Bad Girls is an upcoming low-budget underground movie directed by South Carolinian filmmaker Christopher Bickel. And I do mean low budget. He and his team produced it for $16,000, what he says is "about one-half of the CATERING BUDGET for a typical made-for-TV movie."
The majority of that budget (some of which was raised by crowd-funding, some came from Bickel's day-job in a record store) went to pay the cast and crew a modest daily stipend — something which director Bickel cites as being "of utmost importance to keeping harmony on set."
Citing influences as diverse as Jack Hill, Russ Meyer, Greg Araki, R Kern, and Robert Downey (Sr.), Bickel has crafted a vision more than just the sum parts of those influences — it is something unique in current underground cinema.
"These are characters people haven't seen before, interacting in a violent world that is almost-but-not-quite our own," says director Christopher Bickel of the "exaggerated reality" of the BAD GIRLS universe. "When you're making a movie for the cost of a used car, you're forced to get creative with the storytelling in ways that Hollywood focus-groups don't allow. You won't find BAD GIRLS in a Walmart because it doesn't belong in a Walmart."
Here's its trailer. The full film is due out in 2021 but you can pre-order it now.
BAD GIRLS gleefully subverts genre tropes in telling its lurid, hyperreal tale. After robbing a strip club, three desperate teenage girls lead a misogynistic Federal Agent on a lysergic cross-country chase, scoring a duffle bag full of money, drugs, and a crew of willing kidnapees along the way.
