14. aug, 2014

Weird Movie Corner: Deadly Weapons (1974)

The first time I became aware of Chesty Morgan, the leading lady of Deadly Weapons, was during ' The Night Of Bad Taste ' in a movie theatre in Amsterdam. Chesty stars as Crystal, a successful advertising executive. Her lover Larry (Richard Powers) ties up with some very shady, underworld types, Tony (Harry Reems) and a bald guy with an eye patch (Mitchell Fredericks) that goes by the name of Captain Hook. They put a hit on one well-connected man, with a powerful little black book. Larry finds it first and slips it into his jacket, in effect pulling a silent double cross on his partners. His plan does not work, and once he is found out, he is killed. Crystal, by some weird coincidence, hears Larry being killed over the phone. She decides to avenge the death of her lover in a very unique way. By smothering them to death with her 73-inch, all natural bust line. Deadly Weapons is a strange film, but what's more interesting to me is the woman who made it, Doris Wishman. Wishman started her career in the early 1960's and ended it in the early 2000's. She got her start doing clerical work for a movie producer. When her husband died, she had a slight mental collapse and kept fantasizing that her husband was still alive. She felt this obsession was unhealthy and to keep herself occupied she started to make films. She had the formula early on: work on a story in which you can show a bunch of nudity. ''Sexploitation'' in the 1960's was a male-dominated industry, and I think, but I could be mistaken, she might have been the only woman who made movies in that genre in a male-dominated period. Feminists would probably hate her films, but she was a feminist by her actions. There was no gender issue with her, she simply thought ''How can I make these films sell?'' So I took an interest in the rest of her work. Her movies are direct and have unconventional editing. There is no sense of continuity or matching, no irony, no analysis. What I admire in her, is her tenacity in making film after film without barely any money, but also the way she seemed to follow her own interests and taste. All the films reflected her personality, her humor, her fearlessness. But back to Deadly Weapons. For breast-obsessed people, and let's be honest, aren't we all, this is the movie for you. And even if you think this is an awful film, you can't deny the beautiful strangeness that is Deadly Weapons.