Todd Sheets has been making micro-budget genre films – mostly of the horror variety – for a quarter of a century, so you’ll have to excuse me if I take a moment to show the man a little respect. Yes, his Nightmare Asylum nearly broke my brain. Yes, Prehistoric Bimbos in Armageddon City has all of the same technical and structural limitations as that later film (and a few more). Yes, it took me three attempts to get through this film despite it being only 69 minutes long. But, the man is committed to the genres he loves, and despite a long history of creating some of the worst things ever committed to videotape, he’s still ballsy enough to call himself the “Master of Splatter”. It’s almost admirable.
Prehistoric Bimbos in Armageddon City begins in a particularly confusing manner, with plot points and characters being thrown at the screen with reckless abandon. Apparently there’s a group of Prehistoric.. Bimbos who are searching a post-apocalyptic Chicago for an antidote to the disease that is plaguing one of their comrades. Along the way they battle – ridiculously – in a rec-room against the minions of the evil Salacious Thatch. Then the whole thing is over. Only eight minutes. That wasn’t so bad.
However, these are actually clips from Todd Sheets’ earlier Bimbos B.C. (1990), the film to which Prehistoric Bimbos in Armageddon City is a sequel. Bimbos B.C. is – tragically – not included in this collection, so I’ll just have to try and pick up on important plot points from the earlier film as we go along. We’re immediately thrown into the film’s opening credits, which are redeemed significantly by the Sheets’ composed theme song titled (surprisingly) “Prehistoric Bimbos In Armageddon City” which manages to somehow be both low-fi and low-brow at the same time. Thank goodness this song exists, since its main guitar riff appears to be the only bit of original music throughout the film – the rest being composed of public domain works (notably Mars: Bringer of War by Gustav Holst and the music that begins Act II of Swan Lake that is notably used in Tod Browning’s Dracula).
We begin with a post-Apocalyptic Chicago that looks suspiciously like regular Chicago – and I hope the original film explains why the women are at all “prehistoric”, as aside from wearing a bit of fur over their tie-died mom jean-shorts and t-shirts they seem fairly representative of your average early 90s woman. They also spend a lot of time wandering the halls of what looks a lot like a fully functioning school, which sort of takes the edge off of the “warrior woman” vibe that Sheets is going for. Gabrielle (Holly Starr) has been left in charge by Bimbo leader (and star of the first film) Trianna, but is having trouble gaining the respect of her.. uh.. bimbettes. She decides a team building exercise might help bring the group together, so she assembles the titular gals to go out in search of precious gems.
Despite piss-poor sound (much of the dialogue is drowned out by the repetitive music, so I eventually switched to watching with headphones so I could make out what was being said), and what can only be described as a non-existent visual style, I enjoyed Prehistoric Bimbos significantly more than I expected to. The acting is uniformly terrible, but at least this time there appears to have been a script (by regular Sheets collaborator Roger Williams), and the whole thing wraps up before it gets too tiresome. It’s saved by a few moments of humor – Pringle running into the alien from Ridley Scott’s Alien and saying “I’m in the wrong movie! Go find the bald-headed chick”, the comically extended chase scene at the end – and the high-school art class “robots” compiled from plumbing parts and cardboard boxes. Despite the title, there’s hardly anything in here that would bring this over a PG rating aside from a few “shits” and – a Sheets trademark – a character calling someone a “piece of dook”.
I should note that there is apparently a 80 minute version of this out there – which might explain why certain characters just show up at the end without explanation – but the 69 minute version (which has less than an hour of original footage) is probably just right for those looking to dip their feet into the work of Todd Sheets. The film is presented full-screen and was shot on video, and comes with the usual glitches and inconsistent color that you quickly become accustomed to on no-budget productions. Thankfully much of the film is shot outdoors during the day, so the lighting issues that plagued Nightmare Asylum are not an issue here. As mentioned, the sound is awful aside from that rocking theme song.
As per usual in the Bloody Nightmares collection there are no extras, not even chapter stops.
