Assault of the Killer Bimbos (1988)

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

With the title "Assault Of The Killer Bimbos", and the premise of two airheaded women on the run from the law, you may think that you'll get a lot of sleazy fun with this movie. Alas, the actual results are somewhat of a letdown.The women in the movie are written to be a likable bunch, and the actresses playing them are a talented bunch, but the screenplay is pretty one-note with them. After a while, these characters seem to just be doing the same thing over and over again. That may be because the screenplay stops advancing the plot after the first twenty minutes or so, and does not start advancing the plot until the last ten minutes.Eddie Deezen does liven things up with his appearance (no movie can be completely bad if it has Eddie Deezen), but he's only in the movie for a few minutes.Also, the screenplay is seriously lacking in sleaze. There's hardly any nudity, no sex, and a minimum amount of PG-style violence.Did this movie inspire "Thelma & Louise"? Probably not, but you never know.

Bimbos is a work of slapstick theater. In contrast, I consider its derivative, Thelma and Louise, a work of junk Americana - to me perhaps all the more junky since I live in that film's playground. But back to our Bimbos. Early in this work, three surfer-boy characters perform a brief Three Stooges parody as though to set tone and genre. Unfortunately, the film falls short of developing that tone as a well-balanced work. If I compare Bimbos to works of the Marx Brothers (together with their faults of excess) or to films such as My Man Godfrey, or to full-length films by Charlie Chaplin, I conclude the following:First, at least to please me, slapstick comedy must present a mix of `high' and `low' tones. The Marx Brothers interject high tone through music performances, through inclusion of high-class and rational characters - wealthy spinsters, etc. - and through a structure that permits each of the brothers a solo performance, whether on harp, piano or (more questionably) one-on-one clever dialogue. Godfrey employs a languishing piano virtuoso - Carlos, the family protogé - as essentially a clown who actually performs romantic music. The role of art is to entertain and to uplift - `elevare et delectare'.Drama requires contrasting characters - i.e., texture. The Three Bimbos were not enhanced dramatically by joining forces with three more bimbos - the surfers - and things only became blander as policemen, café crowds, etc., all turn out to be just as `bimbo' as our heroines. Our girls needed to stand out as unique, to contrast against society - e.g., perhaps to fall in with higher-tone `road' figures, like a Woody Guthrie group. We could have watched the three bimbos' tails wagging as they picked melons with the Mexican `temporarios' in the farms along the Colorado, we could have shared the enchantment of fireside music and dance under a huge Arizona sunset. The movie could have ended with our three bimbos waddling off into the sunset like Charlie Chaplin and his sweet sidekick in Modern Times.The film needed to introduce nostalgic elements to give the humor a bittersweet texture. National Lampoon's Animal House achieves nostalgic counterbalance through enacting slapstick absurdities that recall deep sentimental memories to the minds of many a typical old-college grad - i.e., within each slapstick act hides a kernel of emotionally rooted truth. Last, our three actresses were not used in either a complementary or complimentary way - indeed, the least charismatic of the three is given the opening scene and the most exposure. Kaitan's minuscule strip at the foot of a scraggly joshua tree only seems a desperate attempt - perhaps an improv, like the three surfers' quick Stooges routine - to inject some shred of life into the work. But the wreckage was too great for Kaitan to save - not even Superman could have done that alone - and Tammara Souza, the third bimbo, isn't even given a chance. Yes, I prefer the Bimbos to T & L, though that isn't saying much. I still respect Susan Sarandon, but far too much as an after-effect of her performance many years ago in the television film, The Last of the Belles - for which I've forgiven many an indiscretion ever since - but not all. For me, her time has come and gone - however much I commiserate with that universal need to make a living. If T & L merits a 7-rating, the Bimbos merit a 9. But that's impossible. I would rate T & L at 2 and our sorry bimbos at three and a half. What a shame - because for so little additional investment in time and money, this film could have been so much better. I guess the real bimbos were the director and producer?

Even in the rarefied air of b-movies this is a stinker. Unlike the work of the fun B directors (H. G. Lewis, Fred Olen Ray, Al Adamson, even Ed Wood) this commits the cardinal sin of being boring. There's no energy, style or fun to this movie. It's just a tedious, drawn-out chase plot featuring three scantily clad women, of whom only Elizabeth Kaitan is worth a second look. (It's no coincidence that she's the only of the three who subsequently had any sort of career.) Even the bad actors (and there are plenty) are boring. Only Kaitan and supergeek Eddie Deezen bring anything to this party. The picture also deserves special mention for two of the lamest performances ever given by famous actors' offspring in one movie, courtesy of Griffin O'Neal and Nick Cassavettes as zonked out surfers. How did this mess ever develop a cult following?

Brought to you by the same people who made 'Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity' and 'Sorority Babes In The Slime Ball Bowl-a-Rama'(of which I loved) this one wasn't up to par.Elizabeth Kaitan (or Cayton, from the movie Slave Girls) is a co star in this flick that is kind of a Thelma and Louis b-movie. Two exotic dancers (bimbos) get framed for a murder by being bimbos (blatantly stupid). They hop in a car and partake in some adventures.They meet up with surfer guys, gangsters, and cops. Pretty well getting chased around the highways until they finally get to Mexico.The girls flaunt their sexy bodies and act totally like bimbos...I suppose the main idea for the movie. Absolutely nothing else happens in this movie.