by Amylou Ahava and Jennessa Hester
In the prologue to BITCH ASS, the one and only Tony Todd sets the stage, speaking directly to the camera in a way which recalls televised horror hosts like Rod Sterling or Alfred Hitchcock. Todd reminds the viewer of the hood horror classics of old, from less remembered pictures like TALES FROM THE HOOD to his own 1992 masterwork CANDYMAN. But alas, this canon is incomplete. There is one thus far untold story which precedes them all, of the first Black American to don a slasher mask and take his place in the grindhouse. Won’t you stick around then, Todd teases, to hear the terrifying tale of BITCH ASS.
This self-reflexive introduction, an instruction manual for how audience members should approach and interpret the movie, is what elevates the film to be more than the sum of its parts. After all, the story itself is rather formulaic. The young protagonist Q, played by Teon Kelley in his feature film debut, has fallen in with a ruthless neighborhood gang. On the leader’s instructions, Q and three other gang recruits head over to the house of a local recluse to break in and steal some valuables, an initiation ritual to become full members of the group.
Terrors will soon overtake the initiates, of course, as the film promptly reveals that the local recluse has transformed into the titular psychokiller. But in this first act, the hood half of hood horror takes center stage in the viewer’s mind. With Todd’s opening monologue, the movie encourages its audience to treat this narrative not as a genuine story originating from a real neighborhood block, but as a prototypical myth of the street — one which follows all the rules laid out by its subgenre predecessors but refuses to conceal them. Even the film’s violent and frenetic editing style, which makes frequent use of split screen and atypical aspect ratios and non-diegetic visuals, calls attention to the seams of the screenplay.
This setup creates a tense relationship between BITCH ASS and the films it apes. On the one hand, it pays clear tribute to its celluloid ancestors, and fans of TALES FROM THE HOOD and similar features will feel quite at home in the cheeky, low budget nightmarescape dripping with macabre joys of gothic Americana. But at the same time, the film never feels totally comfortable with the stories that came before. For example, the killer’s own backstory reinforces this reading, featuring multiple reveals which are predictable by design and play out just as one would expect in a hood picture. Indeed, the question is not what made the killer this way—as if that were a real point of narrative concern—but is it possible for BITCH ASS to have turned out any other way? The query posed is more structural than narratively focused thanks to the static tropes filmmakers from horror and beyond have used to construct our common cultural perceptions of “the hood”. Is the block itself a crypt from which escape is impossible?
It is within this framework that the terrors let loose on Q and his fellow initiates. Following the much-established setting of Black hood-horror (complete with a gang-ruled community), BITCH ASS loses some of its power in the first few minutes of the film due to an uneven production design. Director Bill Posley chooses a more stylistic approach to his story with the use of an extremely wide aspect ratio. Obviously, a bold choice for filming, but since the ratio extends beyond the standard format, not all devices can properly portray the film. However, included in the stretched perception, Posley also picks certain scenes to divide into fragmented sections, almost like looking into a shattered and distorted window or perhaps a stylistic comic book. The director pulls out this technique a few times during the movie (ex: a mugging, death scene, and the final showdown), giving the otherwise brutal images an artistic quality and interesting perspective.
The film articulates the mental and physical warping of Bitch Ass, played by Tunde Laleye, at the hands of his violently religious grandmother and a ruthless gang leader predominantly through flashbacks. Receiving abuse at school and at home, the large-framed and softspoken Cecil eventually grows to become the masked killer mentioned in the opening segment. Finding solace only in various types of games, he morphs his home into a massive kill room with deadly versions of childhood favorite board games. Never having companions as a child, Bitch Ass now ensnares the unsuspecting gang members into elaborate murder-traps, forcing them to play for their lives. The games all strongly resemble well-known games such as Operation, Battleship, and (my personal favorite) Connect Four, but with slight modifications to provide a gorier outcome for the loser (and probably to avoid copyright infringement). Think of the house as a cross between a SAW death-trap and TOY STORY.
BITCH ASS does not get into the political commentary often associated with the subgenre, which might upset some fans looking for more elevated horror or deeper subtext. And while the villain offers a lot in the way of backstory and potential for an incredibly menacing figure, the director leans more toward a sympathetic approach, adding a significant amount of sorrow to the character and effectively setting Bitch Ass apart from other masked killers. Where the infamous Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, and Jason Vorhees killed with no purpose or motive, Bitch Ass finds himself simultaneously playing the victim and the murderer. So Laleye’s masked slasher aligns more with Gunnar Hansen’s Leatherface then any of the other big names in disguised horror baddies. Combining the more likeable killer with the added bits of flair to the cinematography and hints for future movies suggests a promising new slasher franchise in the budding BITCH ASS series.
Tags: Alfred Hitchcock, Bill Posley, Bitch Ass, Board Games, Candyman, Film Festivals, Freddy Krueger, Gunnar Hansen, Jason Voorhees, Leatherface, Michael Myers, Rod Serling, Saw, Slashers, SXSW, SXSW 2022, Tales From The Hood, Teon Kelley, Tony Todd, Toy Story, Tunde Laleye
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