ART, IT AIN’T: EWAN SANDERSON EXPLORES THE LEGENDARY BIKINI BANDIDS

Picture dem good ole boys, The Dukes of Hazzard, on the run from Boss Hogg, whilst protecting the weak and the innocent. Now, forget Bow and Luke and in their place imagine a whole troupe of bikini clad, gun-toting Daisy Dukes (their bouncing bosoms as dangerous as their firearms), who couldn’t help but have been in trouble with the law since the day they were born.
Bikini Bandits is a brazenly crass, gratuitous and hugely enjoyable cocktail of flesh, guns and filthy innuendo. A string of flimsy narratives follows the busty heroines as they save Retarded Amish Boy from becoming a pawn in the porn game, very nearly de-virginize the Virgin Mary just prior to her divine impregnation (instigated by Corey Feldman as the Angel Gabriel) and verbally abuse the quarrelling, drunken Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington.

 The film also works as extreme-advertising for director Stephen Grasse’s successful chain of highly unusual grocery stores, with the bandits proclaiming “F*** you, G-Mart” at almost every turn. The action is even broken with excerpts from the G-Mart shopping channel, hosted by dodgey salesman, Sam (“everyone knows you can never own enough firearms”) and his amorous assistant, Mercedes.
The original series shot to fame on internet film channel, AtomFilms, prompting Grasse to piece the episodes together into a full, hour long, feature. The result is an extremely fragmented 60 minutes of fun. This is exaggerated by the occasional cartoon dialogues between Grasse and editor Gabe Imlay, which concentrate on the stressed-out director’s fears about the film’s lack of coherence (“Gabe, if I didn’t know anything about this, I’d be really confused by now”).
 But it’s best not to get too bogged down and just revel in the outrageous humour. Not only does the late Dee Dee Ramone contribute to the rocking soundtrack, he also cameos as none other than “Pope” Ramone. Arriving at Bethlehem just in the nick of time, the rock legend very capably saves the Virgin Mary from the seductive hands of the Bandits before leading them all to victory against a lascivious Satan (Maynard James Keenan) - despite the latter’s impressive, laser-firing strap-on.
Poking fun at every US icon from Betsy Ross to Batman (we get to meet the evil Homo the Gay Clown, who, Joker like, drugs the girls with perfume from his button hole flower before tying them up with balloons), Bikini Bandits is a whistle stop tour of American bad taste. In one revealing scene a despondent Feldman, no doubt bemoaning another career-wrecking move, groans “they said we were going to make art! But it isn’t art.”
Sorry Corey, it isn’t. But it’s jolly good fun!
Bikini Bandits was screened at the Portobello Film Festival (www.portobellofilmfestival.com) in August.

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