Meet the teenage girl direct­ing her way to cult success

A Cal­i­forn­ian named Kansas Bowl­ing, now 19, has made a movie called B.C. Butch­er. This pre­his­toric slash­er movie was shot on 16mm when she was 17 and and released through the inde­pen­dent pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny, Tro­ma Enter­tain­ment. ​“My friend Ken­zie Givens and I wrote it in high school,” Bowl­ing tells LWLies.“I was 15 and she was either 16 or 17. We just thought it was a fun­ny idea and we both loved the same type of movies – Kenzie’s great love is John Waters. We weren’t set­ting out to achieve any­thing at the time; it was just some­thing fun to do after school. But once I grad­u­at­ed when I was 16, I decid­ed I actu­al­ly want­ed to make the film!”

The movie is 51 min­utes of joy­ous, camp, gory the­atrics. Five cave women clad in fash­ion­ably skimpy leop­ard print gar­ments try to sur­vive first the fits of their jeal­ous val­ley-girl accent­ed leader, Nean­dra, and then the mur­der­ous stalk­ing of a heart­bro­ken he-man. The flir­ta­tious cave man Rex is at the root of everyone’s prob­lems! This gig­gly blondie is sup­posed to be Neandra’s boyfriend but plays away with reck­less glee.

The film begins with Nean­dra spear­ing a love-rival whose entrails emerge gloop­i­ly in a hue of radioac­tive red. The filmmaker’s younger sis­ter, Park­er Love Bowl­ing, has a small role book­end­ing the movie. Kansas express­es fierce pride and deter­mi­na­tion to con­tin­ue col­lab­o­rat­ing when her sis­ter comes up: ​“Park­er Love Bowl­ing will be in all of my films. In fact, I wrote her a star­ring role in one of my future projects.”

Bowl­ing Snr has a lot of fun with B.C. Butch­er, mak­ing every sec­ond riotous via upbeat swing tracks and per­for­mances that are all on a plane of inten­tion­al­ly height­ened ham­mi­ness. Her style and tone owes a debt to Tro­ma movies, which have influ­enced and inspired her since she dis­cov­ered them at the age of 12. ​“Troma’s films are so beyond what any oth­er pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny brings for­ward. I’m a huge fan of Crown Inter­na­tion­al Pic­tures, Amer­i­can Inter­na­tion­al Pic­tures, New World Pic­tures, etc, but Troma’s films are by far the most bizarre and the most out­ra­geous. Their films are ridicu­lous fun but what real­ly stands out about Tro­ma is their undy­ing love for inde­pen­dent cin­e­ma. They care more about artistry and about their film­mak­ers than any oth­er com­pa­ny around.”

Pri­or to B.C. Butch­er, this writer had nev­er watched a Tro­ma movie and so turned to Wil Jones, a writer and pro­gram­mer full of cult movie knowl­edge. Accord­ing to him, the trade­marks of Tro­ma are: ​“real­ly cheap, rub­bery, crap gore; nudi­ty; child­ish­ness; stu­pid­ness; cheap­ness; reusing props and stock footage; ludi­crous high con­cepts (Surf Nazis Must Die). They’re try­ing to make bad moves ​‘on pur­pose’. Lloyd Kauf­man is also real­ly impor­tant. He’s the stu­dio head, pro­duc­er and some­times direc­tor. He’s prob­a­bly more famous than most of his films. He’s a total shill, atten­tion seek­ing, shame­less but kind of loveable.”

More dig­ging revealed that act­ing lumi­nar­ies such as Kevin Cost­ner, Samuel L Jack­son and Marisa Tomei have appeared in Tro­ma movies. Trey Park­er of South Park fame direct­ed one: Can­ni­bal! The Musi­cal and James Gunn, direc­tor of mas­sive, super­hero event movie, Guardians of the Galaxy once upon a time wrote the script for Tromeo and Juli­et tout­ed as ​‘From the writer of The Mer­chant of Venice, from the direct­ed of The Tox­ic Avenger.’

The Tox­ic Avenger is about a bul­lied nerd who falls into radioac­tive goo and becomes a deformed hero who only kills bad peo­ple. It is direct­ed by Lloyd Kauf­man and appears to be the defin­i­tive Tro­ma movie, spawn­ing three sequels and – bizarrely for such a wan­ton­ly vio­lent flick – a kids TV show. The self-lac­er­at­ing­ly hilar­i­ous way that Tro­ma mar­ket their movies is a balm in the often intense world of movie-making.

I dis­cov­ered that I owned anoth­er Tro­ma movie: Joel Reed’s 1976 hor­ror com­e­dy, Blood Suck­ing Freaks – orig­i­nal­ly (and more accu­rate­ly titled) The Incred­i­ble Tor­ture Show. The blurb said it was about a The­atre of the Macarbe run by a sadist named Sar­du. Pun­ters come to watch his shows not real­is­ing that the naked women they see being muti­lat­ed and killed on stage are hav­ing that hap­pen for real. Most of the film unfolds back­stage in the lair that Sar­du and his dwarf assis­tant, Ral­phus, have decked out with kid­napped, hyp­no­tised naked women who they mis­treat and kill for their sex­u­al plea­sure. It’s basi­cal­ly tor­ture porn con­ceived for shock val­ue with a flim­sy nar­ra­tive shoe­horned in.

On the DVD extras filmed years lat­er, Lloyd Kauf­man vague­ly admits that he wouldn’t have released such a film today. Bowl­ing is in accord: ​“I can’t real­ly con­done Blood Suck­ing Freaks and nei­ther do Lloyd Kauf­man and Michael Herz real­ly. They think it’s a hor­ri­ble movie but became involved in restor­ing the film, which is a nec­es­sary job. You wouldn’t call who­ev­er restored The Jazz Singer racist. It’s just about pre­serv­ing his­to­ry whether it’s on the right or wrong side of it.”

Grant­ed that Blood Suck­ing Freaks seems to be an out­lier in that most of Troma’s out­put seems to be defined more by schlocky gore and cheap effects than hard­core female exploita­tion. Still, women run­ning around naked is a sta­ple. This does not faze or out­rage Bow­ing in the slight­est: ​“I have absolute­ly no prob­lem with nudi­ty in film. Watch­ing movies like these as a very young woman real­ly helped me grow­ing up. Being able to see what all of these dif­fer­ent women looked like caused me nev­er to be inse­cure about my own image and gave me a con­fi­dence that was rare in girls my age. I’d rec­om­mend a Lloyd Kauf­man film to any teenage girl.”

She points out that there is an equal­i­ty of nudi­ty run­ning across Tro­ma films! ​“Sure, Tro­ma films have naked scream­ing young women but Tro­ma is one of those rare com­pa­nies to also fea­ture naked scream­ing young men in their films as well!”

Although, from my (outsider’s) posi­tion, Bowl­ing appears to be mark­ing out new fem­i­nist turf for the stu­dio as a result of film action dri­ven by clothed female char­ac­ters, she is insis­tent that she is part of an estab­lished tra­di­tion, cit­ing a glut of impres­sive Tro­ma titles as fore­run­ners: Fero­cious Female Free­dom Fight­ers, A Nymphoid Bar­bar­ian in Dinosaur Hell, Lust for Free­dom, The Row­dy Girls, Squeeze Play, The Seduc­tion of Dr Fugazzi, and Wait­ress! ​“I love movies with pri­mar­i­ly female casts and Tro­ma films like these are what helped me realise that. Boys are so bor­ing to watch. My next film is going to have a 100 per cent female cast.”

As for the lack of nudi­ty, her youth may have played a role in that cre­ative deci­sion: ​“I’m not against nudi­ty but I just didn’t see it nec­es­sary in my film. Also, I’m not sure if it would even be legal for me to direct such a film at 17!”

She reveals a lit­tle snip­pet of infor­ma­tion about her next film – the one with the all-female cast: ​“I don’t want to give away too many details, but it’ll be about teenage hitch­hik­ing, rock ​’n’ roll school­girls in Hol­ly­wood shot on Super 8. I haven’t dis­cussed releas­ing it with Tro­ma yet, but who knows. I def­i­nite­ly would not mind doing anoth­er film with them.”

Sub­scribe to Tro­ma Now to stream B.C. Butch­er as part of a Jan­u­ary spot­light on women in Tro­ma films. B.C. Butch­er will be offi­cial­ly released in March on DVD and VOD.

Fol­low the progress of Kansas Bowl­ing at kansas​-bowl​ing​.com