Blast-Off Girls

By 1967, H.G. Lewis had stopped his gore career short with THE GRUESOME TWOSOME a year earlier. He directed a campy send-up of a rock group being used and humiliated by the music business called THE BLAST-OFF GIRLS that remained lost for years. Eventually, Something Weird Video unearthed it and released it. While it's all good campy fun, it could hardly be called essential Lewis.

The Faded Blue (a real-life Chicago garage band) star as The Big Blast, a Florida garage band who are conned into a business deal (without a contract) by big-time manager Boojie Baker (played disgustingly well by Dan Conway). Boojie uses beautiful women to con record executives and concert hall owners into letting the Blast play there and eventually makes them famous with a record on the Billboard Hot 100 called "Noise". When the group decides that Boojie isn't giving them enough money, they promptly drop him and he avenges himself by setting up a drug bust. But the group isn't finished with Boojie yet.

THE BLAST-OFF GIRLS suffers from one thing: the group isn't that good. When many of the "bad guy" executives say, "This group is just like any other", the audience can't help but agree with them! A multitude of garage bands erupted in the late 60s and it's hard to tell them apart. The Big Blast, if there ever were such a group, would have melted into the garage band sound without making much of a dent. Some of the songs heard are pretty good (like "Noise"), but others are overpowered by the annoying organ work. Of special note is the keyboard player, who is set up to be the comic relief and is pretty likable. As a matter of fact, the whole band are not bad actors and any viewer can identify with them. I was surprised to see Col. Sanders appear as himself, offering free fried chicken to the group in exchange for a performance outside his restaurant for dancing kids! Pretty cool stuff. Imagine anyone doing such a thing today for a low budget filmmaker! Besides The Big Blast is an unnamed garage band heard during the opening sequence that features the chief delinquent in JUST FOR THE HELL OF IT as the lead singer! They do a pretty good job, too, and I would have preferred the whole movie to be about them instead.

H.G. Lewis does what he can with a pretty slapshod storyline, but the film slows down too much when the band is off the screen. The background music really irks me, too. But BLAST-OFF GIRLS is kitschy fun that is worth seeing at least once. Lewis fans will die happy after seeing The Big Blast's stoned performance on live TV as only Lewis could do it! Recommended for one-time viewing and to anyone who ever was in a band or is now! Modern-day garage bands should really enjoy this! For a much better film on the same topic, though, seek out BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, which I enjoyed much more.

Funny, predictable melodrama about a pop group and the manager who hijacks their career. An inferior pop band ("The Big Blast!") sells its collective soul to heartless, manipulative preppy Boojie Baker, who owns their name, their suits, their equipment -- and their girls! (The Blast-Off Girls are useful to the plot but too frequently offscreen.) Vocals and instrumentals are uniformly off-key and undistinguished, the band members have no distinct "look," and the record execs & promoters don't care, because "all bands sound the same anyway." Will The Big Blast submit to contractual enslavement and every indignity known to man? See the film to find out. For Lewis fans, there are small pleasures here -- the guy who played "Lang" in SCUM OF THE EARTH plays a similar, though more epicurean character here; Ray Sager from JUST FOR THE HELL OF IT and WIZARD OF GORE is Boojie's sidekick; Big Blast members had parts in THE ALLEY TRAMP (!), YEAR OF THE YAHOO, et. al. All in all, a fun film, but hampered by its cheapness and simplicity.

For me, H.G. Lewis movies have always been a mixed bag. Sometimes they're a lot of fun and sometimes they are excruciating. This would fall in the latter category.

The story involves a sheisty band manager (and "whitey mack" wannabe), Boojie Baker (played by Dan Conway), who goes from one garage band to the next, forming them into a profit for himself. The type of manager who believes in taking as much credit and percentage as possible and leaving his band with virtually nothing. Conway turns in a good performance, yet considering the repetitive nature of the plot and several other elements, it becomes grating.

Boojie's first group gets the hint right away, when he tries to screw them out of their earnings, and they proceed to take a hike. He bounces back and hits the jackpot, with his next anti-stellar group of morons. A group that continues to get conned over and over by Boojie's transparent tactics, until 10 minutes towards the end of the picture when they finally discover an escape clause (an escape clause being a metaphor for a small rock on the same gravel road they've been traveling on all along).

H.G. Lewis' films were never known for great music, and this one might have the worst. If you thought the theme from "JUST FOR THE HELL OF IT" sounded like "White Rabbit" performed by an orchard of adam's apples liquefied in a blender, then you ain't heard nothin' yet. Wait until you hear Boojie's band, The Big Blast, pump out the same song over and over and over and over. Not even a song really, just a chorus that's sung so many times that it literally sounds like a broken record. Here's a taste... "The next time that you want me, I won't run to you. The next time that you need me, I'll tell you that we're through. The next time, the next time, the next time that we're through(?!)" Just imagine hearing that same jam session in nearly every other scene. Not since Jean-Luc Godard's "SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL", have I seen a film that thrives on such lyrical overkill.

What's even more grating is that the band members never truly gel with one another and the music suffers because of it. At times, it seems as if each member is singing different lyrics to the same chorus, all at once. For example, when they're singing "...the next time...", it sometimes sounds like "...run and hide...". And, in a more interesting number, "Go BLANK Yourself, My Friend", some of them sing "Go BLANK Yourself, A Friend". My initial thoughts were that this was a band of non-actors attempting to perform music, when in fact, according to the credits, this was a real band. Ugghh.

In conclusion, if you want a far out ride that contains little emphasis on girls and couldn't provide a spark with a dry match in a hay barn, then "THE BLAST-OFF GIRLS" is for you! Otherwise, I'd recommend Arch Hall, Jr's "WILD GUITAR", which deals in the same subject manner and is a lot more fun to watch.

H. G. Lewis occupies a special place in film history; he's infamous because his blood-red gore films of the 60's and 70's were so shocking and audacious. I've enjoyed watching a few of his movies, but I have certainly not seen them all.

Nevertheless, I'd be willing to bet that "Blast-Off Girls" is one of his best-made films. I liked it a lot. Surprisingly, it features no graphic violence, and very little violence period. And surprisingly, it is driven by story and acting, both of which are fine considering the shoestring budget. I imagine there is a strong autobiographical side to this movie, because filmmaker Lewis really seems to loathe and despise the rotten, profit-grubbing main character:

Dan Conway plays "Boojie Baker," the all-too-believably sleazy band manager with big-time aspirations--he's working his way up the ladder (or so he thinks), chewing up and spitting out small rock bands; he entices his prospects with girls, and promises of "the good life," then books shows for them--but when the minimal profits roll in, he makes sure the band gets just enough of them to stick begrudgingly around. If they question his honesty, he lies and placates; if they accuse him of thievery and threaten to leave, he blackmails them. He's thoroughly detestable, and very enjoyably played by Conway.

Boojie's associates generally only tolerate him so they can go to his raucous parties (attended by the "Blast-Off" groupie girls of the title, who have basically nothing to do with the story). He doesn't really have any friends, and seems happy without them.

But Boojie's good luck runs out the day he takes on a musical group that is as naive as all the others, but possessing of a strong sense of justice. They object to his treatment of them, and plan an elaborate revenge, with the intent of screwing Boojie on a cosmic level. In classic morality-play fashion, Boojie gets his rightful desserts, although he does spin off at the end of the film (rather like Darth Vader at the end of "Star Wars"), minus one cheesy band but ready for new sleazy Boojie adventures. Don't kid yourself, the film seems to say; you might be lucky enough to send them off in some other direction, but Boojies don't go down easy!

In a twisted way, this is a charmingly optimistic film that suggests that decent people can exist in the entertainment world if they have the guts to stand their ground and oppose their oppressors. But "Blast-Off Girls" isn't really about the good guys at all; it is almost a study in Boojie-ness, a virtual diagram of the Boojies of the world, so that the viewer will be able to spot them should he or she have the misfortune to get into business relationships with them. The bands Boojie abuses wander in and out of the movie; but Boojie himself is ever-present--the sneering, evil star of this odd and fascinating picture. See it today!

If you are going to waste 2-3 hours of your life watching these movies, might as well check out Blast-Off Girls for the Colonel Sanders (yes, THAT Colonel Sanders) cameo. You can actually hear him talk.

Other than that, these movies are almost interchangeable. In fact, at first I thought I was accidently restarting the same movie twice.