Confession time: All my life, I never quite understood the appeal of baseball, “America’s pastime.” Then I saw Blood Games. Batter up!
The one and only film from one Tanya Rosenberg, Blood Games begins as Babe and the Batgirls, a traveling all-ladies team, are beating the pants off an unofficial assemblage of backwoods hicks and rednecks. Led by Babe (Laura Albert, The Jigsaw Murders), the Batgirls have been hired to play nine innings against birthday boy Roy (Gregory Scott Cummins, Action U.S.A.) and his greasy, uneducated buds. The girls win, which the guys do not cotton to, so they respond with grab-ass and other on-the-field antics of sexual harassment.
That night, after Roy’s wealthy dad (Ken Carpenter, Tammy and the T-Rex) shortchanges the Batgirls the $1,000 they’re owed, Babe’s father (Ross Hagen, Wonder Women) goes to collect … and a couple of people get killed in the process. Roy’s father places a $1,000 bounty on each Batgirl the boys bring back dead, not alive, so the Batgirls’ bus outta town is thwarted in the middle of the nowhere, leaving every woman for herself. Let the Blood Games begin!
Like Deliverance in hot pants, Blood Games more than satisfies the bloodlust of viewers in the mood for a back-to-basics revenge thriller. Being directed by a woman gives it a more progressive viewpoint while still wallowing in exploitation elements; the movie is a case of having its cheesecake and eating it, too. Beyond Babe and Donna (Lee Benton, Beverly Hills Brats), the Batgirls don’t get much in the way of individual personalities, but the fact that we get any is more or less a plus. With Rosenberg often playing violence in slow motion, her flick rouses as a gem of cathartic VHS trash. As George “Buck” Flower’s character says without an ounce of eloquence, “It was them baseball bitches did it.” Boy, did they ever! —Rod Lott