• Written and directed by Jon Gorman and Thomas Edward Seymour
• Starring
  • Rachael Robbins
  • Debbie Rochon
  • Sheri Lynn
  • Margaret Champagne
  • Natalie Laspina
• Produced by Robert Cosgrove and Sheri Lynn

I know I went to some lengths to point out my disappointment with the movie to which this is a sequel, Bikini Bloodbath (2007), but I also have to acknowledge that most of my complaints were irrelevant. Unknown movies with no theatrical release or major stars (sorry, Debbie Rochon really doesn’t qualify) rely on two things to attract renters/buyers: subject matter and cover design. The title alone broadcasted the salient points of the movie’s content, as well as the general tongue-in-cheek characters of its treatment; and the cover design was clean, energetic, and attractive. Coupled with a fairly heavy internet promotional campaign, the original apparently did fairly well — well enough for a sequel to be rushed into production.

The events of the movie are largely a retread of the first movie, with the “carwash” part of the title tacked onto the storyline (such as it is) simply to keep the title honest. Jenny (Playboy model Rachael Robbins) and Sharon (Natalie Laspina) are college co-eds who certainly are more believable in their roles than the crop of actresses who were supposed to be high school seniors in the last movie. After school, they work at the Bikini Wax & Wash run by the dykey Miss Johnson (Debbie Rochon), who apparently survived her apparent death last movie and decided to change careers. This occasions more than one scene of a half-dozen girls shaking it while they spray suds, with Miss Johnson calling the girls her bitches and muttering her lesbian lusts under her breath.

Meanwhile, the Inbred Lardass Carwash on the next block can’t drum up ANY business.

We also meet a crew of male college students (again labeled with helpful T-shirts like “College Student” and “German Exchange Students”), with whom the girls plan to party at Miss Johnson’s house on Friday night — the house being the murder house from the last movie, which Miss Johnson picked up for cheap in between movies. And mostly because there really isn’t enough plot to fill out a DVD if it’s taken in a linear fashion, we get scenes which introduce us to inconsequential characters like Professor Shipwreck (Film Threat critic Phil Hall) who accessorizes with a Popeye-style sailor hat and pipe while in class, and Dr. Zartan (Dick Boland), the requisite lecherous instructor whose thinly-veiled comments go entirely over the heads of his bimbo students. (And for no reason that I can propose, we meet someone dressed in a Cobra Commander hood who goes by the name of “Community College Commander.”)

We now leave entirely the carwash part of the movie — and also the bikini part, largely, though the girls don’t exactly spend the rest of their time in burkas — and get down to the bloodbath. Or its genesis, anyway. The girls from the carwash gather in Jenny’s and Sharon’s dorm room for a séance to contact their dead friend Porsche, but the Ouija board is taken over by messages from Chef Death — whom, you of course recall, was the homicidal maniac in white coat and poofy hat who caused all the mayhem last time until he (spoilers!) died at the end. It isn’t until Jenny panics and starts babbling about how she killed Chef Death that I realize that Jenny and Sharon are supposed to be the two characters who survived the previous movie — Jenny by virtue of being Final Girl, and Sharon by going out for a burrito at a climactic moment. At least Natalie Laspina bears a distant resemblance to Anna-Karin Eskilsson, who played Sharon in the first movie; both girls have dark hair and complexions, anyway. Rachael Robbins as Jenny, though, bears absolutely no resemblance to Leah Ford from the first movie: blonde instead of plum brunette, buxom instead of lithe-verging-on-skinny. But not only that, the personality attached to the name is wholly different as well. I mentioned in my review of the previous movie that Jenny may have been one IQ point smarter than the average among her social circle, but this version of Jenny is as blonde as blonde could be, a scatter-brained bimbo who makes all the other stupid people in the movie seem at least average (no mean feat).

I really just included this one for the price list.

Anyway. Because of the contact through the Ouija board, in a vaguely nearby cemetery… a kitchen meatcleaver suddenly protrudes through the sod! Yes, it’s Zombie Chef Death (Robert Cosgrove, Jr.), reprising his role), whom the authorities saw fit to bury in his blood-spattered chefs’ suit, complete with his twin meatcleavers.

Now, I don’t want to get your hopes up. This all takes place before the half-hour mark. It isn’t until 57 minutes into the movie (which only stretches to 1:07 before the closing credits start to roll) that any of the characters realize that they’re in a horror movie — at least, any characters who aren’t immediately dispatched by Zombie Chef Death. So to fill the time while ZCD slaughters miscellaneous isolated characters (Dr. Zartan and a student he conned to his house to “help him with his groceries,” a bikini carwash girl who goes back to the changing room for her merkin, etc.), we’ve got the following going on:

- The girls at Miss Johnson’s house for the party. (If Jenny’s got any misgivings about going back to the house that her parents obviously sold in a hurry after their daughter was the sole on-site survivor of a mass murder, she doesn’t show it.)

Yet another culinary professional casually disregarding OSHA standards for hygiene.

- The boys arrive also — Todd (Jack Flaherty) the third-string quarterback, Gary (Matt Ford) his friend who raises the homoerotic quotient just a little bit much (though not nearly as high as it was in the first movie), and two German exchange students (Russ Russo and co-director Thomas Edward Seymour) who find their attempts to score are only made marginally possible by these girls’ low standards.

- There is dancing — first the girls alone, then everybody once the boys show up. Much shaking of groove things and moneymakers, yes, but… well, I just didn’t realize my inner thirteen-year-old was so far beneath the surface of my psyche.

- Miss Johnson takes a special liking to Lucy (co-producer Sheri Lynn), designating her her own little bitch.

- Various hot tub jokes, urine jokes, etc. Some approach the margins of comedy; others stay far, far away. (Can someone explain to me the “genius” behind the running gag that everyone calls Sharon fat, despite the fact that she’s not even as fleshy as Jenny? Doesn’t a gag like that have to be funny the first time before it’s worth repeating?)

Meanwhile, ZCD is in the house, and slaughters various people in random corners of the house before finally (at the 57-minute mark noted above) someone realizes that there are murders going on. It’s an abrupt ten minutes from the first inkling that the characters might be in danger to the ultimate resolution, and the denouement is certainly abbreviated compared to the first movie. Nevertheless, it’s over, and time for the post-game.

“(glurg)”

The biggest improvement between the first movie and the second is that the main characters, the ostensible protagonists, are not entirely hateworthy douchebags. Stupid and small-minded, yes; unworthy of audience regard and sympathy, certainly; but not willfully reprehensible. Or maybe I’m just getting soft in my old age.

The other differences between the two installments (and as you can hopefully tell from my recap, the divergences almost qualify as nuance rather than major dissimilarities) are a mixed bag. There’s a good faith attempt to replicate (or at least echo) the homoerotic gags which were one of the first movie’s few high points, but this time it’s not cast as a gender-switched version of the standard female sleepover behavior in B-horror movies, and thus loses some of its charm. Debbie Rochon’s part is much larger and more central to the story, but her hardbitten bulldyke-with-PTSD-flashbacks act gets a little old, with scene after scene of her doing little more than dropping F-bombs and calling everyone a bitch. And of course, the inclusion of the carwash (and the attendant bikinis on the attendants) for only a few scenes at the start is not just a bait-and-switch as to general content — and as I said, my inner thirteen-year-old is dormant enough that I didn’t feel cheated — but also to the B-movie plot expectation raised any time that “bikini” and the name of a business are placed in close juxtaposition in the title. “You mean they don’t have to shuck down to beachwear as a gimmick to save the business from a greedy developer?”

“Um, thanks for the coverage, you two, but I really don’t think that reviewer guys counts these in the breasts total.”

As much as I hate the cop-out phrase “It is what it is,” I find myself hard-pressed to assess this movie without using some analogue. It’s a stupid movie which provides light sexiness and a few nipple shots, some cheap kill scenes that are delivered without suspense, and a lot of the kind of “amusing ourselves in front of a camera” humor that makes “sophomoric” more than an educational descriptor. If that’s all you’re looking for, I suppose you’ve come to the right place, but don’t blame me if it leaves you hungry for the more satisfying fare that Fred Olen Ray and Jim Wynorski used to crank out in the post-Porkies era.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 12
• breasts: 6
• explosions: 0
• dream sequences: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0