer Bitch was right there flying that flag high.
Killer Bitch shares a similar gross-out ethos as Jim
Muro’s Street Trash and the excesses of Troma.
It works overtime to disgust and offend, to the extent that it probably
constitutes an act of GBH on viewers of a sensitive disposition. What with its tongue in cheek, cartoonishly
over the top approach to the material though, Killer Bitch registers as a
series of juvenile pranks designed to wind up people the wrong way. The filmmaking equivalent of sticking a ‘kick
me’ sign on someone’s back, toilet papering their house, or knocking on their door
and running away. No film whose end
credits refer to characters as ‘Horny Killer Bird’, ‘Knifed Sex Punter’ and ‘Good
Looking Bird’ harbours a deep desire to be taken serious.
Take Killer Bitch serious they did though. The BBFC reportedly agonised over whether
they should give an 18 certificate to a film that opens with sexual
penetration, especially one that was clearly aimed at a... ahem...non-arthouse
demographic. One retailer took offence
to the film’s title, leaving the filmmakers to contemplate releasing it under
the ‘less sexist’ title of Killer Babe, before sticking to their guns. Even after the film was awarded an uncut 18
cert from the BBFC, Killer Bitch still ended up being banned from the shelves
of Asda, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s, WH Smith and Tesco, and lasted only two days
on I-Tunes before being banned there as well.
A tie-in novelisation was also pulled from publication due to the
controversy.
At the time its makers hoped they had a long-term
Rocky Horror Picture Show type cult hit on their hands, but Killer Bitch’s notoriety
proved to be short lived. Eleven years
down the line, it’s a largely forgotten £1.50 DVD in CEX. Sadly I’m not holding my breath for a Killer
Bitch action figure line or for Killer Bitch: The Musical to open in the West
End anytime soon. Still, using only
slender means and his colourful connections Galvin pulled together a noisy, chaotic
encapsulation of everything he thought guys wanted from an action movie back
then. Namely, shootouts, brawls, gore,
big tits, a car chase and enough insanity to fill a dozen other movies. Killer Bitch stands as one of the most
primal, blokeish, uncouth movies ever made, a triumph of blockheadism. If movies smelt Killer Bitch would hit you
with the stench of a badly burnt full English breakfast. If movies had balls, Killer Bitch would break
the scales.
