Originally posted on 9/8/12
When adult filmmaker Doris Wishman got together with bazooka-boobed Polish stripper Chesty Morgan in the mid-70s, the result was two of the most head-scratchingly cockeyed and totally off-the-wall nudesploitation flicks ever made. "Deadly Weapons" and "Double Agent 73" are now together on the same Blu-Ray disc along with an unofficial non-Chesty follow-up, "The Immoral Three", to form the Something Weird Video collection CHESTY MORGAN'S BOSOM BUDDIES.
It was a match made in junk-film heaven--Wishman, a filmmaker with an abundance of energy and enthusiasm but little actual skill, and Chesty, a stunning human visual effect who nevertheless displays absolutely no natural talent whatsoever in front of the camera. In fact, her absolute lack of any discernible acting skill makes everyone and everything else around her seem better by default. And yet, with those mind-bogglingly huge all-natural hooters and preternaturally unaffected (some might say "spaced-out") expression, she somehow demands our disbelieving attention every second she's on the screen.
"Deadly Weapons" (1974) features Chesty (here billed as "Zsa Zsa") as the faithful wife of a mob wiseguy named Larry who gets whacked after he steals an incriminating address book and tries to blackmail his boss with it. The grief-stricken Chesty vows revenge. Overhearing one of her hubby's killers referring to his addiction to "burlesque", Chesty knows what she must do--get a job as a stripper and wait for him to show up at the club.
Naturally, she has no trouble doing so after the bug-eyed manager gets a load of her blouse-bursting knockers, which gives Wishman a chance to include scenes from Chesty's burlesque "act" as part of the plot. When the killer shows up, she gets him alone long enough to wield the only weapons at her disposal, smothering him to death with her enormous cleavage in a scene that has to be gaped at to be believed.
Later, porn star Harry Reems (DEEP THROAT) meets the same fate despite sporting what must be one of the most formidable moustaches in film history. But screenwriter Judy J. Kushner (Doris' niece) saves the most shocking twist for the final minutes of the film, which should leave viewers shaking their heads in dismay.
With "Double Agent 73", Chesty portrays secret agent Jane Tennay, who, in service of a plot that doesn't really bear keeping track of, has a camera surgically implanted into her left boob. That way, whenever she kills an enemy agent she can snap a photo via her Nipple Cam for use back at headquarters in identifying the big cheese, "Mr. T." (no, not THAT "Mr. T.").
This gives the robotic Chesty an excuse to doff a variety of hideously unflattering outfits throughout the story, beat up bad guys with her wrecking-ball boobs, and snap their pictures. But first, we meet her while inexplicably sunbathing in a black bra, hot pants, and pantyhose while watching that old nudie-flick standby, naked coed volleyball.
Later, there's a weird slow-motion sequence with her beating up an attacker with her boobs while taking pictures of him, leading to a hilarous speeded-up car chase that's like a cross between "Bullitt" and "The Road Runner." In another highlight, Chesty's pretty blonde houseguest is mistaken for her by an assassin, giving director Wishman a chance to duplicate the shower scene from "Psycho" but with a decidedly different approach than Hitchcock. To her credit, Wishman does manage a couple of semi-cool action scenes in which Chesty is manipulated into looking like she's actually doing something, a feat even Hitch probably couldn't have pulled off.
Wishman's directorial style is primitive, but it's always watchable. She even shows a little imagination here and there, particularly during scenes of people getting beaten up, and there are flashes of rudimentary style. But the main fun here (aside from the inescapably nightmarish 70s decor and fashions) is in watching Wishman try to coax a performance out of Chesty Morgan the way nature photographers attempt to manipulate animals into "acting" for the camera.
While listening to breathless dramatic dialogue being dubbed over Chesty's expressionless closeups, to hilarious effect (Doris and her husband dubbed ALL the voices themselves), it finally occurred to me that these films reminded me of the 1970 TV series "Lancelot Link: Secret Chimp", in which footage of chimpanzees dressed as human characters was coupled with voiceover dialogue to create modest little spy spoofs. Even the look of the film, sets, and costumes is similar, and it wasn't hard to imagine Chesty fitting right in as Lancelot Link's female sidekick Mata Hairy ("Oh, Lancie!"), albeit with less acting ability than the original ape actress.
Since there were only two Doris Wishman epics produced with Chesty Morgan as the star, the third film in this collection, "The Immoral Three", aka "Hotter Than Hell" (1975), is more of a generic offering. That is, the three women who star in it have more generic physical endowments, although star Cindy Boudreau as "Genny" is still pretty conventionally stacked.
This time, agent Jane Tennay (also Boudreau) is murdered by a mysterious assailant. We discover that she had three daughters who were the result of "carelessness" during missions involving sexual relations with the enemy. The half-sisters Genny, Sandy (Sandra Kay), and Nancy (Michele Marie), strangers to one another until now, must find out who killed their mother and avenge her in order to inherit her $3,000,000 estate.
What follows is some dull softcore sex stuff such as a bikini-clad Sandy fellating a banana to entice the pool man and a drunken Genny doing a seductive dance in bra and panties (the elevator scene is actually kind of funny), mixed with scenes of abrupt, bloody violence as the girls' search for their mother's killer draws some desperate characters out of the woodwork. The final minutes are rather intense in their own haphazard way, with a surprise ending from right out of left field.
The triple-feature Blu-Ray from Something Weird Video is in 1080p high-definition widescreen 1.78:1 with mono sound. Bonus features are a gallery of Doris Wishman exploitation art and a sizable collection of entertaining trailers from her many films.
In recognition of one of his major influences, John Waters has the teenage son in "Serial Mom" breathlessly watching Doris Wishman's Chesty Morgan flicks on home video in the privacy of his bedroom. I, too, rented these movies back in the early 80s and found them, while not exactly "sexy", to be delightfully odd artifacts from a once-in-a-lifetime collaboration of cinematic forces. With CHESTY MORGAN'S BOSOM BUDDIES, we can revel once again in the bizarre.