In the long history of the “fans of a losing sports team goes on a revenge-fueled murder spree against the winners” genre, none are better than Tanya Rosenberg’s gripping classic from 1990, Blood Games.

In fact, this movie is so perfect, it’s the only movie Tanya Rosenberg ever made. After Blood Games, she was like, “Yup. I did it. I can do no better, and I should not even try. Suck it, Goodfellas. I made the best movie of 1990.”

Or so I imagine she said all that. I really don’t know. It is entirely possible she’s not even a real person. There is no additional information about her that I can find. I don’t even think this Vinegar Syndrome release of the movie even has any special features talking about her. For all I know, Tanya Rosenberg was created in an exploitation movie lab for the sole purpose of making Blood Games.

While I can’t say much more about Ms. Rosenberg, I can say a few things about the people in the film. And yes, I am using the word “film” because this shit is high art…? And yes, I meant that typed lilt.

First up, we have a couple returning actors from the same movie. A few months ago, I covered Action U.S.A. In that movie, our primary hero was Gregory Scott Cummings. Cummings returns here and we’ll see him again later this year on B-Movie Enema: The Series. Just keep that in the back of your mind for Halloween 2021. Also, we have Ross Hagen. Hagen is in a ton of movies I could cover either here in text or on the show. He’s a bit of a B-Movie superstar. Hagen was the hired gun brought in to chase down Cummings and his FBI partner and that babe in Action U.S.A., and I’d bet dollars to donuts he’s a bad guy in Blood Games too.

The team captain of the winning softball team being hunted down by the fans of the losing team is Babe. Babe’s played by babe Laura Albert. Albert did a lot of movies in her acting career, but is best known as a stuntwoman nowadays. She still works to this day as part of stunt teams for shows and movies. She even has a few high profile gigs. So, good for her.

Before we dive in, I should also mention Sabrina Hills. This is for two reasons. First, that name. I mean… That’s a name that you would have to expect to see on the marquee of a strip club, or a billboard (for a strip club), or as an actress in an exploitation movie (probably playing a stripper). Anyway, she also has only Blood Games on her IMDb page. Like Rosenberg, she was like, “I did it. I can do no better. I’m retiring right now!”

The movie opens with a real cool credit sequence of blood pouring down to reveal or cover the credits as they move away from us. I appreciate when movies get clever with their credits. After the credits the real good shit happens. We see Babe’s softball team, “Babe and the Ball Girls”. From the best I can understand, they are like the King and His Court. Remember them? They were kind of a traveling Harlem Globetrotters-like softball team that would go around on tour around the country. They were a four-man team that I don’t think ever lost.

Well, I think this is like that, but with babes.

Sexy, sexy babes.

Babe and the Ball Girls are playing this podunk town celebrating Roy’s birthday. Who’s Roy? Roy is Gregory Cummings. Most of the town consists of drunk hillbillies who think Babe and these Ball Girls are nothing but a bunch of bimbos who know nuthin’ about nuthin’ when it comes to the sports.

As it turns out, I would have lost my dollars to donuts bet about Hagan. Ross Hagan is the team’s coach/manager. He’s got some nerves around this game because he laid a big bet on the town. Babe says she’ll win the game for him and she won’t let him down. As we see, the girls are pretty serious about playing. They pitch, they catch, they run, they tag, they play baseball. The guys they are playing against are more interested in playing grab ass with the girls as they circle the bags, but get shown up soon enough after the girls turn a double play. Then Roy steps up to the plate.

He strikes out swinging. He handles it extremely well… by throwing his bat. The girls handily beat the podunk boys. They handle this well by throwing an absolute fit. They also find ways to cheat by way of tripping the girls as they round the bases or straight up elbowing them in the fucking face. This only makes the girls want to beat these assholes more. Step #1 to do this is to launch the ball right into Roy’s dick parts. Oh, and hit multi-run home runs and strike out the drunk, tobacco-spittin’ batters.

The girls win 17-2.

The game was watched with great interest by this cowboy lookin’ dude. After the game, he calls Roy over and tells him that he’s disappointed in Roy and this team. This cowboy is Roy’s father. He spent a great deal of money to get the girls there to play them and have some fun for Roy’s birthday. When Roy says he guesses he’s just too much like his mother, Cowboy Whitey here punches him in the gut and says to quit all that yappin’ because Roy’s HIS SON GODDAMMIT! Midnight (Hagan) wants his thousand bucks for the game. Cowboy Whitey says he’ll “send a messenger” and that he’ll “get what he’s owed” and a bunch of stuff that I don’t feel too confident about.

The girls pack up and take off. And where do the girls go?

Yup. They hit the showers. As to be expected, because I know exactly how girls act in the locker room, they sit around in their underwear and towel and sometimes no towel and talk about g-strings and g-spots. We get lots of shots of butt, boobs, and… BUCK FLOWER?!?

Yeah, you can’t have a B-Movie of any significant quality without Buck Flower creeping around the locker room watching women shower and get naked. Are you as surprised as I am that he doesn’t have a hat that reads “FBI (Federal Boobies Inspector)”? Yeah, anyway, he’s doing the thing I’m doing right now, but actually from inside the shower room instead of through a computer screen 30 years after the movie was released. One of the girls finds him, teases him a big with her sexiness, and then escorts him to the showers and give him a cold shower.

Midnight comes into the shower room and sees ol’ Buck here and asks, “What the hell is this used jock strap doin’ here?” I love Ross Hagan. Anyway, Buck is here to pay off Cowboy Whitey’s gambling debt. However, he only gets $100 of the $1000 owed. Midnight takes off to get the rest of the money. He tells Babe to get the girls loaded up on the bus and be ready to take off when he gets back. Babe is concerned but does as her pop says (by the way, Midnight is Babe’s dad).

Cowboy Whitey, and no I am not going to learn his character’s real name, is at the shit-kickin’ bar watching his son arm wrestle one of the other hilljacks in town. I think this place might be called Toxic Masculinity, Alabama. I might be wrong, though. I am pretty sure the only thing this town exports is alcoholism and habitual date rape. I’m sure I’m right about this.

Mickey and Connie decide to leave the bus to find Midnight and retrieve him because they think that maybe it isn’t a good idea to stick around in this town because the guys here are suck and possibly dangerous. Midnight does get the jump on Cowboy Whitey and demands the rest of his money, but the Cowboy is a bit of a handful. Eventually, Midnight gets some money off the old man and dunks his head into a toilet.

Meanwhile, Roy and his dimwitted fucknut of a buddy, Holt, decide they need to contribute to Toxic Masculinity, Alabama’s GDP and go out and drunkenly find pussy. Sure enough, they come across Connie and Mickey. When Midnight gets back to the bus, he’s ready to head out, but Babe tells him about Mickey and Connie not being on the bus anymore. He goes back and fends off Roy and Holt, but it gets Midnight stabbed in a struggle with Roy. Babe shoots Roy in the leg and they take Midnight to the bus.

Now, Midnight is not in very good shape. It turns out half his blood was stored in his gut. What was once inside him is quickly going to the outside of him. In the medical profession, this is what’s called “a very bad situation of intense bleed out” or “holy fucking shit this guy is probably gonna die”.

While the girls beat a hasty retreat in the bus, Roy and Holt look for a truck that is unlocked. It just so happens that every goddamn truck in this town has a shotgun rack inside it. Roy finds a truck unlocked, and grabs the guns. He has Holt fire on the bus from the sides while Roy fires from the front and kills the girl driving the bus. This causes the bus to run right into Roy, pinning him between two dumpsters.

Oddly enough, being smushed between two dumpsters is the 2nd leading cause of death in Toxic Masculinity, Alabama.

Now, if we’re also to keep score here, the guy who is top billed in this movie is now dead only thirty minutes into the movie. The guy who got the special “and” credit (Hagan) is very likely morbidly wounded. Also, one of the Ball Girls is also dead, victim of a hillbilly shotgun blast to the forehead through the windshield of the girls’ bus. That happens to be the 4th highest cause of death in Toxic Masculinity, Alabama.

Holt goes to get Cowboy Whitey and he sees that his son is dead. Buck Flower says clearly that it was “those baseball bitches that done this.” Cowboy Whitey puts a grand on each of the girls’ heads that the town goes after and kills for the death of his boy. Babe pulls the bus over and Midnight tells her to not stop and to keep going. One of the girls, Stoney, who took the elbow to the head earlier, is showing signs of concussion. It’s clear she needs to see a doctor…

And… I mean I guess that’s true because concussions are bad news and shit, but are we sure that Ross Hagan is dead?

Babe stops the bus at “Ronnie’s Garage”. This is apparently a set up because they got phoned ahead to be on the lookout for those baseball bitches. One guy grabs Babe while another couple of guys try to attack the girls on the bus. However, this is a baseball team. Guess what they have lots of? Baseball bats. Guess what they know how to use? Baseball bats. Guess what else they have? The keys to the bus. And what else? A motherfucking gun. They use all this shit to get away.

Now, we’re nearly halfway through this movie, and I want to take a moment to talk about the movie as a whole and how I feel watching it. Are there gross people doing gross things to people who didn’t do nuthin’ but beat them in a baseball game? Yes. That’s gross and bad form. However, there is an absolute charm to this movie. Not the kind of charm that you think of when you watch something like My Mom’s a Werewolf or Virgin Hunters or Disco Godfather. There’s a charm in making the bad guys utter garbage people who somehow can afford the beer they are guzzling despite being utterly incompetent hillbillies and not seen once in this movie without being obliterated by the nectar of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

This movie somehow makes you simultaneously hate and kind of like these dumb assholes. It’s a dichotomy that should rip the fabric of the universe in twain, but, somehow, we’re all still here. I should be really upset with these jerks for the way they are hunting down and all-out dogging Babe and the Ball Girls, but… I’m not. I want them to be killed, I assure you that. I want Babe and each of the Ball Girls to do terrible, horrible things with their testicles and buttholes, but I can’t totally hate them. I think this scene right here encapsulates exactly how I can say I don’t hate them.

Buck Flower and Holt are hanging out there talking about pissin’ and drinkin’ when the girls’ bus passes their location. They take off after the bus and do a decent job shooting the bus up. Holt drives a bit fast and out of control as he chases after the girls. Hold decides to hand the wheel over to Buck flower so he can jump onto the back of the bus and climb to the top of it and shoot into the bus through the roof. Babe is able to dump Holt off them when they cross a bridge while one of the girls shoot at the truck to cause Buck Flower to wreck and turn the truck on its side.

While the hilljacks keep preparing for the next opportunity to get the baseball bitches, we’re constantly reminded that Stoney isn’t doing so hot. I mean they have a couple bodies decomposing in the bus and they really need to get authorities involved, but okay, let’s make sure we help the girl who got elbowed in the face.

The real problem is Cowboy Whitey’s people have created a diversion to force the girls to go down a road that dead ends about six miles further. She says they need to leave and travel on foot. One of the girls says she thinks they need to stay and fight, but Babe disagrees. She thinks, and is probably correct in this line of thought, that if they stay with the bus, they will die sooner than if they try to make it on foot. I think this is all Cowboy Whitey’s plan. You see, he’s a crazy army person. He’s apparently a former mercenary. In 1990 movie terms, that means he has access to a giant arsenal of weaponry.

This includes a powerful crossbow that he uses when concussed Stoney falls behind the rest of the girls and gets distracted by a butterfly floating around some flowers.

Babe goes looking for Stoney and finds her stuck to the tree she realizes there’s someone hunting them and they have to keep moving to the town 30 miles away. Donna, the one who keeps wanting to stay put, wants the team to set traps for the bad guys to finally stand up for themselves. Babe is like, “Cool, if that’s what you think you have to do!” and leaves. This leaves only the three blondes behind to do their trap setting. The rest of the team goes with Babe.

Back at the bus, the drunk hillbillies raid the inside. And by drunk, I mean they are barely able to stand up. I’d say they are having a hard time speaking, but fuck… This is the deep south and I’m not sure what is deep south speak and what’s drunk. Naturally, these morons panty raid the bus because I don’t think this town has any womenfolk around. At least these people pretend like they have never been around women before.

Donna and the Baseball Blondes work to set up their traps and watch for hillbilly activity in the area. Now, if I’m being totally fair, I’m not too sure the blondes have much going for them by way of strategy, know-how, or ability to carry out their plans. First, the leader of the team is not with them. Second, the hillbillies are, like, LEGION. They are everywhere and everyone. I don’t see how three blondes will defeat an entire town.

They do have one thing going for them…

Diversionary tactics. They use this girl’s naked boobs and body to distract Buck Flower and Holt and they toss a noose around Buck’s throat and hang him while knocking Holt into the stream. When Holt gets out of the stream and joins the rest of the drunk hillbillies. The blondes get found by Cowboy Whitey. He kills one, and leaves the other two girls for Holt and the hillbillies. It’s full on I Spit on Your Grave beeswax as they assault one of the girls. It’s pretty raw.

Good thing Babe and her group is nearby. They come to the rescue and beat the shit out of some of the dudes with bats and shoot a few with rifles and stuff. As they escape with the girl getting raped, she gets shot by one of the hillbillies. She asks to be left behind, but they refuse. However, she dies anyway.

I will give this movie massive credit for one thing in this third and final act. Tanya Rosenberg had a good eye and a cinematographer, Sam Gart (in his only credit as Cinematographer despite having several solid credits as a camera operator), who could pull off some decent shots. The scene in which Louise is escaping with Babe and Ingrid and gets shot in the back is really nicely captured with high angles, shadows, and slow motion. Later, Donna faces off against Cowboy Whitey and she shoots him in the gut at the same time he hits her in the leg with a hunting knife. That’s also done in a fairly tense slo-mo sequence too. Yes, this movie is making sure the girls are on full display as much as necessary for each scene they are in, but it is not without some really solid moments and some tense business going on in the action scenes.

Donna is able to crawl away while Cowboy Whitey is lying on the ground with a hole in his gut. It is implied that he’s either dead or just sleeping off the gunshot wound like a fuckin’ badass. I would believe either one at this point. Elsewhere Babe, Ingrid, and Connie are able to see hillbillies in the mist as fog rolls in as another fascinating set of shots mask some of what’s going on to help the girls strike and hide without giving away too much of their position.

Holt finally meets his end when he stumbles over one of the dead hillbillies. He pleads for his life by saying he’ll tell Cowboy Whitey that they are all dead, but Mickey comes along and gets used as a hostage. She signals to Babe to throw a rock at him. You know, like a catcher (that she is) does to a pitcher (like Babe)? She knocks Holt down and Connie shoots him dead.

The remaining girls get to a campsite that appears abandoned. However, they are not alone. Cowboy Whitey has limped his way there too. While Donna is resting with the other girls, Babe takes a look around. He’s near enough to the cabin the girls are resting in to try to pick a couple of them off as they pass in front of a window. While he plans to snipe the girls from his spot, Babe realizes she’s just under him in the same building. He chases her down and he uses a a tiny little knife to stab at her legs. She leads him into a silo of some sort and is able to kick him off the ramp to his death.

And so ends the deadliest, and most catastrophic, day in the history of Toxic Masculinity, Alabama. To this day, they still post Facebook posts to remind the citizens to never forget. They have quite a disdain for women baseball players to the point that there’s a whole phobia around those types of people. The baseball diamond where the 17-2 thrashing that ultimately led to so much bloodshed is now marked with memorial for just all the worst people who have ever lived, played, and got shithoused at local bar. Parents still tell their little boys about the terrible girls with their boobs and their short shorts that are an affront to their very belief system. For it was that day that so many patriots died.

I mean, mostly from alcohol poisoning and dipshittery, but it’s important for kids to understand history through a different lens so they can grow up to hate women baseball players and keep up this holy war against their kind.

This ends another entry into the annals of B-Movie Enema. Blood Games is quite a tense and well made slice of exploitation action. I actually kind of recommend it to anyone who wants to see dumb fuck hillbillies get their comeuppance. Plus, Gregory Scott Cummings playing a bonkers out of control madman is always fun.

Tomorrow, the season finale of B-Movie Enema: The Series is upon us. I end season 1 with the movie that began this crazy blog to begin with – The Eerie Midnight Horror Show! Be sure to head over to the B-Movie Enema YouTube Channel to check it out. In the meantime, don’t fret… Season 2 is already planned and will be returning on September 11, 2021. Whatever you do, never forget… that date for season 2. Season 1 taught me a lot about what I can do with the show and what is possible. I am excited for the improvements and new stuff and new movies that I’ll be doing for the second season.

As for the blog, there’s no stopping here. Next week kicks off a theme month. Yup, it’s time to cobble together another month-long deep dive into something. For this theme, I decided it was time to take a look at some of the Jess Franco movies that starred his muse, Lina Romay! If I was smart, I would have held off until May to have Lina RoMAY Month, but I’m a dipshit and did it for April instead. So…

Look, just come back next week for a movie called Cries of Pleasure.