‘Bad Girls,’ a shocking drug-fueled post-modern female rage-odyssey

Films Colacitta has announced the release of ‘Bad Girls,’ a violent underground film by Christopher Bickel, premiering in early 2021. 

2021 is poised to be the year of the underground film. Due to the void of Hollywood content caused by the 2020 pandemic, audiences are clamoring for new and unusual programming. Heading the charge for unique DIY boutique cinema is ‘Bad Girls,’ an eye-popping artsploitation road movie from acclaimed director of ‘The Theta Girl,’ Christopher Bickel. The film’s producer, Crystal Colligan, describes ‘Bad Girls’ as a “shocking drug-fueled post-modern female rage-odyssey.” Watch the trailer via Vimeo below.

‘Bad Girls’ gleefully subverts genre tropes in telling its lurid, hyperreal tale. After robbing a strip club, three desperate teenage girls lead a grizzled Federal Agent on a lysergic cross-country chase, scoring a duffle bag full of money, drugs, and a crew of willing kidnapees along the way. 

‘Bad Girls’ is an underground film produced by amateurs in South Carolina for $16,000 — “about one-half of the catering budget for a typical made-for-TV movie,” Bickel proudly indicates. The majority of that budget (some of which was raised by crowd-funding, some came from Bickel’s day-job in a record store) went to pay the cast and crew a modest daily stipend — something which director Bickel cites as being “of utmost importance to keeping harmony on set.” Citing influences as diverse as Jack Hill, Russ Meyer, Greg Araki, R Kern, John Waters, and Robert Downey (Sr.), Bickel has crafted a vision more than just the sum parts of those influences — it is something unique in current underground cinema. “These are characters people haven’t seen before, interacting in a violent world that is almost-but-not-quite our own,” says director Christopher Bickel of the “exaggerated reality” of the ‘Bad Girls’ universe. “When you’re making a movie for the cost of a used car, you’re forced to get creative with the storytelling in ways that Hollywood focus-groups don’t allow. You won’t find ‘Bad Girls’ in a Walmart because it doesn’t belong in a Walmart.”

Nikolas Schreck, author of The Satanic Screen and The Manson File says, “Not since Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! have three lethal ladies on a rampage lit up the screen like the inviting infernal trio in Christopher Bickel’s hallucinatory candy-colored joy ride into the ultraviolent abyss of amoral All-American dysfunction. An artfully stylized irreverent pop art road movie spiked with black humour, ‘Bad Girls’ races to it’s grim conclusion at carnival rollercoaster pace, joyfully making sex, drugs, and rock and roll unrespectable again.” 

‘Bad Girls’ will be the second film for underground producer/director Christopher Bickel. His first film, ‘The Theta Girl,’ was widely critically acclaimed and has been distributed all over the world. Though made for roughly the same amount of money as ‘The Theta Girl,’ ‘Bad Girls’ is a much bigger and more complex production.

‘Bad Girls’ stars Morgan Shaley Renew, Sanethia Dresch, and Shelby Lois Guinn as the titular “Bad Girls.” Cleveland Langdale and Micah Peroulis star as two cult rock stars kidnapped by the girl gang. Jonathan Benton stars as a geeky hotel clerk swept up in the madness. Mike Amason and Dove Dupree star as oddly-paired FBI agents following the wreckage of the girls’ cross-country crime spree. ‘Bad Girls’ was co-written by Bickel and star of ‘The Theta Girl,’ Shane Silman.

This is a first feature for most of the cast members, though Mike Amason, Cleveland Langdale, Dove Dupree, and Shane Silman are returning from ‘The Theta Girl’. DOP Stephen Nemeth is known for his camerawork on the extreme horror film ‘AMERICAN GUINEA PIG: BLOODSHOCK’ (2015) 

More information, including the red band trailer, can be found at www.BadGirlsMovie.com.