I opened up Tubi and am greeted by the face of a scowling bald black man and written underneath are the words “Bitch Ass.” Now, I don’t know who this guy is, but I must have cut him off in traffic or something, because now he’s on the top of my Tubi app, calling me a bitch ass. This is the first thing that came to my mind, even though I know this is a movie they think I should watch. For whatever reason, Tubi thinks I need to watch a bitch ass movie. So okay! We’re watching a bitch ass movie, Mido!
(Mido doesn’t care, she’s probably wondering what my bitch ass is talking about, and why this bitch ass thinks that cats understand humans)
Candyman actor guy brings his voice with him to introduce a blaxploitation-style “hood horror” movie about a killer named Bitch Ass. It’s like the opening of “Plan 9” when Bella Lugosi does the intro, only it’s Candyman-guy. The year is 1999, and (Candymanguy had a name, Tony Todd, he passed away last year but before that he had a fantastic voice and was in a zillion movies and TV shows spanning 40 years… in case you were thinking I was being too cavalier in describing a horror legend as “Candymanguy”) we’re in the bad part of town. A lady is being chased by a purse snatcher, he catches up with her, yells at her a bunch, then Bitch Ass pops out and beats him up. The next day some gang initiates are sent to go break into a dead old rich lady’s house and rob the place. That’s the task for “666 Night.” I don’t know what that is, they never explain it, let’s pretend it’s “Devils Night” or “Cabbage Night” or whatever your preferred colloquialism for “Night Before Halloween When Teenagers And Older People Who Should Know Better Go Out To Be Little Assholes.” It’s a dead old rich lady, but her psycho grandson lives there and he eats people or something, so these four stereotypes have to go get that money!
“Q” is the gang leader’s nephew or cousin or something. He’s the official not-dumb member of the crew, he knows things, his clothes fit right, he wears a backpack all the time and he’s got a good haircut. Nice kid, wants to go to college and become a doctor, but decided in the meantime he wants to join a gang. It’s like pre-pre-med, gang stuff is. It assures there will be plenty of people for future ER doctors to work on.
Pretty lame gang, too. A couple of middle-aged men living in a vandalized squat, and these four ordinary-looking 25-year-old teenagers who wear their hats sideways and have silly names like “Moopy” and “Shlurb.” That’s the gang. 6th Street Gang, gotta be the lamest street in town.
Sure enough, when they get to the house Bitch Ass is upstairs, having a flashback about the days when he was a cuddly goober playing board games with grandma, who then abused him because she’s a mean old bitch. Nice goober is now a mean killer, and I suspect there will be more flashbacks in the course of the next hour and four minutes that will explain more to us viewers. I suspect he became a mean killer because grandma sucked.
They land in a room with stacks of board games. “Man they really liked board games!” Then as they head down the hallway the camera pans down to the word “Start” carved into the floor they step over. Ahhh, got it. House of horrors that cuddly goober turned Bitch Ass killer created to be a live-action board game.
Is this a horror comedy? It seems like that’s what they’re trying to do, but it’s not particularly funny, it just isn’t overly-serious. “Horror Quirk” is the more appropriate description. Cheesy slasher horror for teenagers who want to make-out in the back of the theater. Horror for people who have limits when it comes to horror. I wasn’t expecting much from a movie called “Bitch Ass” but it’s pretty O.K.!