Deadly Weapons

Cheap Mafia movies are a dime a dozen, right? Not when your heroine is Chesty Morgan, the Polish peeler with proportions preposterous enough to give Russ Meyer pause. Billed as Zsa Zsa (as in "The Zsa Zsa Gabor of Burlesk"), she smothers any of the viewer's misconceptions during the title sequence. As the credits roll and the great theme song blasts, we see the jiggling title artillery distorted (okay--more so) in a series of convex mirrors. Please note that this film is not erotic in the least. Rather it is one of the most unintentionally hilarious pieces of dementia ever to hit the screen!

The amazingly ridiculous plot finds Chesty is Crystal, a "Hard Selling Woman" who is deeply in love and wants to get married. Unfortunately, her gangster boyfriend is rubbed out by his associates after a backfired double-cross. Hell hath no fury like a monstrously huge-breasted woman scorned, and Crystal takes it upon herself to dish out retribution. How? With her gargantuan just-over-six-foot bazookas, of course! Clad in pantyhose and girdle, she raises her arms--cue the thunderous crash of bowling pins--and closes in for the kill! As you may guess, sense is not the movie's strong point. But who watches Doris Wishman movie expecting sense?

Chesty comes off as a complete boob, with her clunky, elephantine breasts as her only assets. Sporting a (supposedly self-supplied) platinum shag wig and a hideous ruffled wardrobe, she lumbers around on mile-high platform shoes, staring blankly at her gaudy surroundings. She does two striptease acts, which consist of her walking around a bit, losing her top, and manhandling those frightening things. Throughout the course of the film, she looks and acts like someone just dragged her out of bed.

Still, despite her awesome inability to act, Miss Morgan has an undeniable screen presence and is consistently fascinating to watch. She and Wishman have created a style of what, in other hands, might be considered simple ineptitude. Everything about the film is so delightfully, wonderfully tacky and ridiculous that you can't look away. It's as if Chesty herself is merely the pinnacle of the greater camp aesthetic. The final dollop of Cool Whip is that THIS WAS INTENDED IN ALL SERIOUSNESS! See it now!

When I was a young man out in the work force, I went with a couple of colleagues to see this flick. The theatre was about 15 feet wide, and I think the film must have been a 16 mm print. The floor was sticky. Besides 3 or 4 young fellows (us) the rest of the audience seemed to consist of much older men with rain coats.

When the movie got going, it was so preposterous that we just couldn't keep from laughing our you-know-whats off. Well, that didn't go over too well with the others: We were repeatedly shushed and told to pipe down, so they could enjoy the show. Interrupted their concentrations, no doubt. It was really too preposterous to be sexy.

On the way out after the movie, there was a jar of "Chesty Morgan matchbooks" in a bowl, and I took one. ( No, her picture didn't wrap around to the back.) Many years later, at home, the lights went out in a thunderstorm. But I happened to remember that the Chesty book of matches was nearby, and I was able to find it, light one, and see my way out of the room. Thank you, Chesty!

This movie is a must for what some of us call "le bad" cinema. The idea is great, a woman with unbelievably huge breasts goes on a killing spree to avenge her husbands death. Of course the acting is awful, the writing leaves a lot to be desired, and the plot is over-done, but how often do you get to see a man smothered to death with enormous breasts?

Out of the two Chesty Morgan features created by Doris Wishman, "Deadly Weapons" is probably the weaker. In this trash epic, Chesty plays a woman who sets out to get revenge on the men who kill her fiancee. The film suffers from too many scenes of seedy violence between the thuggish male characters, and the usual Wishman out-of-focus shots of legs, shoes, wallpaper, curtains, ashtrays and carpets. Chesty can't act to save her life, but she actually does make an attempt, unlike "Double Agent 73" where she resembles a drugged up zombie for the entire running time. She is helped immensely by a lot of her vocal performance being "inner monologues" that we hear without her having to actually try and read lines on camera.

Highlights include Chesty's "sexy" bubble bath near the beginning where she showcases an inability to even sit in a bath like any normal person. The lurid fashion crimes in both clothing and home decor will take your breath away, as will Chesty's hilarious method of dispatching her victims. Oh yeah, and the them tune "Hard Selling Woman" (I think) is great! If anything, "Deadly Weapons" is slightly better made then "DA73", but sadly, a lot of it is still boring. Still, for anyone who appreciates the craziest of cult trash cinema, this is a must see.

After the mob hits a guy with a list, one of the hoods (Richard Towers) keeps the list for himself to blackmail the people on it. When the mobsters find out he is a double-crosser, they off him, which angers his busty girlfriend (Chesty Morgan). She goes after them using the only two weapons she has.

Now, you have Richard Towers ("Last House of the Left") and you have Harry Reems ("Deep Throat"). And Reems has one of the greatest mustaches I have ever seen... so this alone should sell you. But then you have Chesty Morgan. She cannot act, she cannot talk (all her lines are dubbed), and her "talent" is more of a freak show than anything you would actually choose to see... which is perfect for a film released by Something Weird.

As others have said, this is the very definition of a "cult" film. It is certainly not good in any traditional sense, but it has a very odd quality about it that might be enjoyable if you are into strange films. That is all this can be called -- a strange film. It is not sexy, it is not well-written, the directing is adequate but nothing more. Acting is poor. It is just weird.