It may have had the biggest budget of any Andy Warhol film but you'd never know it based on the crude production values of BAD. Nevertheless, this is a fun and frequently very funny movie. Carroll Baker, in a role reportedly turned down by Shelley Winters, is terrific as an electrologist/assassination broker who has her hands full with a useless husband, sickly mother and crazy daughter-in-law. Baker is a thief, sadist and racist. One of the film's highlights has her trying to rip off a blind newspaper peddler. Baker's "girls" are a mixed bag of pyromaniacs, dog-killers and overall mayhem- makers. Stefania Casini is the best, and most creative, of the lot. She overkills her victims and terrorizes Susan Tyrell, who plays Baker's shrill daughter-in-law. It's unlikely that Warhol had anything to do with BAD and it's closer to one of John Water's mid-career films like POLYESTER but it's still a lot of fun. Brigid Polk, nee Berlin, is a standout as one of Baker's more ornery customers.
Review of Bad
