Blood Games

I'd expected more of a slasher flick when I started watching Blood Games, but what I got instead was a well made action-thriller instead. All in all, not a bad trade off.

An all girls baseball team beats an all male redneck team and this leads to all hell breaking loose when members of the redneck team attack two of the girls. As revenge, the girls mow down one of the attackers with their bus and flee the scene of the crime. From there, the rednecks gang up trying to get revenge on the girls. No matter where the run, they'll find them.

Blood Games is a mashup of Deliverance and Friday the 13th with a little hint of The Final Terror thrown in. It moves at a decent pace, is very well shot, and has a handful of very exciting set pieces. If there's any major complaint, it's that it's nearly impossible to tell most of the characters apart on either side. There are only about 2 or 3 guys and girls who we learn anything about or spend much time with. It might just be a case of way too many characters complicating things.

I really prefer the Aussie name for this movie: Baseball Bimbos in Hillbilly Hell. It is an apt description. A traveling women's baseball team that dresses like Hooter's girls take on a bunch of drunken hillbillies and whip their ass. Did they not think they would take retribution? Things only get started when Roy (Gregory Scott Cummins) and a buddy try to rape two of the girls and kill the manager. Things are only going to get uglier. Roy and his buddy grab rifles and start shooting and Roy gets killed. His daddy (Luke Shay) puts a bounty on the girls - $1000 each DEAD. Now, the games begin.

Let's get the T&A out of the way right now. The actresses were cast, not for their acting ability, but for their appearance in the shower after the game, and for the time they get their clothes torn off in rape attempts.

After the bus gets on the wrong road, they team sets out on foot. three stay back to fight while the rest move on. Big mistake. The others return, but the losses on both sides are stacking up. The girls actually are in the lead, but they don't know it.

You know who's going to win, but it was fun watching.

Blood Games is strange in that it's hard to figure out director Tanya Rosenberg's intent. On one hand, it's one of the most misandrist movies I have ever seen, all but one of the male characters being vile, sexist, violent redneck pigs with absolutely no redeeming qualities and double-figure IQs, while all of the women are hot, resourceful and able to best a man at almost anything, whether it be a baseball match or unarmed combat. On the other hand, the film is pure exploitation, Rosenberg missing no opportunity to show the ladies' ass cheeks hanging out of their hot pants or exposing their ample breasts, with gratuitous up-skirt shots and a communal shower scene befitting your average women-in-prison movie. What exactly are we dealing with here? Feminist survival horror or sleazy skin-flick? Thankfully, whatever it's supposed to be, you're bound to be entertained if straight-to-video trash is your thing.

The film kicks off with a prolonged baseball game between all-women team Babe and the Ballgirls, dressed in cropped tees and very short shorts, and a bunch of drooling backwoods scuzz-balls. The ladies take the game comfortably, their coach, Midnight (Ross Hagen), winning $1000 in a bet with losing coach Mino Collins (Ken Carpenter). Collins refuses to settle the debt, however, so Midnight decides to take matters into his own hands. Meanwhile, two of the Ballgirls go looking for Midnight, and are sexually assaulted by Collins' son Roy (Gregory Scott Cummins) and fellow redneck Holt (Don Dowe). Things escalate quickly, leaving Midnight bleeding all over the team's RV and the girls running for their lives from the armed hillbillies.

What follows is pure B-movie nonsense, the women abandoning their vehicle to head out on foot through the woods, closely followed by Collins and his gun-toting goons. Pursued by a bunch of men who would struggle to count to ten, the women are able to lay traps and lure several of the rednecks to their deaths, but ultimately only a handful of them survive to face the crossbow-toting Collins in a dilapidated ghost town for the predictable finalé. Rosenberg's strong, powerful women display their tits and ass at every turn, with brutal rape scenes and violent deaths at regular intervals. Check your brain at the door, and get a few brewskis in, and there's a good chance that you'll find this dumb movie quite a bit of fun.

"Blood Games" is one funny movie. I can't quite figure it out yet, but on surface inspection it appears to be a sexist parody of "In A League Of Their Own" crossed with some passable Humans Hunting Humans carnage, a bit of "Repo Man" social satire, along with a Hicksploitation sleaze "Deliverance" ripoff angle thrown in for good measure. The producers went out of their way to make sure there was something in this movie to potentially offend anyone, and I for one appreciate their diligence in the matter.

Now bear in mind this is one of those movies that is only offensive if you're stupid enough to actually think about it in realistic terms. It's a cartoon for grownups, with a busload of blisteringly hot 20 year old women running afoul of a community of foul-mouthed, smelly redneck crackers. Their conflict is grounded in a baseball game since the gimmick of the film is that these Penthouse models are baseball players recruited based on looks who apparently travel from town to town playing pickup games. It is unclear if they are actually paid to play baseball, though their dubious manager has a gambling debt he needs to pay off, and wagers against the redneck team with the resident psychotic Vietnam veteran patriarch businessman who organizes the hicks. Through events left best discovered on your own, his dirtbag son knifes the manager, shoots the driver of the bus & gets killed for his efforts, the hillbillies organize into a drunken beer swilling posse, and chase the girls through the woods trying to kill them. Add ample gratuitous nudity, pepper with some gory death scenes, and presto: A fabulous movie to drink beer with in the company of your friends. It is, on the surface, a sleazy despicable little movie that no less than Joe Bob Briggs recommends heartily.

But hang on a minute, there's something strange about this movie. First off it was directed by a woman -- one Tanya Rosenberg, in her sole IMDb credit -- which is eye opening considering the exploitation element at work. These baseball girls aren't just hot, they are bedecked in an array of costumes that the ladies at Hooter's would refuse. The camera also lingers on them, ALL of them, especially in the obligatory group shower scene (where? at the redneck clubhouse?) which plays out more like something from a Women In Prison movie minus the catfight. There is also a self awareness to the presentation that suggests the girls knew they were being exploited and not just didn't mind but threw themselves into their work with pride like there was a message here. I was especially pleased by the nude sunbathing scene by the stream.

The rednecks also behave oddly to say the least. Sure, baseball is a competitive sport, but wouldn't you think that someone in their midst would have had a problem with them slapping around a busload of aggressively attractive twenty year old women? Wouldn't they want to get to know these chicks on better terms, maybe have them over for a kegger later? They aren't just the only decent women in the movie, they are the ONLY women in the movie. And the rednecks aren't just your typical movie rednecks, they are all hyper-rednecks with nary a decent soul who doesn't drink beer while driving their rifle rack equipped monster pickup trucks amongst them. Even stranger still, the movie was shot in California ... California has dysfunctional cracker trash communities?

The only conclusion to make is that the movie is a parody of some sorts, or a cartoon-like graphic novel brought to life, with behavior and mannerisms so over the top that they can't possibly be confused with the way real people would act, look, dress, etc. Think "Repo Man" with "Dukes Of Hazzard" production design. It's a bizarre, twisted little entertainment for grown-ups, and surprisingly well made with some interesting use of slow motion camera-work, a respectable budget, laughs galore, and never a dull moment. Sadly the film was a direct to video release by a small now defunct company whose work has yet to be resurrected for the DVD era. But it's worth tracking down if you're into junk like this, which is exactly what keeping a functioning VCR around the house is for.

6/10

An okay hicksploitation movie about a girls softball team being hunted by rednecks. It's both trashy and not trashy enough. Nothing stands out really, but you could do way worse. The main problem is that you don't care about any of the girls, the kills are very basic, and the villains are interchangeable. A solid meh all around.