| by: | Jul 11, 2000 |
Bikini Bandits, the T&A meets assault weaponry short film series created and directed by Steven Grasse is under heavy scrutiny with regards to development as a feature film.
Grasse, the mind behind Philidelphia, PA agency Gyro directed and produced Bikini Bandits, Episode 7 and had it screened on Atomfilms.com, an online short film site. Details on the feature are sketchy at this point, but Grasse says he will write and direct a film, slated for release sometime in the summer of 2001.
"We were bored one summer and decided we wanted to get into music videos," says Grasse of the project's inception. "We were going to do one and we wrote the storyline but it turns out we had a lot of dialogue and we ended up shooting a short film."
Titled Episode 7, the short film was the first of what has become a series of shorts starring a number of actresses from Philidelphia-based entertainment venue, Delilah's Den. The buxom vixens barge into a convenience store and brutally take down the joint before kidnapping the large-toothed clerk (played by Grasse's brother Peter, the Gyro account manager for client Puma). In a creepy bachanalian-weeny and ketchup sequence in the back of their car, the clerk is literally stuffed to death before the bandits make their escape.
Shot last October, Episode 7 has been followed up by The Bikini Bandits and The Magic Lamp, shot on location in Morocco; director Heidi Easton of Harry Nash, London co-directed the new episode with Grasse. The Magic Lamp features the gun-toting vixens hijacking camels after blowing away some nomadic desert dwellers, then stumbling across a merchant who sells them a magic lamp unleashing none other than Peter Grasse, who plays an over-sexed genie.
Four more episodes are in the works, including Bikini Bandits Go Dutch (featuring the girls in Pennsylvania Dutch territory, a la Witness), Bikini Bandits and the Time Machine Parts One and Two (a temporal disruption taking the ladies back to revolution-era Philadelphia where they seduce and defile George Washington and Ben Franklin) and finally, the Bikini Bandits Under the Big Top, with the girls facing off against a rival gang of homosexual clowns. Grasse plans to release a number of the Bikini Bandits shorts on video, just in time "for back to school."
The success of the Bikini Bandits is directly linked to Atomfilms and Grasse wholeheartedly endorses the Internet company's efforts.
"We edited it and sent it out to Internet companies and all of them fought for it," says Grasse, who says Atomfilms had the best marketing plan. "Then we hit the jackpot. Atomfilms ran a TV spot on MTV, Comedy Central, E! and Sci-Fi. They spent a million bucks promoting it and it became the most downloaded film ever with close to 2 million downloads."
Gannat Gargi, Atomfilms' director of acquisitions and development calls the piece a diamond in the rough. She says the Magic Lamp episode running on the website broke all records for viewings, including those set by Episode 7.
"It became a huge hit on our site and Hollywood started paying attention," says Gargi. "Part of being a big success on the Internet is having your audience base, plus the built in market research that can cross over to a feature or TV series."
The buzz surrounding the scantily-clad gun-toters was furthered by last week's press tour in Hollywood, complete the Bikini Bandits joining a SAG picket line with signs reading: "Bikini Bandits don't SAG."
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