Blood Games

Blood Games (1990)

Runtime: 90 minutes

Directed by: Tanya Rosenberg

Starring: Gregory Scott Cummins, Laura Albert, Shelley Abblett, Ken Carpenter, Ross Hagen

From: Epic

Why yes, due to a recommendation I came across a few months ago, I watched this movie on Netflix Instant, one of the last I'll watch on there before I get rid of the service for awhile. I watched it because the plot is... and this is all true... it's about a team of sexy female baseball players who barnstorm across the country playing against whomever, and in this case they play against a birthday boy named Roy and his redneck pals in what looks like an overgrown meadow while a bunch of slovenly slobs watch on in the crowd. The girls kick some ass and the rednecks (who openly grope them many times) are mad. Roy even elbows a girl right in the face as she's running the bases. He gets a baseball to the gonads in retaliation. But, it's best to talk about this bizarre film in detail in bulletpoints.

• The people in the crowd... country bumpkins. One has on a King Cobra t-shirt (as in the malt liquor) with a navy blue vest over it and a Yosemite Sam “Back off!” hat and another guy has on a “Don't worry be happy hat” but that hat has various logos on it, including the standard lady silouette you see on mudflaps on 18 wheel trucks!
• One guy wears a Hot Rod shirt, after Roddy Piper. It was official WWF merchandise at the time. That guy's name is Holt. It seems like he has a rather homoerotic relationship with Roy. Later on you see
• Holt trips up a girl running the bases. To celebrate, he lifts up his shirt and rolls his belly... um, what? I belly-laughed, though.
• The rednecks lose 17-2! Roy then gets chastised by his war-fighting dad, MINO. By the way, the manager of the girl team... he calls himself MIDNIGHT. I have no explanation for these names.
• There is a shower scene. Yep. A pleasing sight! I can't tell where the scene is set at, but out of nowhere a white trash dude who was at the game (I know this as he had on a “The check is in the mail” hat; turns out, his name is Vern and he's legendary character actor George “Buck” Flower) appears out of nowhere and plays Peeping Tom. He gets caught and is literally given a cold shower.
• There is a scene in a biker bar. Roy and Hot Rod hang out and man, they might as well be the Ambiguously Gay Duo. A lot of homoeroticism going on. They chug beer together, throw popcorn at each other's faces... wow.
• Midnight goes into the men's room and barges in on Mino taking a crap. Midnight also has a gun. Midnight wins and Mino gets a swirlie! I swear this is true.
• Two of the girls almost get raped by Roy and Holt but Midnight saves the day, only to get stabbed. One of the dames does shoot Roy in the leg, though. The ambiguously gay duo try to gun down the ladies in the bus with shotguns and do hit the driver... but the bus then crushes Roy. Don't you hate it when that happens? Mino and the rednecks vow revenge.
• The bus drives off and drives throughout the night. They only stop to get assistance for the lady driver and for Midnight at an obviously abandoned gas station! Some white trash is there but they get dispensed easily. One is on the back of the bus but gets shot off and as he falls off he totally takes out a road sign.

From there you have Holt developing a homoerotic relationship with Vern and they play a rather wacky yet hilarious duo as they argue over such thing as masturbation (Holt claims that Vern “can't even beat his own meat”). Sad to say that relationship doesn't last too long. Holt has bad luck with friends... anyhow, the girls get stupidly tricked and they take the bus on a dead end road. Instead of at least trying to turn it around or at least staying on the bus, they decided to leave the bus and instead go hiking in the woods to the nearest town, which is far away. But of course. You get some wackiness but it definitely isn't like the first half of the film. Instead in the California woods the rednecks try to hunt down the girls while they try their damndest to fight back.

On a technical scale this movie is pretty terrible, from the dialogue to the plot to the goofy musical score to especially the sound mix; at times it is really hard to hear what the actors are saying. Yet, this strangely plotted film is pure cheese and if you love cheesy exploitation then this is something you should enjoy.

I'll be back tomorrow afternoon with something a little interesting.