“Bad Girls, Bad Girls, what you gunna do, what you gunna do when they come for you?�

And without a Will Smith in sight.

Not my cupcakes!!!

Set in the wild west of the late 1800’s, four prostitutes played by Stowe, Barrymore, MacDowell and Stewart Masterton are accused of murdering a citizen during a bungled kiss (yes, really). So they flee the town and run from the law, pursued by some worthless bounty hunters known as the Pinkerton Detectives and shadowed by mysterious loner Josh McCoy (Dermot Mulrony) who’s motivations aren’t purely voyeuristic.

While the acting is pretty solid from the female leads the rest of the mostly male cast is deliberately and shamefully pathetic. The buffoon like male leads are framed in such a ridiculous light that it’s hard not to feel sorry for them as the girls trample all over their hapless selves.

Suspend your disbelief as we are led to believe that these ladies of the night can out ride and out shoot hardened outlaws and you may enjoy this movie as a rainy day time waster.

Presented in the original theatrical release ratio of 1.85:1 the video transfer on this disc is generally acceptable for a budget release. The usual areas of concern such as shadow details, black levels, skin tones and colour richness are all good enough.

On the negative side, some minor aliasing is present in the usual places and compression artefacts are obvious and annoying in a number of scenes. One major complaint with the video transfer is the softness of the picture, it’s hard to tell is this was a deliberate softening of the image when particular female leads were on screen but the sharpness of the picture seemed to oscillate from sharp to soft on an almost scene by scene basis.

A tribute to Blazing Saddles

While the video presentation is average at best, the audio component is actually better than expected. The English 5.1 track is excellent, in particular the use of the surround channels for music and environmental effects and the subwoofer for the deep bass sounds like horse hooves beating the ground or gunshots. The centre channel is similarly excellent, presenting the dialog clearly and distinctly at all times.

The almost astounding number of languages (7) and subtitles (13) available defy the lack of effort put into the other areas on this DVD but will be a welcome addition to viewers who require these features.

The static cookie cutter menu template used to generate the menu system for this DVD just oozes “we don’t care�, as does the complete lack of any extras.

Despite the multiple gunfights, beatings, murders and implied rape Bad Girls is light and fluffy, I’m not sure if this was deliberate or not. If you want a dark and serious ‘girl power’ western, I recommend The Quick and the Dead instead.