Movie review: ‘Ticked-Off Trannies With Knives’

Despite complaints from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and other LGBT advocates over the potentially offensive “Ticked-Off Trannies With Knives,” the film’s biggest infraction is that it’s a joyless grind. This inept send-up of 1970s action-exploitation pictures, especially those featuring sexually liberated, butt-kicking über-women, never finds its mojo; it’s as if writer-director Israel Luna hatched a startling title and then flailed around trying to match its minor promise.

He did, however, assemble a game cast of leading ladies (whose specific transgender statuses are kept provocatively confusing) who bring the necessary karate chops — if not exactly the acting chops — to their unbridled, cartoonish roles. But as the naughty gal pals who exact bloody revenge on a trio of violent male transphobes (and would-be hookups), Krystal Summers (a.k.a. Bubbles Cliquot), Kelexis Davenport (playing the hefty Pinky La’Trimm) and Willam Belli (as the mouthy Rachel Slurr) can only do so much with the junky material until they, like the movie itself, overstay their welcome.

Luna further attempts to lampoon the cheesy genre, including the film’s blizzard of specks, scratches and splice marks, scenes edited as if by chain saw, and even the old “missing reel” gag, go just so far to cover the movie’s patchwork storytelling and dearth of cleverness. Sure, the girls here just wanna have fun, but where’s ours?

— Gary Goldstein

“Ticked-Off Trannies With Knives.” MPAA rating: Unrated. Running time: 1 hour, 31 minutes. Playing at Laemmle’s Sunset 5, West Hollywood.