“I’m too old to spank”
Cult author James Robert Baker’s SOV classic Blonde Death (1984) is a bonafide assault on middle American values. Like John Waters before him, Baker’s film revels in depravity and reveals the hypocrisy of middle class taste. Baker’s film is loud, violent, queer, and absolutely hilarious. Blonde Death has, since it was made, become a classic among cult film enthusiasts and students of queer cinema.
Blonde Death follows the exploits of high school drop out Tammy (Sara Lee Wade) as she descends into a world of sex, crime, and personal freedom. Tammy is liberated by her relationship with mass murderer Link (Jack Catalano) and his homicidal lover Troy (Scott Ingram). Together the trio robs and screws their way through Orange County. The bodies pile up as quickly as they collect new kinks.
Baker’s film makes two allusions to texts that inspired and provided the basis for Blonde Death. At the beginning of the film Tammy watches Rebel Without A Cause (1955) and then later she and Link watch Bonnie & Clyde (1967). These are films built on a “ménage à twat” of characters who are young, rebellious and criminal. Baker takes his inspiration from these two films for his own picture, then updates the text as an attack on Reagan era America.
Tammy is described as a “depraved little Gidget” who reads “Harold Robbins and Marcel Proust”. She’s survived years of incest and abuse before she encounters Link and the militant lesbian Gwen (Anne Kern). Every character Tammy meets is, like her, articulated as an over the top and campy caricature or archetype. The dark comedy of the film is derived from these larger than life characters whose interactions sound like outtakes from Pink Flamingos (1972).
Blonde Death moves at a rapid pace from one scene to the next, keeping the demented quips coming just as fast as the brutal acts of violence. Blonde Death is queer subversive art; the link between John Waters and Gregg Araki. Baker sees parents as oppressive perverts; cops as homicidal maniacs; marriage as a prison; and Disney Land as a hot bed for public masturbation. Tammy, Link and Troy aren’t just out to rob the rich, they are here to rip apart the status quo.
