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If the whole Charlie Sheen fiasco has taught us anything, it’s that nothing in Hollywood can boost your popularity quite like a little scandal. The crazier you are—the more scandalous your actions—the more popular you’ll become. Of course, it doesn’t come without some consequences, like losing your cushy sitcom job—or, in the case of Alyssa Rampart-Pillage (Beth Broderick) in the dark indie comedy Bad Actress (previously known as (818)), losing a few family members.
Twenty years ago, Alyssa was the fabulous Emmy-nominated star of TV’s HMO Nurse. Now, she can’t even get a role on a TV movie. Instead, she’s the Kool Queen of Air Conditioning, helping her husband, Bernie (Chris Mulkey), promote his successful chain of appliance stores.
When their daughter dies accidentally, Alyssa blames Bernie. Bernie, meanwhile, finds comfort in a strange, cult-like religion, which inspires him to change his will to liquidate his kids’ trust funds and give everything to his new church.
Desperate to maintain the lifestyle that she and her children are accustomed to (and that her TV career funded), Alyssa gets Bernie’s overeager cousin, Morris (Vincent Ventresca), to help her in a plot to stop Bernie. But Alyssa’s scheme propels the entire family into a mess of murder, lies, blackmail, and revenge.
Directed by Psycho Beach Party’s Robert Lee King, Bad Actress is a sinfully entertaining little comedy about life (and death) in The Valley—pitting husband against wife, mother against daughter, and desperate actress against her fading career.
Of course, the greed, desperation, and backstabbing are nothing new—nor are the shamefully shallow personalities. The film is jam-packed with the usual Hollywood stereotypes: the desperate has-been, the determined do-gooder, the clueless trust fund baby, the spoiled princess. Still, there are a few little surprises along the way, too—like Corbin Bernsen’s small but hilarious cameo. And the characters (especially the ones who are just slightly over-cooked) manage to come together to create a comedy that’s just as entertainingly light and fluffy as it is dark and deadly. In fact, most of the film is so light and fluffy that the dark moments will catch you completely off-guard (which only makes them that much more fun).
Beth Broderick, meanwhile, is wonderfully over-the-top as the has-been drama queen. Vain and desperate and completely unwilling to sacrifice both her career and her lifestyle for her appliance-selling husband, Alyssa is the picture of the proverbial woman scorned. And Broderick plays the role with the perfect amount of melodrama, making Alyssa (and her ridiculously sinister plans) more outrageous than shocking. The rest of the cast, then, simply follows her lead—and the result is a black comedy that’s often totally zany, in the most delightfully disturbing ways.
The characters may have been done before—and the story is pretty silly—but Bad Actress is a campy comedy that’s over-the-top in all the right places. If you can’t get enough of Hollywood gossip rags and desperate has-beens on reality TV, you’ll love every minute.
