Andy Warhol’s Bad is a fem­i­nist mas­ter­piece that’s too good to ignore

Direct­ed by Andy Warhol’s lover Jed John­son, a for­mer Fac­to­ry floor sweep­er-cum-film edi­tor (Flesh for Franken­stein) and inte­ri­or design guru, Bad focus­es on the exploits of a hair­dress­er who oper­ates a hair removal ser­vice from her house, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly hir­ing out female assas­sins to per­form a vast array of twist­ed assign­ments as a means of earn­ing extra cash.

As with every oth­er film made by Warhol’s pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny, name­ly Paul Morrissey’s Flesh, Trash and Heat, Bad is tra­di­tion­al­ly dis­cur­sive with the addi­tion of a series of digres­sive sub­plots prin­ci­pal­ly con­trived to shock and exas­per­ate the dis­cern­ing view­er. The dif­fer­ence between the film and those ear­li­er works is not only the change of direc­tor but also the big­ger bud­get, which allowed John­son to hire indus­try professionals.

In an open­ing scene that feels stripped from a John Waters pic­ture, Cyrin­da Foxe’s bleached-blonde bomb­shell, RC, struts through a drug­store with the volup­tuous­ness of a bedrag­gled Jayne Mans­field car­i­ca­ture. She steals a dirty old man’s half left­over burg­er before block­ing a toi­let with tis­sue and trash­ing the joint. We’re intro­duced to the film as the toi­let and its con­tents over­flows. As the per­fect curves of RC’s back­side are fol­lowed down a street and she is wolf-whis­tled by lech­er­ous bin man, it becomes clear that Bad has already sub­vert­ed our under­stand­ing of the bux­om hero­ine and by exten­sion women in cin­e­ma at large.

Warhol movies were among the first to objec­ti­fy the male form, as Joe Dallesandro’s qui­et and most­ly naked per­for­mances attest to. Dalle­san­dro turned down the role of LT in Bad, the part even­tu­al­ly going to looka­like Per­ry King, who looked decent enough with his shirt off and could act dumb while han­dling demon­stra­tive dialogue.

Intrigu­ing­ly, the film’s only sex scene is orches­trat­ed by a horny woman after flick­ing through a porn mag­a­zine. A cou­ple of pas­sion­less jerks lat­er, she express­es her dis­ap­point­ment and leaves LT defiled in a show­er of cut­ting and sar­cas­tic remarks. Where Lit­tle Joe owned the Paul Mor­ris­sey tril­o­gy, Bad very much belongs to the women.

Here we have a pow­er­ful and mer­ci­less­ly angry hit-harem, char­ac­terised chiefly by their actions. Heart­less and hun­gry for mon­ey, there is lit­er­al­ly noth­ing that these extreme fem­i­nists won’t do for a pay cheque. And we’re not talk­ing Pret­ty Woman – more Shirley Stol­er in The Hon­ey­moon Killers, fed after mid­night and mul­ti­plied. Con­science is non exis­tent in this brood of auda­cious ladies.

Car­oll Bak­er excels in the lead as hit­man king pin Hazel Aiken, whose abil­i­ty to remove ​“650 hairs an hour” and run a mur­der-for-hire busi­ness is ignored by her vapid and use­less hus­band. Her pun­gent one-lin­ers are deliv­ered with laugh­able soap opera histri­on­ics that blend con­gru­ent­ly with the rest of the cast. Although Hazel her­self nev­er know­ing­ly com­mits a sin­gle crime with­in the film, her knowl­edge of the homi­ci­dal assign­ments and the flip­pan­cy with which she del­e­gates tasks to her girls makes her so much more chill­ing than, say, Kath­leen Turn­er and her dark­ly com­ic, Hazel-inspired, Ser­i­al Mom.

In con­trast to Hazel’s total lack of human­i­ty is Mary Aitken, the grouchy daugh­ter-in-law played by a scene-steal­ing Susan Tyrell. For the major­i­ty of the film, Mary sits shak­ing her head in dis­be­lief at the actions of every­one around her. ​“Peo­ple are so sick,” she tells LT, ​“The more you see ​’em, the sick­er they look.” Mary is the sweet­est anom­aly. Her face is con­stant­ly on the verge of tears, her tone emo­tion­al­ly height­ened, yet she is the only char­ac­ter in the entire film with a relat­able sense of moral­i­ty, which sug­gests that the film is not set in mod­ern day Queens but a malev­o­lent and inhu­mane alter­nate uni­verse, an intrin­si­cal­ly ​“bad” place where human nature is over­thrown for the sake of mon­ey and the illu­sion of a vac­u­ous and easy life.

Chil­dren and babies play a sig­nif­i­cant role in Johnson’s film. Serge Eisenstein’s silent clas­sic Bat­tle­ship Potemkin laid down the gaunt­let in terms of ten­sion and large-scale action when an unat­tend­ed baby makes the long jour­ney down the Odessa steps. One of the most famous sequences in the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma, the scene has been homaged many times before and Bad, with its sub­ver­sive agen­da, game­ly oblig­es – with­out warn­ing, a baby is tossed from a mul­ti-storey build­ing where it hits the city street below with hideous­ly grue­some aplomb. Push­ing the bound­aries of taste and black com­e­dy, a moth­er then threat­ens her son with sim­i­lar con­se­quences if he doesn’t behave him­self. It’s very fun­ny, but with a splat­tered baby lay­ing before you, it’s impos­si­ble to even crack a grin.

Infan­ti­cide is used iron­i­cal­ly, of course, not sole­ly to shock the timid view­er but to satir­i­cal­ly shake Amer­i­ca while pro­vid­ing com­ment on the issue of abor­tion, an issue insou­ciant­ly dis­cussed dur­ing the film. In fact, it’s worth not­ing that in there is no such thing as a hap­py moth­er in Bad. Chil­dren are rou­tine­ly chas­tised, beat­en or mur­dered for noth­ing more than being a dis­tur­bance. Mater­nal instinct is aggres­sive­ly reject­ed by all of the women in this universe.

LT’s pater­nal instincts come under scruti­ny when he is hired to mur­der an autis­tic child (the child’s moth­er ini­tial­ly requests a woman for the job). Occu­py­ing the role of the objec­ti­fied male, how­ev­er, he fails to car­ry out the task, thus high­light­ing both his already evi­dent emas­cu­la­tion as well as reflect­ing the pro-life ide­olo­gies of the mis­in­formed male. Ren­dered pathet­ic in this world of empow­ered women, he car­ries the child into its par­ents’ bed­room and yells ​“Do it your­self!” Not every­thing goes accord­ing to Hazel’s mas­ter­plan, then, as the incom­pe­tent actions of oth­ers and a cal­lous racist slur lead to her melo­dra­mat­ic final breath.

The film’s curi­ous foot­note is deliv­ered in its clos­ing scene when Mary cross­es over to the dark side. A baby is again used to sig­ni­fy this shift. Her son, who has been held so tight­ly under her arm through­out, falls to the floor as her grip loosens. With the evil matri­arch dead in the sink, Mary clasps her mother-in-law’s lip­stick in one hand and her ear­rings in the oth­er. ​“Looks aren’t every­thing,” she says with the awk­ward self-aware­ness of a child in a school play.

It’s fas­ci­nat­ing to envis­age Mary’s next move beyond the end cred­its, like the Witch from The Wiz­ard of Oz, she is left with some wicked shoes to fill – but could they ever fit the film’s only ves­tige of mer­cy? Bad rel­ish­es flip­ping gen­der roles, under­lin­ing in its last line the fact that there is so much more to a woman than just her image.

Oth­er than Jonathan Kapland’s all-girl west­ern, Bad Girls, or F Gary Gray’s Set It Off, it’s hard to think of anoth­er film that inter­changes gen­der roles with sim­i­lar vis­cer­al impact. As such it’s dis­ap­point­ing that Bad is the only film from the last 40 years to deliv­er a pletho­ra of female char­ac­ters who open­ly and vio­lent­ly reject social con­for­mi­ty. It should not be buried or for­got­ten, because as nasty and as rot­ten as it is on the sur­face, Bad is a vital cult trea­sure that’s ripe for a major reissue.