I have 498 movies in my Netflix Instant queue. I tend to watch one thing for every five that I add, but now my library is close to being full and I have to make room. So, every Monday or Tuesday I’m going to pick a random movie out of my queue and review the shit out of it. But (like Jesus), I’m also thinking of you and your unwieldy queue and all the movies in it you want to watch but no longer have the time to now that you’ve become so awesome and popular. Let me know what has been gathering digital dust in your Netflix Instant library and I’ll watch that, too. One Monday for you and the next for me and so on. Let’s get to it!
What’s the movie? Ticked Off Trannies With Knives (2010)
What’s it rated? Unrated for poo covered knives, a terrible beating or three and a bit of the old grindhouse torture show.
Did people make it? Written and Directed by Israel Luna Acted by Krystal Summers, Kelexis Davenport, William Belli, Erica Andrews, Jenna Skyy and Tom Zembrod.
What’s it like in one sentence? It’s about very angry pre- and post-op transsexuals with sharp devices used for stabbing.
Why did you watch it? Sosgeminia thought it might be fun and I can’t really say he was wrong.
What’s it about in one paragraph? Bubbles Cliquot (an extremely feminine transvestite (transsexual?) played by Krystal Summers) meets a young lad named Boner (Zembrod) who goes home with her only to find she has plentiful cock. In his apparent disgust and rage he rapes and beats her and takes off. A day later, Bubbles and her lady friends Rachel Slurr, Emma Grashun, Tipper Sommore and Pinky La’Trimm head off to the club to party, only to be terrorized by a still angry Boner and his two friends. An eye for an eye and some other biblical shit goes down.
Amazingly, the new Charlie’s Angels reboot lasted for six seasons and a movie, which all played exclusively in my head. Season 4 was meh.
Play or remove from my queue? I got robbed by a dude in a dress once. He broke into my house on New Years Day at about 5am and I awoke to him rifling through things in my living room. I walked into the room, wrapped in nothing but a blanket and was surprised by a 55 year old man in a 1950’s housewife dress with a trenchcoat and a bee hive hair-do. Long story short, he ran out of the house after offering me some crack and a blowjob (or a blowjob for some crack , I never quite got the details ironed out). Either way, I took a pass and he disappeared from my life until I ran into him three years later in a story none of you really want to hear. Anyway, the point is this: I don’t call him a dude in a dress because I don’t respect his lifestyle choices (although, breaking into my house was a shitty one), but because I am not certain whether he was transsexual, transgendered or a transvestite (or coming back from a party where he did some crack, gave out some blow j’s and spilled his appletini on his favorite hoodie and only had a dress to change into? Fuck, I don’t know!) I’ve learned since writing that last sentence that to truly know the difference, you really need to know the person because a lot of it has to do with internal dialogue we have no way of knowing. I dated a girl named Alex for about a year who very slowly came to the realization that she was genderqueer and would prefer to be pegging boys instead of having sex with them heterosexually. We broke up and the next time I saw her the hormone treatments had begun and I asked her what she’d like to be identified as (whether it be genderqueer or gender neutral or what have you). She said Alex. That seems like the right answer to me, so I’m not gonna focus on any of the labels and just focus on the characters.
Ticked Off Trannies With Knives is another of the recent homages to the grindhouse era, but more in the way that Planet Terror did it instead of the way Death Proof or Hobo with a Shotgun did it. That is to say that it is constantly nodding to the era with post-production digital scratching and missing reels, instead of actually existing as a film in the genre the way Death Proof did. The budget is low, the production value is damned near non-existent, but the film does manage to rise above the (mostly purposeful) shoddiness with a few well times catty zingers and a pretty great performance by William Belli as Rachel Slurr. His comic timing is fantastic and brings a lived in weariness to the character that I found transportive. Now, Krystal Summers as Bubbles Cliquot confused me a little bit. All the other characters were obviously men in drag, but Krystal looks, sounds and has the mannerisms down so well that I genuinely thought Krystal was genetically a woman for the entire running time. It kinda made me wonder if the LGBTQ community would get upset that they cast a woman instead of a T, sorta like the persians did when Jakey G played the Prince of Persia. But no, Krystal is trangendered and damned impressive as a lady. I never even saw an adam’s apple, which I suppose you can get removed, but if that’s true then does that mean that men don’t really need them” I don’t really like mine and I think my beautiful beard would point out my gender much more elegantly than my excessively large throat testicle does.
I say go ahead and play it. It’s a very specific movie for an even more specific audience, but I had fun at times and I was bored at times. I never would have watched it if it wasn’t for this column, but I’m glad I did. You might not like it or even appreciate it. Hell, if you’re homophobic then you’ll downright be repulsed or turned on and fascinated by it (I don’t know how those people think, so I’m only guessing, but I imagine it’s all a bunch of Ted Nugent music and graphic images of a baseball bat, handle deep in an apple pie). If you’re in the mood for some dirty, grimy cinema, then you could do much worse.
That’s more of a happy-go-lucky tranny, but I shan’t split hairs.
Do you have a favorite line? Every time someone screamed “BUBBLES!!!” I got a huge laugh.
How’s the music? Forgettable, generic Kill Bill-esque cues. I was hoping something for a little more bombastic.
What does Netflix say I’d like if I like this? Blubberella (are Clint Howard and Michael Pare’ reprising their roles from the third Bloodrayne movie?), The Gay Bed and Breakfast of Terror (That might have to happen at some point), Girls Will Be Girls (look at Jack Plotnick, having a career!), RuPaul Drag Race ( I read William Belli is on this, so now I have to watch it) and Queens of Heart (a 45 minute long documentary about the psychological aspects of drag).
Do you have an interesting fun-fact? The budget for this was $300,000, which actually seems high. Like, $200,000 went in someone’s pocket high.
What is Netflix’s best guess for Jared? 2.3
What is Jared’s best guess for Jared? 2.5
Can you link to the movie? It’s all I ever wan-ted!
Any last thoughts? It really depends on your mindset going into this movie. If you’re open minded and want to see something new, then you’ll have fun, but if LGBTQ stuff isn’t your jam, then you might want to steer clear.
Did you watch anything else this week? Went to see Oz (Mila almost kills the movie), two episodes left in Season 3 of Justified (the episodes just fly by) and I’m digging in to Season 3 of Archer (hysterical).
Any spoilerish thoughts about last week’s film, Cleanflix? The jaw dropping moment for me wasn’t the reveal that Daniel is a naughty boy who got frisky with minors, because that shit is par for the course. The moment for me (and the most purely enjoyable moment in film of the year for me) is when Daniel talks about being subjugated to the test by the police psychologist. The moment he breaks into tears describing the horrible shit they made him watch, while strangers were gauging the amount of blood the images made rush into his penis was staggering. Not because of the schadenfreude aspect, but because of the pure, blisteringly bleak irony. This man made a living off renting videos to people who wanted to have the option of seeing culturally relevant films without having to see sex and violence is forced to watch sexual sadism and violence. It’s not funny, it’s horrible. Truly. But you can’t make that shit up. The self described King of Choice has all choice removed from his life in the one way that would hit the hardest. I had tears in my eyes for the poor man, but a smile on my face because I’m an asshole.
Next Week? The Hunter!
Hardcore Parkour!