I was never totally sure Fruit Bruit was going in the right place.
Directed by Doris Wishman, who loves shoes, potted plants, and shag carpeting, and staring Chesty Morgan, who loves very expensive back support garments, Deadly Weapons is a fun jaunt through hills, mountains, mounds ... you know ... stuff like that.
For anybody that doesn't know, director Doris Wishman was one of the few woman in 70s sexplotation cinema. She had a style all of her own; one that could be loosely called Wha? Hunh? style of filming. She'd let the camera linger on potted plants, she focused a lot on shoes, and had some very strange views on what was erotic when it comes to sex scenes. Clue: It's not what you, or anybody else, or even what X769, the super computer from the future, would consider.
We both came with sideburns and mustaches, where's your mustache Larry?
Here's our three bad guys, who work for a mysterious boss. Chesty is in love with the guy on the right, who decides to double-cross the boss.
The Geraldo-look alike on the left? That's Harry Reems, the male star of Deep Throat. I need to explain this to set up a joke later, all by boring you now. It seems to be a haphazard way of writing, but then the guy with the eye patch appears and I can make jokes about him loosing his eye to one of those collars.
Never look down on the teal! Never!
Here we meet our herion heroine, Crystal, waking up with fresh lipstick, room color-cordinated eye shadow, two enormous bags of teal-flavored jello, and a albino skunk on her head.
Crystal is played by Chesty Morgan who was a polish burlesque dancer with a 73 inch chest and a thick accent which forced the film to dub her lines using the same lady who reads train schedules.
Crystal is actually sleeping a lot in this film, which is good because Chesty seems barely awake half the time, and it makes me wonder if this isn't all some trick and she's actually a drug mule and those boobs are full of quaaludes.
That's a pair of very haughty dogs.
This is an example of Doris' fondness for aiming the camera at random locations. Important things -- as important as they can be in this movie -- are going on, and we get treated to a college freshman art show. Dog at top? Looks like he swallowed a brick the same size as him.
Don't miss a moment of the daily boob showing ritual.
Crystal finally drags her ginormous jugs out of bed and manages to not catch any stray planets in their gravitational pull. She preens (her boobs), she checks (her boobs), she fondels (her boobs), and I'm distracted by how crookedly laid those bath tiles are.
I do appreciate them saving money by wall-pappering the bathroom with moldy bread.
Not the first nor the last time Harry Reems would threaten to stab somebody with a long, slender object.
The gang figures out that Crystal's boyfriend has double crossed them, and there's some stabbing and some shooting and a face from Harry Reems that had to scare the living hell out of Linda Lovelace.
Why did Lovelace become an anti-porn crusader later in life? If you see this every time you go to sleep, you might be a bit cranky, too.
Bad things go down, a guy with a book gets knifed, then Crystal's boyfriend gets shot, and suddenly the movie jumps into over drive! Of course, seeing as many of these movies as I have, you know this means it's ready to grind to a spectacular halt, as if gravity itself was being pulled down by two massive objects.
The world's most interesting fluid dynamics study.
Crystal over hears the murder on the phone. She gets enough information to begin hunting down his killers, but before that, we get minutes upon minutes of robot monster moments.
She cries onto her breasts (OK, good job Doris, you get a star!), walks back and forth in lingerie, imagines life with her dead boyfriend, and thinks "I can't do this, but I must, but I can't." Unlike Ro-Man, she doesn't get zapped by "The Great Guidance." I think if anything resembling guidance walked into this movie, the universe would explode in a great cataclysm that would convert all mater to crap.
By the way, I just wasted a whole paragraph on an in-joke about a terrible 1950s monster movie most people only know from MST3K. I typed it, you read it, and I'm not sure who is the loser here.
Always going for the flattering shots, aren't you, Doris?
Crystal decides to fly to Vegas and become a show girl, based on the fact that the bad guys decided to detail their entire travel itinerary as if that damn gnome from Travelocity was hiding under the couch.
Their plans are so specific -- and so unnecessarily descriptive -- that I'm surprised I didn't learn if they wore boxers or briefs, or just how specifically hairy they were (in the 70s, everybody was covered with volumes of thick, black crepe hair.)
Zoinks!
Crystal immediately gets the job by opening her shirt and that cartoon sound effects purchase finally comes in handy. This give Doris the chance to pad the movie with dancers and two separate Chesty Morgan burlesque acts. The crowd is incredibly square -- they are all probably 20-30, but look 50-60 and the place is awash with brylcreem, thick-rimmed glasses, and flop sweat that probably tastes like gin and smells like wife beating.
Crystal spots her first victim, get him to his room, knocks him out with drugs (hidden in her cleavage), and then ... well, see for yourself:
At least he died on a couch that's easy to clean.
Ladies and gentlemen, your deadly weapons.
Who the hell decided to cover that couch with plastic? Why? To keep the hideous lime-green color fresh? That plastic would have found better use keeping a raccoon run over by a thresher fresh.
If you're going to murder somebody, make sure to do it on a carpet that's already blood red.
Our second bad guy strangles his girlfriend because she reveals that she knows what he did. He pays her back for that moment of kindness and attentiveness to his work by strangling her with a mysterious moving tie (it really does zip back and forth in the scene.)
I do have to say this was the 70s, and you could lock a woman in the basement for burning the meatloaf, so this doesn't seem all that out of place.
This leaves our swaying sandbag seductress the opening to woo our second killer with the exact same trick. Of course, first she has to kiss Harry Reems. I hope she got hazard pay for that.
Hey, I just found where I left that sandwich!
Reems goes down, and there's one person left, the mysterious big boss. The movie weaves a complex narrative where it presents many suspects, some dead ends, and a couple good red herrings. That, or there's just one other male character in the entire film, Crystal's dad.
You're not going to be watching this, so let's just pretend it's the first one, OK? Is that too much to ask? For one, brief, shining moment, I just want to see some competence ... then, back to the boobs!
She died as she lived: with big fake eyelashes.
They end up shooting each other, and die together in a big heap of convenient plotting. Thus ends the tender love story of a woman seeking revenge for the death of her lover and the giant, pendulous death machines that go along for the ride. Surely a wonderful story for the ages. Very hallmark.
But this isn't the end of Doris Wishman and Chesty Morgan. Shot at the same time, and what I assume is the same barbiturates and shoe fetish, we have Double Agent 73, coming soon.
Never before has "coming soon" sounded more menacing ...
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