Who better than Tony Todd to serve as host, Crypt Keeper style, for Bill Posley’s feature debut Bitch Ass? “The first Black serial killer to don a mask” is how Todd describes the title figure in his distinguishing voice, all rasping bass and soul-scraping dread. A minor honorific if ever there was one, but given horror’s tendency of denying Black audiences the same satisfaction guaranteed white audiences in terms of broader representation in the genre, it’s one worth embracing. Besides: Are you going to argue with the Candyman himself?
Todd’s presence in Bitch Ass is minimal, befitting his master-of-ceremonies role, but his legend flows through the movie’s veins, which is almost certainly what Posley intended. Think of the movie as an extended segment in a Tales From the Hood anthology, and you’ll be on Posley’s wavelength: Gang leader Spade (Sheaun McKinney) sends four initiates—Cricket (Belle Guillory), Moo (A-F-R-O), Tuck (Kelsey Caesar), and Q (Teon Kelley)—to break into a dark dusty house occupied by Cecil (Tunde Laleye), now living on his own after his grandma’s passing. Spade instructs his future subordinates to find and nick the old woman’s rumored fortune, then return to him newly recognized as part of the crew. Simple, clean, easy.
They don’t know, though, that Cecil goes by a different name: Bitch Ass, his nom de meurtre as an adult and his unfortunate nickname as a lad. Bitch Ass has almost as much flashback material as present-set (the present here being 1999), and in those sequences we learn that Cecil (played as a teen by Jarvis Denman Jr.) was a nice, nerdy boy abused by his religious battle ax of a grandmother, and mercilessly bullied by Spade (played as a teen by Eric Wright). Maybe a tormented outcast growing up into a psycho is a cliché. Then again, nobody holds a more abiding contempt for the world than friendless ex-kids who always had their lunch money stolen by punks, so there’s truth in the Bitch Ass origin story even if it’s been done. Suffice to say that the 1999 version doesn’t take intrusions into his dwelling kindly, and has remodeled the place as a giant death trap for unsuspecting thieves.
If John Kramer owned and operated his own board game café, it’d look like Bitch Ass’s place. Some masked maniacs kill with machetes, others with kitchen knives, others with chainsaws; Bitch Ass kills with to-scale versions of Operation and Connect 4, where the loser gets fried to a crisp or beheaded. Posley has a gas imagining how favorite childhood games can be made fatal, and how those fatalities can be made extra splattery. The comparisons made to the Saw films following Bitch Ass’ SXSW premiere last March don’t quite jibe. Bitch Ass, for one, is fun, something the Saw films never were; it isn’t interested in cultivating Cecil’s sad upbringing for social commentary beyond the basics, either, namely “don’t pick on the hulking bookworm in your class,” and “don’t pull a B&E on that guy when he’s an adult.”
Posley’s apathy for substance and greater meaning arguably leaves Bitch Ass looking thin, in contrast to Bitch Ass the character, a stoic colossus in a domino mask. But if there isn’t much to Bitch Ass other than his aforementioned abiding contempt for the world, Laleye nonetheless cuts a dramatic, intimidating figure, and one of the rare horror villains deserving of sympathy.
The film also adds a wrinkle to the horror tradition of writing slasher victims as annoying, unlikeable or tediously bland, putting us in the killer’s corner and inviting our joy at the supporting characters’ inevitable demise. Bitch Ass is the monster that his bullies made him, and offers similar pleasures of bloody death scenes done well—but with the complication of empathy on both sides of the blade. Posley and co-writer Jonathan Colomb invest in the initiates—especially Q, a college aspirant worried about his chances of getting accepted. Q radiates goodwill for his pals the same way Posley does for Bitch Ass. We don’t want these kids to die, but we see the lonely boy Bitch Ass was, too, ensconced within that massive frame, and, yes, we also see the hard work and ingenuity that went into each “game” he’s constructed, and it would be a shame not to see them played. So it goes.
Posley balances Bitch Ass’ moral dilemma with clever, exuberant filmmaking, best embodied with interstitial videogame UI title cards: Q, Cricket, Moo and Tuck are each given character portraits alongside Bitch Ass, indicating their status, alive or dead, as the movie pushes forward. When a new character enters the arena, they get portraits, too. It’s the kind of touch Bitch Ass would appreciate, a concession to his proclivities as a horror-film heavy as well as something to help the movie stand out among the 2022 horror crop. Bitch Ass isn’t revolutionary. It’s meat-and-potatoes stuff. But the film inevitably comes back to Tony Todd, whose involvement allows Posley to consider how Black voices and actors have typically been allowed to participate in horror. Bitch Ass is unassuming and straightforward, but with Todd, Posley has chosen the right voice to add another chapter to that genre’s history.
Director: Bill Posley
Writer: Jonathan Colomb, Bill Posley
Starring: Sheaun McKinney, Teon Kelley, Tunde Laleye, Kelsey Caesar, Me’lisa Sellers, Belle Guillory, A-F-R-O, Jarvis Denman Jr., Eric Wright, Tony Todd
Release Date: October 14, 2022
Bostonian culture journalist Andy Crump covers the movies, beer, music, and being a dad for way too many outlets, perhaps even yours. He has contributed to Paste since 2013. You can follow him on Twitter and find his collected work at his personal blog. He’s composed of roughly 65% craft beer.