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When you cast as your star someone named Chesty Morgan, you bring certain expectations. And when you advertise your movie with her, ahem, measurements on the poster (with the tagline "Seeing is believing!", you bring more specific expectations. And when you call your movie Deadly Weapons, you bring another set of expectations. Doris Wishman did all of the above, and certainly delivered on those expectations. Wishman trains the camera almost pathologically on Morgan's assets, pushing them in the viewer's face at every opportunity. Wishman knows that this is the movie's primary selling point and doesn't waste time pretending otherwise, but it does mean that the movie has something of a coherent visual style thanks to her heavy reliance on close-ups. This isn't a particularly stylish movie, but there is a certain tactility to the images. I also had to chuckle during a scene when Morgan sheds a few tears and Wishman gives us a close-up of the teardrops on her breasts.
Morgan is no great actress, but thanks to her distinct physical attributes, it's hard to keep your eyes off her. To paraphrase a line from The Big Lebowski, she certainly holds the frame together. Somewhat peculiar is that Wishman serves up the goods with a certain amount of bluntness but makes no attempt to really capture Morgan's beauty, as her camera lacks the libidinous charge of, say, Russ Meyer. (Their follow-up, Double Agent 73, has at least one shot of Morgan twirling in a gown that suggests that you're supposed to find her attractive. That one is a better movie on the whole, as it has a level of narrative momentum missing in most of the Wishmans I've seen. There's also a scene where Morgan goes to the zoo to meet a contact and we get to look at a bunch of cute animals.) And one must make note of her outfits, which heroically attempt (and usually fail) to contain her namesake. Most of what she wears are frilly numbers that look loose enough to be comfortable, but in one scene she wears a t-shirt that looks like it might explode from the pressure.
The plot here has Morgan as an "advertising executive" who for some reason is dating a low level mafioso. After he's murdered by his mob associates, she decides to seek revenge by going undercover as a burlesque dancer and eventually kills the perpetrators in a pair of murder scenes, scored to thunder and angry guitar chords, that do justice to the title. While fetishistic in concept, Wishman doesn't film these scenes with any degree of eroticism, although I suppose they probably do a lot for somebody somewhere. (I assume that person would have this stashed in their collection between their Meyer and Fellini tapes.) Now, if you're wondering why she's able to find them so easily, it's because one of the hitmen is extremely sloppy and basically incriminate him and his partner by spouting a shitload of relevant details while she's listening on the phone. He's thorough enough in this respect that Morgan knows their names and his partner's weakness for burlesque joints. One wonders if the scene was cut before he read out their credit card numbers.
That hitman is played by Harry Reems as one of the worst criminals I've seen in a movie, not only incriminating himself in that initial scene, but also failing to recognize Morgan as she repeatedly conspicuously bumps into him. (After Let Me Die a Woman, this is the second Reems movie I've seen on the Criterion Channel. If they get one more, they can put together a "Starring Harry Reems" collection. Probably tack on some interviews too, with, I dunno, Jeffrey Hurst saying something like "Harry made it okay for guys like me to have a mustache in this business".) This isn't a knock on Reems' performance, as he effectively straddles the line between affability and cruelty, and in fact might be part of an overarching worldview in Wishman's films, of women being done in by flawed, inferior men. (I'm still relatively early in my exploration, but it seems to be a recurring theme, so I'm interested to see how it holds up as I see more of her work. Oddly enough, this theme also came up non-diegetically in my viewing of The Mystery of Oberwald, as the great Monica Vitti attempted in vain to overcome her charisma-devoid male co-star as well as the completely misguided direction she was saddled with.) Now, this is a good deal less explicit than most of Reems' filmography, which means we don't see Reems' (second) most famous body part (after his mustache). What this also means is that we don't see said body part face off with Morgan's assets, like some kind of anatomical kaiju grudge match. Is the movie better off as a result? Who's to say?
Deadly Weapons (Wishman, 1974)
When you cast as your star someone named Chesty Morgan, you bring certain expectations. And when you advertise your movie with her, ahem, measurements on the poster (with the tagline "Seeing is believing!", you bring more specific expectations. And when you call your movie Deadly Weapons, you bring another set of expectations. Doris Wishman did all of the above, and certainly delivered on those expectations. Wishman trains the camera almost pathologically on Morgan's assets, pushing them in the viewer's face at every opportunity. Wishman knows that this is the movie's primary selling point and doesn't waste time pretending otherwise, but it does mean that the movie has something of a coherent visual style thanks to her heavy reliance on close-ups. This isn't a particularly stylish movie, but there is a certain tactility to the images. I also had to chuckle during a scene when Morgan sheds a few tears and Wishman gives us a close-up of the teardrops on her breasts.
Morgan is no great actress, but thanks to her distinct physical attributes, it's hard to keep your eyes off her. To paraphrase a line from The Big Lebowski, she certainly holds the frame together. Somewhat peculiar is that Wishman serves up the goods with a certain amount of bluntness but makes no attempt to really capture Morgan's beauty, as her camera lacks the libidinous charge of, say, Russ Meyer. (Their follow-up, Double Agent 73, has at least one shot of Morgan twirling in a gown that suggests that you're supposed to find her attractive. That one is a better movie on the whole, as it has a level of narrative momentum missing in most of the Wishmans I've seen. There's also a scene where Morgan goes to the zoo to meet a contact and we get to look at a bunch of cute animals.) And one must make note of her outfits, which heroically attempt (and usually fail) to contain her namesake. Most of what she wears are frilly numbers that look loose enough to be comfortable, but in one scene she wears a t-shirt that looks like it might explode from the pressure.
The plot here has Morgan as an "advertising executive" who for some reason is dating a low level mafioso. After he's murdered by his mob associates, she decides to seek revenge by going undercover as a burlesque dancer and eventually kills the perpetrators in a pair of murder scenes, scored to thunder and angry guitar chords, that do justice to the title. While fetishistic in concept, Wishman doesn't film these scenes with any degree of eroticism, although I suppose they probably do a lot for somebody somewhere. (I assume that person would have this stashed in their collection between their Meyer and Fellini tapes.) Now, if you're wondering why she's able to find them so easily, it's because one of the hitmen is extremely sloppy and basically incriminate him and his partner by spouting a shitload of relevant details while she's listening on the phone. He's thorough enough in this respect that Morgan knows their names and his partner's weakness for burlesque joints. One wonders if the scene was cut before he read out their credit card numbers.
That hitman is played by Harry Reems as one of the worst criminals I've seen in a movie, not only incriminating himself in that initial scene, but also failing to recognize Morgan as she repeatedly conspicuously bumps into him. (After Let Me Die a Woman, this is the second Reems movie I've seen on the Criterion Channel. If they get one more, they can put together a "Starring Harry Reems" collection. Probably tack on some interviews too, with, I dunno, Jeffrey Hurst saying something like "Harry made it okay for guys like me to have a mustache in this business".) This isn't a knock on Reems' performance, as he effectively straddles the line between affability and cruelty, and in fact might be part of an overarching worldview in Wishman's films, of women being done in by flawed, inferior men. (I'm still relatively early in my exploration, but it seems to be a recurring theme, so I'm interested to see how it holds up as I see more of her work. Oddly enough, this theme also came up non-diegetically in my viewing of The Mystery of Oberwald, as the great Monica Vitti attempted in vain to overcome her charisma-devoid male co-star as well as the completely misguided direction she was saddled with.) Now, this is a good deal less explicit than most of Reems' filmography, which means we don't see Reems' (second) most famous body part (after his mustache). What this also means is that we don't see said body part face off with Morgan's assets, like some kind of anatomical kaiju grudge match. Is the movie better off as a result? Who's to say?