Bikini Bloodbath Christmas (2009)

I mean, I put it on, so I really don't have anyone to blame but myself.

Bikini Bloodbath Christmas is the third movie in the Bikini Bloodbath series, an extremely low budget horror/comedy franchise I'm guessing was not intended to be watched or considered critically (or sober, for that matter). I don't even mean that as a slight - this is the sort of thing that's mainly just in-jokes and over-the-top sequences parodying mainstream entertainment. It's not pretending it's anything other than bad, which is a good thing because - make no mistake - it is bad.

I should probably add I haven't seen the first two installments, nor do I intend to. This stuff isn't for me. I'm not sure it's for much of anyone anymore, given how dated the references feel, but that's another matter.

I'll do my best to offer a synopsis, but I'm not sure there's much to say. Part of the joke is there's really not a lot of story here, and what is present intentionally makes very little sense. This thing is mocking a subset of slasher movies with minimal logic, and it's not subtle.

The set up is that Jenny, a survivor of Bikini Bloodbath and Bikini Bloodbath Car wash, works at an underground bong shop overseen by Mrs. Johnson (played by Dick Boland in drag), the sister of Ms. Johnson (Debbie Rochon, essentially doing an extended cameo in this movie but still receiving top billing), who's in a coma. In addition to Jenny, several other bikini-clad women work in the bong shop, along with a man dressed as Santa. Their shop is engaged in a rivalry with a deli across the street, which also features a Santa. The deli is run by a Christian man named Gina Davis (Phil Hall). There are several women employed there as well, including one named William Defoe (Maggie Champagne). Get the joke? Yeah, me, neither.

At any rate, a bunch of the women from both locations go to the cemetery where the killer chef from the earlier movies is buried and inadvertently resurrect him. The next day, they go to work and don't mention this, because... well... again, the joke is this doesn't make any sense. The zombie killer kills a couple more people, then that night everyone goes to Mrs. Johnson's Christmas party. The killer shows up dressed as Santa and starts killing people there, as well, until it's down to Jenny and Mrs. Johnson. Jenny runs off while Mrs. Johnson confronts the killer, who pulls off a mask, revealing it's actually Ms. Johnson, who's been faking her coma. She kills her sister to take revenge for... stuff... and the movie wraps up.

There's not that much more to this. For the most part, I didn't find the jokes funny, though there were a couple of exceptions. There's an extended flashback to the earlier films filtered through old-fashioned film with generic horror music that - rather than focusing on the killer that's ostensibly being described - is almost entirely comprised of footage of topless women from those movies. I'll admit the contrast got a chuckle out of me. Likewise, I found a visual gag during a scene in the hospital mildly amusing. But those pretty much constitute the high-water mark here.

Perhaps the movie's weirdest detail was a pair of door-to-door salesmen serving as a reference to the 1983 fantasy movie, Krull, which would already have been pretty obscure in 2009. Their presence has a vaguely MST3K vibe, though I found it more bizarre than funny.

The Christmas stuff is... I mean, it's a joke. Everything in this movie is a joke. I haven't seen the earlier movies, but my impression from this one is half the point of the holiday setting is that this is basically the same movie despite the setting. The tagline on IMDB (which I'm assuming is in some way official) reads, "Jenny and Sharon are stalked by a killer chef ... again? This time ... It's Christmas." The holidays aren't meaningfully used: they're just background.

Which is, in a vacuum, fine. There shouldn't be any kind of expectation that Christmas media needs to check off any specific boxes. That being said, the fact this movie doesn't seem to have anything to say - about Christmas or anything else - leaves it feeling hollow. I do think comedies like this need a point of some sort; not necessarily anything profound, but something to at least tie the movie together in the absence of a meaningful story or characters.

Granted, if you're a fan of gross-out gags where half the joke is how fake everything looks, you might have a more favorable impression. Personally, I found the fart and poop jokes unpleasant (and there were a significant number). I also found the part of the opening credits centered around cutting and packing meat unpleasant (though given that it was simply meat being filmed, I'll begrudgingly acknowledge that sequence was technically well done).

I can't really say the same for most of the rest, with the caveat that by trying for bad, it's hard to seriously argue they failed to hit their mark. However the movie felt like a long series of setups without payoffs. Some jokes were repeated, but the movie didn't really build to any big punchlines.

Again, this wasn't for me, so I'm hesitant to simply write it off as worthless. If this style of low-budget, gross-out comedy/horror is something you enjoy, then... well... honestly find someone more qualified to advise you one way or the other. I'm way out of my element here.