There is a peculiar magic to cult movies like The Room, Troll 2, and Fateful Findings — films that become unforgettable not in spite of their flaws, but because of them. These “so bad they’re good” oddities occupy a strange corner of cinema where outsized ambition collides with limited means, questionable craft, and a striking lack of self-awareness. The result can be bizarrely captivating, and Champagne and Bullets — also circulated under the titles GetEven and Road to Revenge — absolutely belongs in that same pantheon of outsider film classics.
Much of the movie springs from a single creative force: John De Hart. He wrote it, directed it, and cast himself as the lead, Rick Bode. He also steps into the spotlight for an early musical interlude, the wonderfully baffling country-rock number “Shimmy Slide.” The performance is memorable for all the wrong reasons. De Hart, reportedly medicated with painkillers after injuring his back, moves with visible stiffness and scans the room with the wary energy of a man compelled to sing against his will. Somehow, though, this awkward musical detour is not even the most uncomfortable moment the film has to offer.
Like The Room, Champagne and Bullets is filled with conversations and character dynamics that seem to come from a world adjacent to human behavior. Bode and his partner, Huck Finney, begin as police officers, only to lose their badges within the movie’s opening minutes. That setback appears to send Finney into an astonishingly rapid spiral. Already reeling from a divorce after learning his wife has been unfaithful, he shoots holes through his bills, drinks bleach in an attempt to avoid prison, and eventually seems to drift into cult-leader territory.
And cults, as it happens, are central to the movie’s tangled plot. A major storyline follows the return of Bode’s former girlfriend, Cindy, who comes back into his life while escaping a satanic coven she says “sacrificed a human baby.”
Although it is presented as an action movie, Champagne and Bullets is surprisingly light on action, and the fight sequences that do appear have the staged, weightless quality of a theme park stunt performance. De Hart seems more invested in packing the film with gratuitous nudity, particularly through three prolonged sex scenes with co-star Pamela Bryant, who plays Cindy. Each is scored with songs performed by De Hart himself, and together they consume roughly 12 minutes of the film’s 90-minute runtime. One jacuzzi scene reportedly caused De Hart’s then-girlfriend to end their relationship. (A warning for viewers: a separate scene not involving De Hart and Bryant depicts sexual assault.)
