A low budget exploitation film from 2010. It would have been completely unremarkable had GLAAD not picked up on the title, which containes the word "trannies" and therefore must be harrumphed about with all speed, and protested about it at the Tribeca film festival that year. Result? Additional publicity and people going to see it.
Just as planned!
Because on its own merits, it would have sank like a brick in shit.
The film itself is a fairly standard rape and revenge type thing. Basically our protagonists, a squadron of male-to-female transsexuals played by real-life male-to-female transsexuals (none of whom can act very well, it must be said), are all dancers in a club somewhere and have stupid pseudonyms like Emma Grashun, Rachel Slurr, and Bubbles Clicquot. They do their thing, have some girl chatter about relationships in the dressing room afterwards (thus causing the film to fail the Bechdel Test) and hit the clubs for iffy disco music and attempting to pull men, in between cocktails and similar. One of our number, Bubbles Clicquot, meets a former date of hers in this club, all coincidentally-like, and his pal, and they set up a triple-date with them at an address that turns out to be an ominous-looking abandoned warehouse. Thus we have the Trannies of the title.
Despite the mind-bending stupidity of this plan, especially since they know not these people, and Bubbles admitted that one of them had hit her beforehand, and the fact it's an abandoned warehouse in the middle of nowhere, they still go in. One of them objects and is slapped down by being told that the alternative is to go and buy balloons for her pity party. So they all troll in. There's no party. But there is a mentally unstable degenerate who's set them up. We know he's a degenerate because he has long hair, a beard, and a Deep South accent (which in the bien-pensant market to which this film was trying to aim, is shorthand for violent stupidity). He's also called Boner. He and his two pals then proceeds to rape at knifepoint the three titular trannies, gloating all the while. Turns out that he also previously raped Bubbles as well. His motivation is that he thought she was a real woman, not a transsexual, and got the shock of his life when he pulled down her dunghampers and found himself looking at the last turkey in the shop. And because he's from the Deep South and thus Chaotic Evil, this justifies rape. Natch. Needless to say, they are now Ticked Off.
The rest of the film revolves around Bubbles, Rachel, and Emma going and learning martial arts and suchlike so as to get revenge on Boner and his two pals. It involves Knives. I bet you wondered when those would come in. Yeah.
Let's leave aside the fact that there has only ever been one vaguely good rape and revenge film ever, and that was the original number, Day of the Woman, which is better known by its alternate title, I Spit On Your Grave. And even that was only notable because of its premise going out the way to cause butthurt and winding up on the DPP list of potentially obscene recordings. But it did have some attempt at characterisation and was at least very vaguely nuanced. However, Ticked Off Trannies With Knives is not. Let's instead focus on the sheer laziness, Unfortunate Implications, and publicity whoring that drip from this film constantly. Every character - EVERY SINGLE ONE - is a horrible stereotype. The Ticked Off Trannies are all stereotypically bitchy and convinced of their own fabulousness, as are all the men in the gay club that they frequent. The boss of the club they all dance at is a well-built black transwoman who plays off stereotypes of both BBWs and, arguably, the mammy archetype. Boner and the rapists are gang bangers or rednecks. There is no
characterisation in any way, shape, or form. We do not care about any of these people. There is no reason for the viewer to care about them - once again, unlike I Spit On Your Grave, which spends some time developing the protagonist before she's kidnapped and assaulted. Then there's the title, which is basically just an attempt to garner viewers because of its attempts at inherently funny words. It tries to rely upon the humour of understatement, but fails horribly.
There is one good bit, and that's the big fight scene at the end. That's actually rather good. It involves Boner and the rapists getting flick-knives embedded in their recta which get activated at inopportune moments and is rather amusing. Actually, if they'd expanded it to cover the entirety of the film and only alluded to the backstory in dialogue and suchlike, it might have been worth seeing. Unfortunately, as it is, this is yet another limp exploitation flick. It was embarrassing to watch also. I can't believe I wasted time looking for a serviceable BitTorrent stream to download it.
(IN131)