I have a couple of fairly reliable rules of cinema - bellwethers one might say - that let you know you are probably in for a real stinker. The first is Eight Word Title. If there are eight or more words in the title, look out. The second is TBC - Tits Before Credits. If you see 'em before they roll the title and opening credits, you are probably seeing the best part of the movie right there. My first rule clearly does not apply to The Bitch (1979), Joan Collins' second appearance as her sister Jackie's character Fontaine Khaled. The second rule is applicable beyond all expectation, as she is in a naked sex scene in the shower before the credits.
The Bitch is a shabby sexploitation flick and nothing more. The previous films in this exercise were competently enough made that I never even wondered who was responsible for their existence, and the screenplays were by Jackie Collins herself so they at least had a little sharpness to them. When I saw how poor this production was I determined it was either from very early in a filmmaker's brief and unsuccessful career, or it was made by someone with a decades-long string of cheap mediocrities attached to his name. The latter proved to be the case. Look it up if you like - his career is a remarkably consistent pattern of shoddy crap, ending with one of the saddest, poorest mummy movies in the history of the cinema. He wrote the incoherent and inconclusive screenplay and I nearly feel motivated to try to read the book just to see what a botch he made of the original story. Plotwise, after her brief temporary comeuppance in The Stud, the protagonist is left to her own resources to get her failing disco back on top of the scene again. There is some guy with a stolen diamond. Stuff happens. She wears this dreadful metallic ensemble.
Everything is pretty much in a long medium shot - most of the time you see everyone from the waist up, whether they are yelling at each other on a disco dance floor or walking down the street. The lifelessness of the filming is noteworthy. The disco scenes are made tedious by there being two basic shots - the medium shot and the camera on a skateboard looking up shot. The sex scenes are longer than the disco scenes and are meant to be erotica as they involve a lot of writhing around in darkness. The peak of decadence comes at a pool party with extensive underwater shots reminiscent of the cheap nudies of Doris Wishman, one of the most consistently shoddy directors of all time who nonetheless was able to make her nudies moderately interesting. The Bitch is not. This morning I could hardly remember anything about it. I remembered this though.
Yes, the thing I remembered most clearly about this sex and disco movie is the crappiness of this driving scene. That is her in a car. I always enjoy those brief amateurish film reviews that go, "This is the WORST MOVIE EVER MADE. Whatever you do, DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE." Of course there is no such thing as the worst movie ever made. This, however is a piece of crap and a complete waste of time. There are not drugs enough in this world to make it enjoyable or interesting.
This concludes the Jackie Collins Memorial Film Festival. Judging by the first two, I got a good idea of the kind of story she wrote, and if you like that kind of trashy lurid sex novel then she is just the stuff. Harold Robbins for the ladies. Her job here is finished, and so is mine. I thank you.
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