Intensity	Stupidity:Nudity Ratio 8:6	Budget Small

Edy Williams was nearly 50 when she starred in Bad Girls from Mars. Though clearly past her prime, she is the main reason to see this movie.

As the movie opens we see our hero chained to a wall of a space ship. One of the ships personnel enters (played by Jasea, a porn star specializing in bondage, clearly a case of typecasting) and after a bit of exposition, takes off her bikini top and threatens our hero with sex. Just when things are getting interesting, we find out we are on the set of a movie. Oh yeah! Another movie about making a movie! Shortly after this Jasea's character is strangled to death with a loop of film. The director has a fit because this is the fourth actress that has been killed on the movie. The crew is mildly concerned. The producers have had insurance on all the actresses and have collected enough money to make the movie profitable already. They bring in Emanuelle (Edy Williams) who is doing a publicity tour for her book about her time as a high class call girl and madame. The pace of the murders pick up and a fat police detective shows up to solve the case. After being nearly killed a couple of times and taking her clothes off several times, Emanuelle confronts the murderer, sticks a grenade in her mouth and escapes. We get to see one more scene on the movie set where Emanuelle exposes her breasts yet again before the credits roll.

Bad Girls from Mars is a Fred Olen Ray flick. You'll no doubt see a lot of Fred's movies reviewed here as time goes by if for no other reason than that the man has made over 100 films already. Also, I have a certain amount of respect for Fred. Currently he has dropped his regular cast of B movie actors and is largely working with porn actors which truthfully has not really lowered the quality of his movies. Whether that speaks to the acting of the porn stars or the fact that Fred's older movies have not really set the bar very high is a topic for another time.

The acting in Bad Girls is uniformly broad with everyone playing for the cheap seats. This is done on purpose as they are supposed to be playing actors who are not any good. Jay Richardson (who has appeared in about a dozen films for Fred) has played this character a lot. Brinke Stevens who plays Jay's girlfriend has also been in a few movies for Fred and brings her patented laid back acting style to this movie as well. For the life of me I don't know how Brinke became a scream queen. She is attractive, but not gorgeous. She has a good body but is not as big chested as most scream queens. She is not a great actress, but neither are most scream queens. She does have that throaty voice and she is frequently used as an Exposition Guy in fact she narrates "Zombiegeddon". It could be that she just works at it harder than most actresses. Richardson and Stevens both recite their lines dependably and are quite comfortable in front of the camera which is really all that Fred ever expects from his actors.

Which brings us to Edy Williams. From an early age, Edy depended upon her looks as her career. Beauty pageants, modeling, TV work and movies all helped to pay her bills. Believing that there is no such thing as bad publicity, Edy would show up at the Oscars and other big events wearing dresses that would frequently slip off her shoulders exposing her naughty bits. A current comparison would be Carmen Electra. Carmen mostly makes her living based on her beauty. She is not much of an actress and while she can dance, she is not really a dancer. Carmen is aware of her Sex Goddess status and often her movie roles reflect this such as her roles in the "Scary Movie" franchise. There has always been this type of actress around who is less an actress and more a personality and for a while in the 80's that actress was Edy. There are a few in jokes about Edy in the movie. I am pretty sure the changing clothes in the car scene is a reference to her habit of flashing photographers at award shows. And when after watching some video of one of the other actor she looks at the camera and says "Wow. He really can't act", we know that she is just beating the critics to the punch(line). The fact that her character's name is Emanuelle and she is a call girl/madame who writes a sex advice column for a magazine is just icing on the cake. Emanuelle is the name of any number of movie characters from soft porn movies and the character's background is a reference to Xavier Hollander of Happy Hooker fame. (Heidi Fleiss had not become infamous yet). Considering that she was 48 or 49 at the time of filming, Edy looks pretty good in her nude scenes and looks formidable in her two wrestling scenes. Though I did get tired of her wide-eyed monotone delivery of all her lines.

You've seen this movie before, it is not a lot different than "Hollywood Boulevard" or "Sex Bomb" or "Silent Movie" or even "The Happy Hooker goes to Hollywood". Actually the premise of the movie they were supposed to be making sounds more interesting than the rehash of the "killer on the movie set" theme. As with most of Fred's movies it is reasonably well shot and lit well enough that you can follow the action but clearly Fred does not spend a great deal of time or thought on putting out a perfect product. Without Edy this movie would have no interest at all and with her it is mostly a minor note.

It is worth seeing if you like Fred's movies or for Edy. There are a few chuckles here and there and Fred may even make a joke or two at his own expense. One of the guys robbing the liquor store is played Fred and I can't help but wonder if this is how he normally arranges financing for his movies.

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In case you can't come up with some of your own:

A little head in a box! Just what I always wanted.

Makes a great gift.

A gift that sucks, but in a good way.

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