Death B*tch (my asterisk of course) is a grindhouse exploitation style crime movie directed and co-written by Ken Brewer (Zombie Rage), who also had a hand in many other aspects of the movie, from editing to the cinematography and even had a starring role as the main antagonist character. From the trailer it seemed to have some good scenes, but also a lot of suspect acting. Having now seen the whole thing I have to say it was enjoyable, if perhaps slightly too long.
In a crime ridden American city the police are not only having to deal with a serial killer operating in the area, dubbed 'the Southside Slasher' (or something like that), but they also have a criminal killing vigilante on the loose, who the press have simply dubbed 'The Vigilante'. It becomes clear to the two detectives investigating the vigilante - Detective Maddie (Traci Burr - Zombie Rage) and her partner, that the person is targeting in particular members of a gang who work for a local crime lord named Dante (Brewer). That person is Alexia Walker (Linnea Swanson - Zombie Rage), mild mannered dog groomer by day, cold blooded agent of justice by night, someone with nothing to lose after the gang murdered her family. Can she finish her goal of cleaning up the streets before the detectives discover her identity though?
The focus in the movie is far more on the detectives investigating the breakout of street slayings than on Alexia herself. This gave things more of a crime movie feel than a more grindhouse style one. I liked the rapport with the detectives, and I enjoyed following them around. These moments are interspersed in multiple ways. You have the slasher, relegated to a sub plot off doing his thing, you have Alexis heading out at night looking for criminals to shoot dead with her trusty pistol, and you have Dante's gang, a group of men and woman who don't value life in the slightest, heading out for random carnage. These gang members were best summed up with Stella Smith (Bridget Powers), a psychotic little person whose wild anger outsizes her short stature, making for a fun bad guy
There were many criminals here which led up to a lengthy third act that was a series of gun fights taking place around the one area which all the central characters had congregated at. For an idea of how action packed this was, the IMDB page states that in the final ten minutes alone there were over a hundred and sixty six gun shots fired! Admittedly in execution this leads to plenty of scenes of people standing facing each other and repeatedly firing their guns until the loser falls down. I especially liked the head shots that had the victim always seeming to look up at their forehead confused before falling down dead.
For a film with inspirations from grindhouse and exploitation movies, there wasn't that much blood, used more functionally than anything else. This also never tried to seem like a film from decades back, instead content to have that style of film using modern filmmaking techniques, and a few drone shot moments. With a large cast there were going to be some actors who were better than others, this means there are more than a few actors who either sounded like they were adlibbing or delivering their lines in a bit of a wooden way. To be honest, either that was on purpose, or it was a happy accident as the sometimes stiff delivery fed into the exploitation style vibe of the film. My only real complaint was that Death B*tch did start to feel a little samey due to multiple scenes of the same thing happening over and over again just with different characters. At around ninety minutes it wasn't excessively long, but could have maybe been tightened up slightly.
Death B*tch had plenty of action, a bunch of fun characters and a good pacing, the indie film having a healthy dose of necessary cheese. I enjoyed this more than the trailer made me think I would, and even if it did slightly stretch out the run time, this a decent bit of escapism from the misery of the real world. Death B*tch is having its American premiere on Thursday August 29th at the Starlight Terrace Theatre in California, with its Canadian premiere at the Evans Theatre in Brandon Manitoba in September. The DVD and Blu-ray are available for pre-order now on the Livid Media website and will be shipping September 2nd.
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