I’m sure the seventies was a great decade and all, what with Disco, government forced bussing, bell bottoms and the Iran hostage situation, but after jumping in a time machine by slipping the Joan and Jackie Collins vehicle ‘The Bitch’ into the old DVD player, this was obviously a decade that couldn’t end soon enough.  I vaguely remember ‘The Bitch’ because it was of those shows that used to come on Cinemax or Showtime or whatever cable channel we had when I was a kid, and I think I actually stayed up one night to watch it after my parents had nodded off.  Not that they would have been too pissed off at me watching it anyway because old school parents didn’t do a hell of a lot censuring back in the day.  But I don’t really remember this movie being nearly this bad.  I mean this was awful.

A sequel another Joan and Jackie Collins vehicle, ‘The Stud’, which I’m told is exponentially better than this flick – however zero to the tenth power is still zero, our films continues the exploits of Fontaine Khaled (Collins) who is – hell, I don’t what she is.  I suppose we’d have to watch the first movie or read the book (as if) to find out what Fontaine’s career is or was.  But when we meet Fontaine again, she is laid up in the sack with a dude in New York, then they take a shower together and we get a glimpse of our then forty six year old star nude.  Then we get to the definite highlight of this film which is the opening credits and quite possibly one of the cheesiest disco songs I’ve ever heard in ‘The Bitch – uh huh, God helps the guy who get The Bitch!’  ‘The Bitch – uh huh, Nobody’s safe around The Bitch!’ Sing it with me y’all.  A tireless search of the Net was unable to unearth of MP3 of that song which means I’m going to have to figure out a way to rip it off the DVD.

Fontaine is off to the airport to Paris where she catches the eye of scurrilous con man Nico Cantafora (Antonio Cantafora) who is probably the true star of this trash if only because of his porn star stache and a constant ‘My God I can’t believe I’m so incredibly good looking’ smirk that never leaves his face.  Nico has stolen a jewel which he stuck inside Fontaine’s coat on the airplane because he’s the kind of guy, with that smirk, that customs officials perform a full body search on every time he enters a new country.  Nico needs this jewel to pay off his mob debts and needs to track down Fontaine who he lost at the airport.  With the help of his Disco Dancing Fence, Cliff Claven from ‘Cheers’ (John Ratzenberger), Nico tracks down the whoring Fontaine, takes his turn in line to screw her, and gets his jewel back only to find it’s a peace of glass.  Where is all of this leading you may ask?  Why that’s a good question because I’m not quite sure.  Fontaine owns a disco club which we are told is in trouble, Nico gets to have sex with a mob assassin, Fontaine screws her chauffer, Cliff Claven disco dances, there is an orgy at a pool party, Nico gets beat up by mobsters, and there is a horse race then the credits roll with that ‘The Bitch’ song playing in the background.

For the life of me I don’t understand why it is so difficult to tell a coherent story in a movie.  I understand that movies are difficult to make, time consuming, expensive and problematic from day one but just telling a simple, logical story that proceeds from point A to point B can’t be that hard can it?  This flick was all over the place with absolutely nothing making any kind of sense, and the only focus it would appear was making sure they were able to squeeze in the appropriate amount of nudity and fake sex.  I’m guilty in that I did read a Jackie Collins novel once, which if I remember was Hollywood Wives, and though it hasn’t stuck with me I think it was at least readable so I’m sure her novel version of ‘The Bitch’ had to be better than this.  By the way, as a teenager in the 80’s I went through a trashy novel phase where I read my fair share Sidney Sheldon, Harold Robbins, Judith Krantz and whatnot so there you go. 

Other than Antonio Cantafore’s constantly plastered shit eating grin, which he maintains even while getting punched in the face, there’s almost nothing to recommend about this movie, and that includes the nudity, fake sex and orgy pool scene.  Any flick that has a lame orgy pool scene is a movie that disgusts me beyond reason.  Well, my copy of ‘The Stud’ should be arriving soon and of course we’ll keep you posted.