“Joan Collins is THE BITCH” announced the opening credits of the 1979 film, The Bitch. Seriously, how can you not love a film that opens that way?
Joan Collins returns of Fonatine Khaled, the character that she previously played in The Stud. Once again based on a novel by Jackie Collins, The Bitch follow Fontaine as she adjusts to life as a freshly divorced woman. Though she received a good deal of money in the divorce and she has her own personal fortune as well, Fontaine is struggling to maintain her extravagant lifestyle. A new disco has opened and is taking away the crowds that used to populate her club. She’s running out of cash and soon, she might not even be able to fly first class!
It’s on an airplane that she meets Nico (Michael Colby, who is not particularly charismatic but still isn’t quite as dull as Oliver Tobias was in The Stud). In an amusing in-joke, the movie that they watch on the plane is The Stud. Nico says that he can’t decide if the movie is funnier with the sound or without. “It’s not meant to by funny,” Fontaine replies. Nico claims to be a wealthy Italian businessman, which immediately gets Fontaine’s attention. Of course, Nico’s lying. He’s actually a con artist and a jewel thief. Fontaine figures that out when Nico tries to use her to smuggle a diamond through customs. Fontaine is angered but she’s intrigued.
Nico is in debt to the Mafia. The head of the British mob is a man named … and I’m not making this up …. Thrush Feathers (Ian Hendry). Thrush Feathers demands that Nico cause a horse to lose an upcoming race. The horse belongs to Fontaine’s friends from the first film, Vanessa (Sue Lloyd) and Mark Grant (Mark Burns). Thrush Feathers also offers to help Fontaine keep her club open but his help comes with a price. Whatever the price is, could it possibly be worse than being named Thrush Feathers? Seriously, in what world is someone with that name going to take over a London crime syndicate? How do you go from the Kray Brothers to Thrush Feathers?
Anyway, the plot really isn’t that important. There’s a lot of double crosses and manipulation as Fontaine lives up to the title of the film. The plot is really just an excuse to tease the viewer with visions of the decadent rich. The clothes are expensive. The mansions are ornate. The conversations are always arch and full of double entendres. This film is less about how the rich live and more about how middle class like to imagine the rich live. It’s also about sex, though none of it quite reaches the lunatic abandon of The Stud’s swimming pool orgy scene. The important thing is that whole thing is scored to a disco beat.
As with The Stud, it’s Joan Collins who holds the film together, giving a fierce and uninhibited performance in which she gleefully embraces the melodrama and delivers her lines with just enough attitude to let the viewer know that she’s in on the joke. “Bitch” may have been meant as an insult but, as played by Joan Collins, Fontaine wears the title as a badge of honor. She understands what had to be done to survive in a male-dominated world and she makes no apologies for it. Even more importantly, she knows that once you fly first class, you can never go back.
The Bitch is not necessarily good but it is definitely fun in its sordid way.
It is true that Oliver Tobias does play the title character of this 1978 British film, which was itself based on a novel by Jackie Collins. Tobias is cast as Tony Blake, a youngish Englishman who runs the hottest discotheque in the UK. He runs it on behalf of its actual owner, the decadent Fontaine Khaled (Joan Collins). Fontaine is married to the fabulously wealthy Benjamin Khaled (played by Walter Gotell, who also had a recurring role in the James Bond films as the head of the KGB) but she seeks her carnal pleasure elsewhere. Tony’s job and all the glamour that goes with it is dependent upon being Fontaine’s personal plaything. If Fontaine wants to do it in the elevator while the security cameras film, that is what’s going to happen. If Fontaine wants Tony to take part in a swimming pool orgy while she swings back and forth over the festivities, that’s what is going to happen. Tony Blake is the stud, after all.
Tony, however, tires of all the nonstop decadence. He’s not as empty-headed as Fontaine assumes him to be. Tony’s complicated. Tony has feelings. At least, that’s what the films wants us to believe. To be honest, Tony is kind of boring but we’ll get to that later. Tony allows himself to be used by Fontaine but he finds himself truly falling in love with Fontaine’s stepdaughter, Alexandra (Emma Jacobs). But does Alexandra feel the same way towards Tony or is she just using Tony to get revenge on her hated stepmother?
Let’s start with something positive about this film. The Stud is one of the most 70s movies ever made. Everything from the fashion to the slang to the cinematography to the wah wah soundtrack simply screams 70s. There’s several scenes that take place in the discotheque. Very few of them actually move the story forward in any meaningful way but they do give you a chance to look at the clothes and the haircuts and to listen for the sound of people snorting cocaine in the background. If you’re a student pop culture or if you’re just fascinated by the tacky and the trashy, the film is very enjoyable on that level. There’s also a lot of sex, all of it filmed in vibrant color and featuring a camera that will not stop moving as The Stud tries to convince us that it’s actually high art.
Unfortunately, the stud of the title is a bit of dud. (And they say I’m not a poet!) Oliver Tobias is handsome and has a superficially charming screen presence. But, whenever he has to deliver dialogue or show any hint of emotion, the film falls flat. As played by Tobias, Tony just comes across as a bland gigolo, enjoyable to look at but impossible to really care about. The film is so dominated by Joan Collins’s cheerfully over-the-top performance as Fontaine that Tobias seems to spend a lot of the movie disappearing into the background. Indeed, Collins’s performance is the best thing about the film. She fully understand what type of movie she’s appearing in and she fully embraces the melodrama, delivering her arch dialogue with just the right amount of self-awareness to suggest that she’s in on the joke.
The Stud is a love story featuring people who are only capable of loving themselves. At its worst, it gets bogged down in Tobias’s dull lead performance. At its best, its trashy fun with a disco beat. I like trashy fun so I can excuse the boring leading man. A good beat that you can dance to can make up for a lot.
(This review contains spoilers because it’s impossible for me to imagine that you somehow have not already seen Sharknado 3.)
Last night, I watched and live tweeted Sharknado 3 and I’m still recovering. After the first hundred, I lost track of how many tweets I devoted to Sharknado 3. Of course, I wasn’t alone in that. Last night, it seemed like the entire nation was tweeting about Sharknado 3 and it was a wonderful thing. At its best, twitter can be the great equalizer, giving everyone an equal voice and last night was one of those moments.
I hoping for a #Sharknado3 spin-off called Kittennado. "The world is ending! And it's adorable!" #meow
— Lisa Marie Bowman (@LisaMarieBowman) July 23, 2015
In fact, I was tempted to just devote this review to posting the best Sharknado 3 tweets from last night. However, if I did that, 90% of those tweets would be from me. Out of the millions of Sharknado 3 related tweets last night, mine were definitely the best.
Over the past three years, the premiere of the latest Sharknado film has almost become an unofficial national holiday, a summer version of the Super Bowl. On twitter, Sharknado 3 was trending for days before the film even premiered. And, once Sharknado 3 did start, it seemed as if everyone in the country was watching and taking bets on which celebrity guest star would be the next to die. (I’m very proud to say that I correctly predicted the bloody and prolonged death of Frankie Muniz.) Even the majority of the commercials were specifically meant to tie in with the Sharknado franchise.
Fans of the first Sharknado will be happy to know that Nova returns!
But what’s amazing and admirable is that, even though the franchise has now become an international phenomena, Sharknado 3 stayed true to its SyFy roots. Ignore all the hype and you’ll see that Sharknado 3 tells a story that will be familiar to anyone who has ever watched any SyFy original movie. The world is threatened by a flamboyant threat, in this case a bunch of tornadoes that happens to be full of sharks. Only one man (Ian Ziering as Finn) can save the world but first, he has to deal with skeptical military jackasses. As always seems to happen in these films, he’s separated from his wife (Tara Reid playing the role of April and sporting a truly badass robotic hand). Meanwhile, their teenage daughter (Ryan Newman as Claudia) has gone off on her own and finds herself right in the center of the disaster. It’s a plot that has been used in thousands of SyFy and Asylum films but director Anthony C. Ferrante directs with a lot of energy and writer Thunder Levin provides so many clever one liners that it doesn’t matter if the storyline is familiar. Ignore all the hype and you’ll discover that Sharknado 3 is still a wonderfully fun film that features everything that we love about SyFy movies.
Of course, one thing that distinguishes Sharknado 3 from other Asylum film is that it is full of celebrity cameos. Usually, I am weary of excessive celebrity cameos because they’re distracting and the celebs often turn out to be terrible actors. But the celebs in Sharknado 3 all do a wonderful job. (Add to that, the majority of them get eaten, as well.) Then again, the same could be said for the entire cast. Regardless of what they’re asked to do or say, Ian Ziering and Tara Reid both full commit to their performances. Casting director Gerald Webb is indeed one of the unsung heroes of the entire Sharknado phenomena.
The film opens with a shark attack on Washington D.C. and it’s during this time that we meet President Mark Cuban and Vice President Ann Coulter. And, oh my God, how certain heads on twitter exploded when Ann Coulter showed up. But you know what? After seeing Sharknado 3, I would totally vote for a Cuban/Coulter ticket. I don’t care what their platform is, they know how to fight sharks and they seemed far more believable than anyone who is currently running for President. At first, I assumed that Mark Cuban was supposed to be playing himself and I thought that Sharknado 3 had somehow managed to predict the presidential campaign of Donald Trump. However, I then checked with the imdb and I discovered that Cuban was playing President Marcus Robbins.
The same people on twitter who were bitching about Ann Coulter weren’t much happier when Michele Bachman showed up, playing herself. (For a few minutes, I was hoping that the movie would be full of cameos from former Presidential candidates.) However, the political cameos in Sharknado 3 are bipartisan. When the action moves down to Orlando, noted Democrat Jerry Springer shows up as a tourist and promptly gets eaten. And then Carlos Danger himself, Anthony Weiner, shows up as a heroic NASA guy. Eventually, for those of us who lean towards the libertarian side of the political spectrum, Penn Jilette and Teller eventually show up. Personally, I suspect that Teller knew how to stop the sharks but, of course, he wasn’t going to say anything.
As for the cameos from various media personalities, Sharknado 3 never manages to top the moment from Sharknado 2 where Kelly Ripa stomped a shark with her high heels. But no matter — it’s still fun to watch Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda get drunk while sharks fall around them. And then Matt Lauer gets eaten by a shark so yay for that!
(Incidentally, whether intentional or not, the film was full of former contestants from The Celebrity Apprentice, with Ian, Penn, and Lou Ferrigno all showing up. Personally, I would have enjoyed seeing Piers Morgan get eaten by a shark.)
However, of all the celebrity cameos in Sharknado 3, nobody could top the Hoff. When David Hasselhoff first showed up as Finn’s father, it felt like a funny but obvious joke. Of course, Finn’s father would be David Hasselhoff. But you know what? Give credit where credit is due. The Hoff actually gave a pretty good performance and, during the film’s interstellar climax, he managed to do a pretty good impersonation of George Clooney as he looked out into space and said, “It’s a beautiful view.”
And yes, Sharknado 3 does go into space. How could it not? The film may have started out as an homage to the classic weather disaster films but, by the end of the movie, it turned into a delirious combination of Jaws, Gravity and Interstellar. By the time Finn was exploring the stomach of a shark while it floated through the starry sky, Sharknado 3 had achieved a definite state of grace.
Incidentally, the film ended with a cliffhanger and we were asked to vote whether or not April would live. At first, I voted to kill April because, quite frankly, I thought it would be fun to see a vengeance-obsessed Finn. But then Tara Reid tweeted the following and made me feel totally guilty:
This is it show me your love and support I need you! You are the fans that made this movie keep it going! #AprilLives
Through the Shattered Lens 