Taking its basic crux from 1960's Eyes Without A Face, Bit Parts marks the debut feature for Dave Reda and while it's competently made and has acceptable performances from the cast, it's much too dry for its own good and tends to sit around spinning its wheels. The makers never seem sure just what kind of horror movie they want to make as Jon Rosenberg's script jumps between mild satirical jabs at Hollywood, tongue-in-cheek humour and mild "deranged family" moments - things just seem to bump together without complimenting each other.

Melissa (Molly Fix) is new to Los Angeles and is hoping to become an actress. Heading off to a big audition, she meets friendly cabbie Bobby (Reda) and they exchange numbers so he can show her around town (because, as he says more than once, "nobody knows L.A. better than a cabbie"). But such a meeting doesn't occur as she finds herself kidnapped by a mysterious man posing as a movie producer.

After she's been missing for a day (yeah, I scratched my head over that too) her sister, Brenda (Sarah Gordon), arrives in town to try and find her missing sibling. She happens to meet up with Bobby and together they set out to track Melissa down. Meanwhile, it turns out that our wannabe actress has been taken by a quite mad plastic surgeon that's been collecting women's body parts in order to transplant them on his daughter, Maggie (Michelle Angel), who was disfigured in a car accident.

From here we're treated to various, mostly dull, scenes of Brenda and Bobby doing minor detective work while Melissa basically spends the movie chained up (she really should be trying to escape more and be more freaked out than she is) as our nutty surgeon has to deal with multiple childish demands from his daughter who, as played by Angel, seems like a ten-year-old trapped in an early twenty-year-olds body. It's also here that the movie unsuccessfully tries to make its villains of the "deranged" type - as witnessed by the overly silly "tea party" moment.

The concept of a killer posing as a fake film producer preying on dream-filled actresses is certainly a good one but it's a better idea than what Reda and Rosenberg can deliver. It just feels like they didn't want to try and push things too far, like they didn't trust themselves or their ability to make a serious horror movie rather than a watered-down one. The baddies are more cartoon characters than menacing and all suspense moments are handled by Reda by having him blur the action and flip the picture so it looks like a camera negative.

Bit Parts is under-whelming as a genre picture and not funny enough as a satire to work on either level. It's not a badly made little movie, it's just one of those movies that's "there" - in other words, it makes no real impression on you be it good, or bad. Reda does fine behind the camera (apart from the aforementioned camera tricks) and puts in a steady performance as well. In fact, most of the cast are perfectly fine in their rolls with Christopher Page giving the surgeon father just enough campiness to not over-do it and our two sisters (Fix, Gordon) aren't bad either. It's only Angel who drags stuff down, but it's hard to say if the character was written that way on purpose.

As indie flicks go, there's a heck of a lot worse out there than Bit Parts. With more focus, and less wimping out on the horror, this could've been a fine 72 minutes but, as is, it's pretty passable stuff. (Chris Hartley, 6/13/07)

Directed By: Dave Reda.
Written By: Jon Rosenberg.

Starring: Molly Fix, Sarah Gordon, Christopher Page, Michelle Angel.

Picture Ratio: 1.77:1 Widescreen.

Picture Quality: Shot on DV, the transfer here does suffer from some softness at times and a few blips but it generally looks fine for its budget range.

Extras: There's not tons here but at least most of the bonus material isn't merely throw-away. We get a trailer, an interview taken from a local news channel about the movie, and a commentary track with Reda, Rosenberg and co-star Peter Redman.

Visit the Official Website for more info.