Bleed (2003) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

Bleed, our first movie with a 2003 date, is a rather dumb grade-B erotic thriller, which I'm about to spoil for you.

SPOILERS

After taking a new job, a messed-up girl (Debbie Rochon) goes to a pool party in her new town. The people there get wasted and decide to mess with her head. They tell her that they are all members of the "murder club". The problem is that she's just close enough to the edge that she wants to join. She kills a woman in a violent catfight over a dent in her car, and therefore lays claim to admission to the club. Then she overhears the other "members" discussing the fact that they were just kidding, and she is hacked off!

The other people at the party know there is a new serial killer in town whose arrival coincided precisely with Rochon's, and they also know that the masked killer's last murder created the very job vacancy that Rochon is filling. That all just seems pretty darned suspicious, so they think she must be the one who is killing everyone, a theory which seems even more logical when everyone at the party starts dying after making her mad. Every single clue points to Rochon.

(1) she's a known, admitted killer.

(2) she got her important job after the first victim was murdered, creating an instant vacancy.

(3) she got mad at everyone at the pool party just when they started dying

(4) she has nightmares in which she sees the crimes being committed

Well, of course, this is a cheesy movie, so we can assume that since every clue pointed to her from the very outset of the film, she therefore obviously could NOT have done it, because then there would be no movie. Sure enough, as it turns out, the serial killing was done by some crazy guy who just likes to kill for fun, and all the clues pointing to Rochon were coincidental.

Here's my problem with that: I'll buy that all the other clues were based on coincidence, but how do you explain the dreams? How the hell could she dream the exact circumstances and faces of the victims, who were in some cases people she didn't even know.

Hmmmmmm. Pretty lame.

Perhaps they re-wrote the ending at the last minute and forgot the loose strands here and there? That wasn't the only element of the film that seemed to be cobbled together shoddily. Julie Strain, who provided most of the female nudity, doesn't actually belong in the movie at all. She is supposed to be the girlfriend of the first guy who was killed, the guy whose death created Rochon's job promotion. The film starts with his death in the street, then Strain's death in her home, and they are both killed during the opening credits. Even if we overlook the fact that Julie is literally old enough to be the guy's mother, it's more difficult to overlook that fact that her scene simply didn't belong there. The script would work much better dramatically if the guy dies in the first scene, then Rochon is seen applying for his job in the second scene. The Strain scene is merely a distraction from the film's momentum. Furthermore, the scene undermines the film's basic premise. Remember that the script is trying to convince us that Rochon is the killer, but the tacked-on Strain scene proves in the opening credits that Rochon could not have done it, and should not be a suspect. The guy is killed on the streets, and Strain is killed at home. Therefore, whoever killed her would either have to know that there is a connection between her and the first victim, or would simply have to be an insane murderer who happened to kill them both in a spree of bloodlust. The real killer qualified on both counts, but Rochon did not qualify on either count. She was from out of town, and therefore could not know where the guy's girlfriend lived, nor even whether he had a girlfriend. Furthermore, Rochon's supposed motivation to kill the guy was to get his job. In that case, she would have nothing to gain by all the effort of going to a separate location and murdering the guy's girlfriend.

I'll tell you what must have happened to create that scene. The writer/director must have realized that there was an abundance of male nudity, and very little female flesh, so he had to add some naked women to satisfy his target audience.  Stomp Tokyo summed it up beautifully in their review:

"Bleed tries to provide entertainment with lots and lots of ... male nudity, which is a bit surprising. Who did the filmmakers think would be watching this film? Women perusing the video store who would pass over Bridget Jones' Diary because they saw Bleed shelved next to it? Gay men with a penchant for evisceration? Not that we're against the concept of male nudity per se, but the slasher sub-genre seems an odd place to find it."

The director had to be aware of this problem as well, and I assume the other cast members had all gone on to other jobs by that time, so his best choice would have been to call up the single most dependable source of female nudity in history, Big Jewel. My guess is that he did just that and then, lacking any of the original actors, filmed a completely unnecessary scene with a topless Julie just standing around by herself for about two minutes. That is a literal description of the Strain scene. No other cast members appeared. It is a virtual monologue. Julie was talking to an unheard voice on the phone, providing some plot exposition, and was then killed by a masked, robed figure.