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STUDIO: Cinema Epoch
MSRP: $14.98
RATED: NR
RUNNING TIME: 80 minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
• Audio commentary by the writer and director
• Local news interview
• Theatrical trailer
The Pitch
It’s like Nip/Tuck, but if that show was really stupid and had a crazy serial killer going around disfiguring people. Oh, wait…
The Humans
Sarah Gordon, Christopher Page, Michelle Angel and Dave Reda
The Nutshell
Many years ago, an enterprising young cosmetic surgeon got into a horrific auto accident while driving with his family. His once beautiful daughter was transformed into hideous pot roast and his own face was disfigured. Driven insane, he plots to restore his doting daughter to her former beauty by cutting off the beautiful features of other young women and attaching them to his daughter.
Screw those fancy college degree programs. Practice cosmetic surgery in your own home with our spectacular web-based diplomas!
He accomplishes this task by acting as a casting agent for movies, placing ads in trade magazines and newspapers, looking at headshots, then inviting the acting hopefuls to an audition in a dirty, abandoned building in the ghetto and killing them. The actresses have no problem going to auditions in the ghetto because they are actresses and they are very, very dumb.
When one of these potential MENSA candidates goes missing, her sister comes to Los Angeles to try and find her and bring her back home so she can resume her job working the counter at Dairy Queen and going to junior college. She teams up with a street wise cabbie who has also been trying to break into the acting game for the past decade. Together, they hope to find the missing sister before it’s too late.
Another satisfied viewer.
The Lowdown
The low budget horror film is one of those things in life that you can never seem to pull yourself away from. No matter how many times you’ve suffered through a Black Devil Doll from Hell or a Gore-Met Zombie Chef from Hell and then immediately told yourself that you’ll never subject yourself to cheap horror again, you just keep crawling back like a nerd to his World of Warcraft account.
Bit Parts is another one of these films. They’re like a snack food that you can just keep eating up and never get full off of because there’s no substance. The majority of this film is a Dr. Giggles imitator slashing up pretty girls and sewing their ample bits and pieces to his own daughter. It’s never any more complicated than that and the heroes only have one motivation – find the guy and stop him. It even has a retarded twist ending reminiscent of any Friday the 13th sequel to boot.
And when it’s all over, I want you to say "What a lovely tea party."
The film is peppered with little references to Hollywood and the industry that are supposed to delight the viewer or at least offer a chuckle or two. It doesn’t really work. The cabbie tells the heroine that he can pull off the interrogation of one of their suspects because he was an extra on The Shield once. It’s a cute throwaway reference for people familiar with the show, but the act wears thin after the tenth or eleventh director name drop or film movement reference.
For its own good, Bit Parts is too cheap and shlocky to ever take itself too seriously. When a large portion of your film is dedicated to a disfigured freak of a girl ranting and raving about how much she wants a larger pair of boobies, you might as well take it to the limit and show the doctor vainly try to attach a pair of booby snatched breasts to her chest.
As far as cheap horror movies go, you could do a lot worse than Bit Parts. Then again, you could also do a lot better. At 80 minutes in length, one thing Bit Parts won’t do is waste a lot of your time, no matter what your ultimate opinion of it is. Fans of disfigured boobs won’t go home disappointed.
I love a director with a real vision.
The Package
The process behind making films with miniscule budgets is often more interesting than the films themselves. The special features on Bit Parts subscribe to this philosophy. The meat of the extras is the feature length commentary track by director and star Dave Reda, writer Jon Rosenberg and one of the actors with, appropriately enough, a bit part in the film. Dave and Jon are big movie nerds and are understandably excited to be talking about their horror feature debuts. They have a tendency to point out references made in the film like they’re some obscure little tidbit that only the greatest of cinephiles would notice, but it’s hard to fault them for their enthusiasm.
Also included on the disc is a small interview segment from a local NBC affiliate in San Jose. Anyone who has watched a “local boy makes good” segment on the morning news knows how delightful these awkward little interviews are, as the host tries to feign enthusiasm and interest in the project being promoted. Any fan of such surreal and bizarre encounters will appreciate the inclusion of the NBC interview on this disc.