Doomsday Reels: Bimbos B.C.

Bimbos B.C. (1990)

The Director

Todd Sheets

The Actors

Tonia Monahan (Trianna), Deric Bernier (Salacious Thatch), Matthew Lewis (Larry - The Male Bimbo), Veronica Orr (Doc), J.T. Taube (Morbius)

The Trailer

The Cause

Chemical Warfare

The Story

"IN THE FUTURE........ A GROUP OF FEMALE WARRIORS FOUGHT A HUGE BATTLE IN ARMAGEDDON CITY......." - opening text

The Rundown

As much of an insane undertaking as it seemed at the time and seems now, my expressed goal with this column was to review every single post-apocalyptic and dystopian movie.  Every.  Single.  One.  That means I'm going to watch a lot of garbage.  That means I've already watched some garbage.  Some of it's just boring.  Some of it is boring but in an interesting way.  Some of it is just this side of watchable.  Some of it is genuinely awful and makes me feel worse for having seen it.

I knew going into this movie that Todd Sheets is not exactly a beloved figure in the indie film world.  He ranks somewhere down there among the Scott Shaws and Massimiliano Cerchis of the world.  The internet has already taken its swings at Bimbos B.C. and as much fun as it is to pile on an easy target I'm not going to do that.  Because I certainly love movies that had more heart than money or talent, even a bad movie deserves to have its good qualities highlighted.  I I will, of course, be honest about the film's shortcomings but I have come here to bury Bimbos B.C., not to roast it.

Bimbos B.C. is based on a comic book that is essentially impossible to find.  What few pages I have seen of this fabled comic make it look like one of the many independent comics that were published during the black-and-white indie comics boom inspired by the success of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles where comic stores would buy up any bullshit in hopes that it would be their next TMNT-calibur hit. (Spoiler alert: none of them were, sorry Fish Police fans.)

The plot, such as it is, is that Rochelle (? - most of the cast is not credited) the leader of a group of "stone-age" warrior women (actually just completely normal looking women with feathered hair in street clothes with random patches of faux-fur affixed to them to look more cave-womanly) called Bimbos living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland (obviously just a normal patch of timber.)

Rochelle is attacked by a high-school mascot that is meant to be some kind of mutant called either a Talon or Talmud (the audio is extremely muddy because this film was shot on video and apparently employed no boom mics).  Fortunately the monster-mascot bites Rochelle and leaves her so she can crawl back to the Bimbos' lair (a public school science classroom and kitchen on a Saturday.)

Doc, a defector from a group of scientists that developed chemicals which ended the world and created bizarre mutants similar to prehistoric creatures, tells second-in-command Triana that Rochelle is dying of the Talmud's venom and the only cure is in her lab back in Armageddon City.

We then travel to Armageddon City where we meet the villainous Salacious Thatch in his evil lair (a public school library on a Saturday.)  If there's any standout performance in this movie, it's Deric Bernier as Thatch.  Bernier is a fairly husky gentleman with a long ponytail and his character is effectively dressed like Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons except he is wearing a massive royal blue cape and a sort of hub-cap necklace.  His beard appears to be drawn on with eye-liner pencil or magic marker.  Deric Bernier is not what I would call a "good" actor, but he is enthusiastic of his portrayal as an evil scumbag and he hams it up wonderfully.

Thatch orders his soldiers out into the wasteland to kill the Bimbos because... something to do with the Talmud/Talon (? - bad audio again).  The soldiers go out and compete in a weird combination of William Shatner-calibur stage fighting and slow motion professional wrestling moves masquerading as fight scenes and then the soldiers go back to Thatch in defeat and this repeats a couple times until the Bimbos reach the city, at which point they are captured, and a character we have never seen before named John Apollo shows up and gets them out, they kill Thatch, heal Rochelle, and Triana becomes the Bimbos' new leader and pardons all of Thatch's soldiers on the condition that they all come back for a sequel (she says this as she turns and looks directly into the camera.)

Look, this isn't a good movie.  It's shot entirely on what I can only assume is a home camcorder, using only the microphone on said camcorder.  There are no sets (we simply have a couple abandoned buildings, the inside of a school, a few city streets, and the woods), the costuming and props are barely existent, the acting ranges from bad to extremely bad (Matthew Lewis as Larry - The Male Bimbo has a particularly inept to the point of being charming), and the story is both far too simple and weirdly confusing.  There are attempts at world-building but they don't really add anything to the movie as they're only mentioned in dialogue, rarely ever shown.

And yet, I can't rag on this movie too hard.  The entire thing comes off like an A.V. club project that a lot of us did in high school and college.  It's clear none of these people are actors, that Todd Sheets is neither a writer nor director and that it's a love of, clearly not a knowledge of movies that lead them to create this.  There's a plucky "let's put on a show" spirit to the whole thing that I can't help but admire.  Is this a good movie?  Not even slightly but the fact that these people made a movie when they clearly have no idea what they're doing.  None of these actors have been heard from since they finished Sheets' Bimbos trilogy (oh yeah, there's more to come) but Sheets is still making movies to this day.

This movie is a mess, it's too short (only an hour and 8 minutes with a LOT of credit sequence at the front and back of the film) and too slow, the plot is meandering and incorherent, the actors can't act, the sound is muddy and hard to understand, but it's a charming little movie that was clearly made by amateurs with no money.  And viewed under that lens this becomes not a collection of things that are wrong but rather a series of things that went surprisingly well all things considered.  Bimbos B.C. is definitely more of a curio than a genuine enjoyable movie-going experience but it's quirky and still a better movie than Live Freaky, Die Freaky.

The Shill

Despite all logic saying that the only place you should be able to find this is on a VHS tape buried in Todd Sheets' closet, you can actually find Bimbos B.C. on Amazon Instant and nowhere else that I have found.

Next Time on Doomsday Reels

"Those were insectoids, they live in caves!"