Double Agent 73

A Boob To A Kill

Double Agent 73
USA 1974 Directed by Doris Wishman
Something Weird Videos Blu Ray Zone A

After the deadly disappointment of Doris Wishman’s first Chesty Morgan movie Deadly Weapons (reviewed by me here) I wasn’t in too much of a hurry to get back to the Chesty Morgan’s Bosom Buddies Blu Ray that I purchased last year. However, now that I’ve seen this second entry in the director and actress’ collaborative CV, I have to say that Double Agent 73 was a heck of a lot better than I was expecting and way more watchable than the previous film. That is to say, that first movie wasn’t even good in a ‘so bad it’s good’ way whereas... Double Agent 73 is absolutely quite bad in the most entertaining way.

The film starts off with Chesty stripping off during the credits and the clicking of her camera breast each time she squeezes said appendage brings up a new title card full of names. Wait... did I say ‘camera breast’? Oh yes... I’ll get to that in a minute.

The film starts properly when we are shown two villains playing cards in a private residence. We know the two are bad guys because one of them has a red blotch down the side of his face and is accompanied by a fiercely sinister musical stinger which, according to the music credit on the movie, is the work of Cine Top... who I can only assume is a needle drop library providing music by the yard. We are also shown a ‘spy’ going through the house and the movie nicely dates itself in this scene by having an old time photo-cube in a shot.

The spy guy finds some sinister looking film in a drawer. He steals it but, as he tries to make his getaway, he is spotted and caught by our two card playing fiends. The two villains consult their villanous boss, Mr. Toppler, with the spy in question and we know his identity must be important to the slow unravelling of the film because we only ever see Toppler in silhouette at this point in the proceedings. So by now your bad movie senses should be kicking in and telling you that the mystery of who this guy is should be pretty easy to solve from fairly early on in the movie and... yep, so it is.

Anyway, Toppler tells his bad boys to get rid of the spy so they take him down the street and run him over. They do a bad job of it too because they leave him alive long enough to tell a passer by in the street something before he finally shuffles off this mortal coil...

Cut to Chesty Morgan’s character Jane Genet (Agent 73) as she watches a group of men and women playing naked volleyball and sunbathes while reading her newspaper in her black, lacy underwear. Actually, it looks like the volleyball game is spliced in footage from another completely different movie because, even as she’s ‘paged’ and called away, she doesn’t once interact with the footage we’ve been shown of the game as an establishing shot and I can only assume this stuff is culled from one of the director’s earlier nudist movies and then just spliced in to give the illusion of having a budget. So then Chesty, who is a secret agent (it transpires), flies back to wherever she works and is called in to get a new mission briefing regarding a truly fuzzy plot to do with... drugs, I think... I honestly couldn’t say and I was really trying hard to find some sense in the plot here but, it all involves the mysterious Toppler in some capacity. This scene is really hard to watch, actually, because it involves a lot of cutting between a classic conversation set up with each shot involving either Chesty or her boss ‘face on’ as the main subject of the shot with the back of the other’s head in the corner.... which is a pretty basic thing you wouldn’t think you could screw up except each of the character’s faces seem to be in much less focus than the back of the other person’s head each time the shot changes. You’d think with the lady in question playing the main lead, they’d at least be able to get their ‘rack focusing’ done right.

Actually, I don’t like her boss in this picture. For starters he gives her a dumb assignment which involves finding leads, taking pictures of any clues and then eliminating the people she finds with the mysterious ‘clues’ and recording their picture so the people back at base can see who she’s taking care of. Also, he uses phrases like “This is extremely imperative, Jane.” Seriously? What kind of messed up grammar is that? That’s as redundant and awful as trying to say something is ‘very excellent’... don’t worry though, I won’t be trying to say that about this movie.

So anyway, the way Jane is supposed to take pictures is through an XL camera which her boss has implanted in her left breast, activating it with the whirr and click of the shutter by giving it a good squeeze. Which is, like, probably one of the most impractical secret agent, super spy gadgets in the history of film, maybe? So every time she wants to take a photograph she has to go topless and squeeze herself in the right direction. No information is given as to how she is supposed to focus or frame a shot... it’s just get her breast out and ‘smile for the mamera’. Makes no sense.

What also makes no sense is the nurse who assists with the surgery trying to kill off Chesty when she’s still groggy from the operation. No problem though. Chesty’s Jane is a smart cat and she dispatches the nurse by strangling her with a phone cord... and then plays with her breasts so she can take some pictures of her, naturally. Hmmm... it’s almost like this is just a ruse so the lead actress can keep getting her bosoms out for the audience, you know?

Okay, so this is a terrible movie but, like I said, it’s pretty enjoyable in places and I really wish I’d have been watching this one with an audience. Pretty soon we are into real ‘budget film-making’ when Chesty and an informant are speaking in a night club. Except... just like the nudist volleyball scene, the footage of the party with all the people doesn’t in any way match Chesty and a guy standing alone against a wall in what looks like it’s supposed to be in the same room as the party. Once more, none of the party footage is on the screen at the same time that Chesty and her companion are in shot but, the really brilliant thing Wishman does here... and it’s quite cheeky... is to cover the wall in bacofoil, shine some ‘Bava-tastic’ red and green lights on it and wobble it about a bit. For literally half a second you think you are watching a load of people dancing behind Chesty... until you realise that, no, ambient atmosphere or not, it’s just a piece of shiny foil being woggled about for a bit. It’s genius, it looks totally rubbish and... I love it. Nice attempt at a solution to having no money there. This brought a smile to my face.

There’s lots of more absurdly stupid things happening in this movie. Such as when a naked Chesty wards off a guy by knocking him down a couple of times in a fist fight... well, I say a fistfight but Chesty actually uses her breasts of doom, throwing them about like a pair of fists and doing some damage which, while it sounds completely stupid (and it is completely stupid, I assure you), actually looks kind of credible because the director slows the footage down so it looks like there really is some weight behind the main star of the show’s natural, sizeable assets.

Later on she lets herself get caught so she can take out a guy with her exploding lipstick. Meanwhile, a man stabs a girl who he mistakes for Chesty in a shower in a quite grisly, gory yet entirely unconvincing murder scene. When a guy comes after Chesty she squirts some gas from a smoking hooka thingamajig and then kills her immobile victim by filling his throat with ice cubes... which I guess is kinda inventive for a Doris Wishman film, I would say. Another spectacular kill comes when she somehow, through the magic of non-matching camera footage, manages to throw her earring across the room... right into the neck of her potential assailant. And of course, all through the movie, each time she takes out another bad guy or gal, she has to get her breasts out and take some photographs of them.

I’m not going to reveal anymore of the story here but, it has to be said, it’s totally silly... as is the ending and the revelation that Chesty is in danger because the spy camera has a hidden time bomb in it which will go off if she doesn’t report back to base in time. Why? Why the heck would you send out a trusted agent with a bomb in her bosom? This really begs the question as to why her boss, who presumably authorised this, would be working in an ‘intelligence’ agency. Oh well... I guess you can only be as intelligent as your script.

And that’s about all I’ve got to say about this one other than to reiterate that, of the two Chesty movies I’ve seen, this one is definitely the more fun and also, although she’s not great in it, she’s certainly a hell of a lot more credible and interesting in Double Agent 73 than she was in Deadly Weapons. I’d have liked to have seen her in a few more things after this, as I reckon she had the potential to become something more if given the right opportunities but, alas, her career only went on to include a deleted scene pulled from a Fellini movie and an unconfirmed appearance in a 1980s film. Which is a shame.

Still, I enjoyed this one and if you’re still on the fence about picking up the US Zone 1 Blu Ray Chesty Morgan’s Bosom Buddies, all I can say is, for me at least, this one was worth the price of admission, purely as a celebration of stupidity. Recommended for a room full of guys and gals who are heavily ‘alcoholed up’ and if you don’t mind people shouting at the screen in response to the ridiculous antics of the characters who inhabit this strange, alternative and amply cleavaged version of the cold war warriors of the US of A. Great stuff.

Deadly Weapons

The Caught Chester

Deadly Weapons
1974 USA Directed by Doris Wishman
Something Weird Video  Blu Ray Zone A

Warning: A couple of big spoilers in here, I guess, if you’re really that fussed about such things in movies of this nature.

Okay... I’ve been hearing about Chesty Morgan movies for a while now so I grabbed the new US three movie Blu Ray set called Chesty Morgan’s Bosom Buddies, which includes her two most well known films, Deadly Weapons and Double Agent 73, as well as The Immoral Three. That last movie doesn’t appear to actually have Chesty Morgan in it for some reason so... what we really have here is a collection of films directed by Dorish Wishman.

Doris Wishman was born in 1912 but she didn’t start directing until after the death of her first husband in 1960. She occasionally used a male pseudonym for some of her films, most of which were some kind of exploitation fare like the nudist movie Nude On The Moon. She was fairly prolific in the 1960s and 1970s and directed her last, 30th movie, in 2007... or at least that’s when it was released because, according to the IMDB, she died in 2002.

I’d like to say that Wishman’s films were well directed movies featuring strong, anti-establishment women righting wrongs and fighting the sexist clichés propagated by her male counterparts but, truth be told, as I started watching Deadly Weapons I was quite startled to find that the movie was, in fact, a) not really any of those things and b) quite terrible. And it’s not necessarily terrible in that good way, where one can appreciate, with a smiling eye, the absolute irony of a film like this being in existence... although there is a degree of that in this too, to be fair. Mostly, though, it’s just incredibly badly put together and, also... a bit grubby to boot. And I’m not talking about the quality of the Blu Ray transfer here either... Something Weird Video have done a bang up job on the presentation of this release.

The film’s opening credits begin with a cheesy song which temporarily cuts out when Chesty’s famous assets are thrust full on into the camera, accompanied by a clap of thunder. The singing then continues with scenes of Chesty dancing in the reflection of some kind of fish eyed mirror as she plays with her deadly weapons. And, no, that’s not a terribly sexist pun... well alright, it is but, what I meant to say was... that’s not just a terribly sexist pun. Chesty’s deadly weapons are just that, as you come to see in the second half of the movie. I think the opening sequence is really not bad... until you are forced to watch it again in the context of the main movie later, where the artistic nature of the angles etc don’t really work without the context of it actually being in a credits sequence.

Once we’re into the film proper we see a small gang, lead by Larry (played by Richard Towers) and his right hand man (played by porn star Harry Reems), beat a man insensible in his apartment looking for a mysterious 'something' which is never, to my memory, ever identified as to what the heck this something actually is. The man is warned to "get out of town"... which makes absolutely no sense considering that a) they haven’t found what they’re looking for and b) they need to keep returning to hassle him for whatever the mystery thing is.

One thing I will say about the movie so far is that the music just keeps getting funkier and cooler. I’d love to know what it is but I don’t think that’s something I’m going to find out in a hurry anytime soon. There is no music credit for this thing so its obviously needle drop and comes from a professional soundtrack library. Either that or they just plain stole it from another movie but I would expect the former rather than the latter here... it’s not a 1970s Hong Kong or Turkish movie, after all.

Returning from his hard day of beating people up, Larry goes home to his girlfriend Crystal, played by Chesty Morgan (real name Liliana Wilczkowska, although she’s actually billed in this one as being Zsa Zsa). Chesty doesn’t know what her boyfriend does but she does spend a lot of her time out of her clothes. For example, we are treated to shots of Chesty as she rubs and wiggles to herself while standing and contemplating having a bath. It seems to take her so long to get to the actual bath... who knew it was such a big decision. I’m guessing certainly not Chesty, who you can clearly catch looking off camera to try and get some clue as to where to wiggle next. Wow... this is just like watching a bad, 1970s porn movie but without the hard core porn element in place. When she does get in the bath for a soak and more wiggling, another terrible song is playing in the background. I mentioned this movie was bad, right?

The plot thickens as Larry is trying to blackmail someone with the ‘stick’ being the thing he’s only pretending he hasn’t attained from the first guy yet, instead of leaving that task to his mysterious boss who’s identity you might not take all that long to guess, methinks.

Things go pear shaped when Larry stabs the guy they were trying to get the item from... presumably to cover his tracks. Then, the boss of the gang somehow finds out that Larry has been running a blackmail scheme of his own so he sends Harry Reems and another accomplice round to kill Larry. They do so while he’s on the phone to his girlfriend Chesty, who slowly processes the news in some of the most spectacularly bad acting I’ve seen. She also listens in on the two killers talking and gets some leads on where to look to find them to exact her chesty revenge.

Everything in this movie is totally unconvincing, it has to be said. The acting, the stilted dialogue, the terrible fight choreography... even Harry Reems unbelievable 1970s bushy moustache which, ironically, though it doesn’t look that real, probably is.

Meanwhile, Chesty flies to one city where the first killer, known as Captain Hook because he wears an eye patch (I never said this movie made total sense, okay?), is laying low. She knows he frequents the burlesque houses and so she gets a job as a burlesque dancer. Something she apparently was in real life. At first, the boss doesn’t even see her as he’s reading a newspaper while he rejects here... so she gets her bosoms out and he changes his mind in a hurry.

After a while, and after being fired for not giving in to the whims of her gropey new manager, Chesty finds Captain Hook and gets herself invited up to his room for sex... and this is where the title of the movie really comes into play. She gets the information out of Hook as to where to find Reems and then laces the guy's drink with a pill which partially paralyses him... making his arms go all floppy and useless. She then strips her top off and unleashes her deadly weapons, slowly smothering the man to death with the weight and density of her huge mammaries.

And then it’s onto the next fellow as she hops on another plane and tracks down Harry Reems, who really doesn’t want anything to do with her as she tries to flirt with him. Eventually, though, he’s forced to strangle his girlfriend to death and, with nobody left to have sex with that evening, he and Chesty hook up for, pretty much, a rerun of the previous death scene with Captain Hook. Harry might like to keep abreast of the situation but this time it leaves him dead.

And that’s almost it for Chesty and her revenge on her boyfriend’s killers except, on returning to her city, she tells her father that Larry left something in a drawer which was very important. Big mistake because, as she is sleeping off the day’s killings, she hears a noise in the night and finds her father trying to locate Larry’s blackmail material. It turns out, if you really didn’t see this coming, that Chesty’s dad is actually the boss behind the gang Larry was in after all. When Chesty doesn’t come clean about the stash, he gets his revolver out and shoots her between her deadly weapons. Chesty retaliates with some shooting of her own, killing her father before she performs a very long, drawn out but so painful to watch, because the acting really is atrocious here, slow crawl across the room so she can die with her head resting on her father.

The movie finishes there and there’s not much else I can say about this one. Deadly Weapons is not the film I was hoping it would be and I find it strange that these titles in particular have grown a fanbase over the years. I can’t, in all honesty, recommend this to many people. It has its moments but they definitely are few and far between and I really didn’t think they were worth the price of admission on this one. That being said, I’m still looking forward to seeing Double Agent 73 soon so... you know... watch this space for another Chesty Morgan review sometime next year, methinks.