They say that revenge is a dish best served cold, which would seem to suggest that a warmed over feature like Cherry
Bomb might not be the freshest treatment of a vengeance theme imaginable. While its filmmakers insist they wanted
to craft an homage to John Carpenter and rustle up a little sex and violence in the process, Cherry Bomb is a
reductive and derivative exercise in a subgenre of revenge films built around the central initial crime of rape. Cherry
Bomb's titular character is a stripper-dancer (played by Julin Jean) who agrees to give one of her stripper friends the
night
off by working a private party. That turns out to be a really bad decision, as a quintet of lowlifes let Cherry work
her wiles on them and then return the favor by viciously raping her. This being a revenge film and all, it doesn't take a
rocket scientist to figure out that the local police force doesn't exactly go out of its way to arrest the men, and so Cherry
sets out to exact some justice herself, along with some help from her brother Brandon (John Rodríguez). The rest of the
film plays out pretty much exactly as you'd expect it to: Cherry and Brandon track down the culprits and dispatch them
with a variety of blood splattered means, with nary a feeling of remorse or regret getting in the way. Along the way they
find themselves being chased by a seemingly superhuman hit man named Bull (Allen Hackley), who for some initially
undetermined reason is out to get them even as they are out to get the rapists.
One of Cherry Bomb's claims to fame is that it features the first so-called dramatic performance by adult film star
Nick Manning, who here plays Ian Benedict, the owner of the strip club where Cherry and the other girls work and who
(initially at least) seems out to keep the cops far from Cherry and her brother, even as they wreak havoc on several
supposedly upstanding citizens of their town. The film is patently ludicrous, of course, with Cherry and Brandon going
on a
killing spree with absolutely no ramifications whatsoever, least of all from their apparently non-existent consciences.
The film has an intentionally lo-fi ambience which is obviously redolent of grindhouse, but which in this case is also
imbued with some other elements which actually make the whole mix a little more flavorful. The film has a decided
sense of humor, though it's intermittent at best and interspersed with so many vignettes featuring despicable humans
that it gets lost in the shuffle. Cherry's late in the game awareness of shades of guilt seems particularly ill advised—
this is a film that should be balls out all the time (no politically incorrect pun intended, considering the rape angle), but
which at several key junctures rather unexpectedly toes the line in a rather reserved fashion. (The rape itself isn't
really even shown, except in some brief flashbacks, and some later violence also happens off screen, something at least
a little unusual in this genre of film.)
This is a standard genre film which never rises above its limited ambitions, but which at least shows a modicum of craft
and perhaps augurs well for director Kyle Day, who funded this outing partially with a Kickstarter drive. Several of the
over the top attack scenes are well staged, even if the film repeatedly delves into hoary clichés like the supposedly
dead guy suddenly lurching alive again and grabbing the momentarily startled heroine. Films like this that are so
relentlessly by the numbers at least create their own sense of comfort in an audience that has learned to count along
with them.
Note: The screener sent by Well Go USA only included a Blu-ray disc, no DVD copy, despite the cover image here
and on Amazon.
Cherry Bomb is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. The
other claim to fame Cherry Bomb has (aside from its "fantastic" dramatic debut by porn star Nick Manning) is
that it evidently is the first feature shot for the most part with a Canon 7D. This is not a camera one would normally
associate even with HD digital video, and the results are not exactly spectacular. The overall appearance here wavers
somewhere between an 8mm and 16mm look, quite grainy a lot of time, with a general softness that verges on blurriness
in several scenes, and with often wildly inconsistent contrast (some of which seems to have been intentionally tweaked in
post). Whether the camera itself or some digital manipulation in post is the culprit, there are a couple of totally odd and
ugly "streaking" moments in the film, where the image simply seems to dissolve or looks like its been airbrushed somehow.
Though it's hard to make it out in the screencap, take a look at screencap 5 and notice the weird discoloration toward the
top of the roofline. In motion, that discoloration flares and smears across the screen, almost in a quasi-posterizing effect.
Screencap 6 also shows how almost surreal some footage in the film tends to appear in passing. In decently lit scenes, fine
detail pops at at least agreeable if not overwhelming levels, and colors are acceptably saturated in these moments as well.
Darkly lit scenes (which comprise a lot of this film) are simply awash in crush with extremely poor contrast.
Cherry Bomb's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix is rather surprisingly well done, considering the lo-fi ambience of the
film, with generally consistent and convincing surround activity and some extremely boisterous and well utilized LFE. The
chaotic ambience of the strip club is well handled in the establishing scenes, and once Cherry and Brandon go on their
rampage, sound effects increasingly paint the soundfield with some nicely bombastic use of discrete channelization. There's
some good use of source cues here, good ol' bass heavy rock that ups the low end considerably. Dialogue is occasionally
nicely directional as well, and fidelity remains strong throughout this enterprise.
Audio Commentary with Director and Producer Kyle Day. Despite the listing on the Blu-ray's menu, this
commentary actually also features Garrett Hargrove, Writer, David Ward, Editor, and Jason Latimer, Composer. Perhaps
surprisingly, the inspiration here wasn't so much grindhouse as it was John Carpenter (!). The film was shot quickly and on
the fly and some of the technical challenges are discussed here in passing. The guys are chatty but informative, talking
about their Kickstarter campaign to fund the movie and things like Nick Manning's special "talent".
Outtakes (HD; 2:10) has some goofy stuff going on, albeit in a sometimes dangerous setting, as live rounds in
a shotgun are being whispered about before one set of takes.
Deleted Scenes (HD; 3:56)
Alternate Ending (HD; 7:35). Not really an alternate ending per se, since the ending of the film remains
the same as in the final cut, but more like an alternate coda, with an unnecessary coda added as little interstitials between
the first set of credits showing Cherry now in charge of the strip club and exacting one more round of revenge on one of her
dancers' brutish boyfriends.
Cherry Bomb certainly isn't as bad as it might have been, but that doesn't mean it's very good. The film would have
done much better to have just gone for broke and played this all for laughs. As it is, it's a kind of scattershot entry that has
moments of effectiveness undercut by its own inconsistencies. The cast is game (Julin looks rather like an attractive
combination of Angelina Jolie and Michelle Rodriguez), but this film is so completely predictable it begins to wear out its
welcome fairly quickly. The gimmick of shooting this with a Canon 7D also seems in retrospect not to have been the
brightest idea, as the image quality here is remarkably drab and has some truly bizarre anomalies. Still, grindhouse fans
may get a kick out of this, at least as a rental.
In July, Well Go USA will bring Cherry Bomb to Blu-ray. This tongue-in-cheek action-thriller stars Julin Jean (Puncture) as the title character, a stripper who finds herself seeking bloody vengeance. Cherry Bomb streets on July 10th.
