gavcrimson: May 2021

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.

Monday 17 May 2021

V 1200 (2021)

Thursday 13 May 2021

Killer Bitch (2010)

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