Our film wastes absolutely no time as the first thing we see is Chesty Morgan’s gargantuan hooters in frozen frame behind the title card. We are then "treated" to several extended shots of Chesty stroking her giant mammary glands (...great googily-moogily!), distorted by trick mirrors, as the credits roll by. (Oh, yeah. I’m turned on. Yeah, baby. Ugh ... Pardon me while I go find a sharp stick, my eyes need some attention.) Mercifully, the film proper begins someplace else, well out of Chesty's range, with a knock at that door. When Nick (Saul Meth) answers, three men storm in and throw him to the ground, and while Tony and Hook kick the crap out of him, Larry (Richard Towers) rifles the apartment, obviously looking for something. Finding a small appointment book, he secrets it into a pocket and tells the others he found nothing. With that, they leave the bloodied Nick on the floor and encourage him to get out of town -- or else!

Upon returning home, Larry thumbs through the stolen book and finds a number. He then calls a Mr. Matty and demands $100000 -- or the appointment book gets it. (No, wait, that’s not right.) And if this extortion fee isn't paid, he will reveal the trappings of the mysterious "Interstate Deal" to the cops. Message delivered, Larry hangs up and retires to the bedroom, where his girlfriend, Crystal (Chesty Morgan -- here billed as Zsa Zsa), is just waking up, climbs into bed, and mounts Mount Morgan, both of them, and they start doing the horizontal bop. But the film providentially spares us the gory details (-- thank you lord!), and after the deed, Larry goes for a walk while Crystal takes a bath ... As we jump between shots of Crystal in the bathtub, washing her breasts (-- and losing the soap), and Larry walking around, talking to himself (-- and we know he’s talking to himself because his dialogue has reverb), he complains about how his boss always gets the money, while he takes all the risks; but with this double-cross he’s pulling, he'll soon be set up for life. Unfortunately for Larry, though, his life expectancy just got a lot shorter and is about to peter out...

Man, I miss Joe Bob Briggs. And what does this have to do with Deadly Weapons, you ask? Hang on, and all will be explained.

Back in day, this tall, laconic good old boy, who used to give us Andy Sidaris flicks on Joe Bob’s Drive-In Theater for The Movie Channel, and later, while guzzling down gallons of Old Milwaukee, the worst films in TNT’s library on Monstervision, has been off the air and out of the limelight for quite awhile now. His programs used to be a staple of late Saturday night viewing; my favorite had to be the dusk to dawn Friday the 13th marathon -- or Godzilla Night. Let go about the same time that Mystery Science Theater got cancelled, even though Monstervision was in a bad downward spiral anyway, due to a programming department that for some unfathomable reason thought Look Who’s Talking Too qualified as a monster movie (-- God? Save us from TV programmers, and once again I plead with TNT to bring back this and 100% Weird --), these were dark days for the B-movie fan. Briggs' newsletter, We Are the Weird, also died about this time that I had subscribed to, and even got a letter printed and a written reply from the man himself. And nothing, but nothing, has stepped up to fill that void. So if you're reading this, Joe Bob, write another book, do another DVD commentary -- or better yet, get back on the air. Come back. Please. We need you.

Which brings us back to Deadly Weapons. You see, the main reason I rented this ... thing was because Joe Bob was on the cover of the rental box. On the back, the synopsis of the film, that promised a woman gaining revenge by smothering the gangsters who wronged her with her giant boobies, was totally secondary. Well, a close second. Anyway, I’ve been at this for far too long to be suckered in by a wild synopsis like that. Well, most of the time ... Okay, it happens to me a lot. But a good rule of thumb should always apply: If it sounds to good to be true, it usually is. (Rule #354 in bad film watching.)

The video opens at an abandoned drive-in theater, where Joe Bob falls out of his trusty Grand Torino and mourns the passing of these vanishing American icons. In 1956, he says, there were over 12,000 drive-ins in America. 95% of them are now gone, but he plans to keep the drive-in alive by releasing a series of videos under the blanket umbrella of Joe Bob Briggs presents the Sleaziest Movies in the History of the World. Deadly Weapons came out in 1990, with the claim that there will be 1,000 of them in total, and a promise that they'd all be done by 2016. I would like to believe him, but alas I don’t think this will come to fruition. Bad Girls go to Hell, also helmed by Deadly Weapons' director, Doris Wishman, a bona fide pioneer in the cinematic nudist movement, who we'll be discussing later, is the only other title in the series that I could get my hands on. Does anybody know if there were any others? Or what they might be?

Anyways, our opening continues after Joe Bob stumbles into the projection booth, where he gives us some background info on the film’s stars, director, and plot, and then cranks up the film after giving us the Drive-In Totals on his 3-B scale: Blood, Breasts, and Beasts. And I think Chesty counts for at least two out of three, there, but believe me, you're still gonna need some beer to make it through this feature. So consider yourself warned, and crack open another brew, as we now rejoin or review already in progress...

Contacting Mr. Matty again, Larry arranges for a meeting to get the payoff. He then joins Crystal for breakfast, and as they eat, she wants to know if Larry will ever make an honest woman out of her. Seems she’s tired of being his mistress and wants to be his wife. Larry then breaks a Cardinal B-Movie sin by promising that after this one final job, maybe, just maybe, he'll have enough money to give her the life she desires. Before leaving for work, Larry gives the coveted book to Crystal and tells her to hide it in a safe place until he gets back. When he turns belligerent after she gets curious as to what the book contains, Crystal withdraws the question and quietly locks it in a dresser drawer -- because no one'll look in there, right?

Needing to play it cool, Larry pretends its business as usual as he rounds up Tony (Harry Reemes -- yes, THAT Harry Reems) to meet their boss. Now, we don’t get to see the boss's face, but easily notice a cross cut into the back of his hand. Angry about their failure the night before, he sends his goon-squad back to Nick's apartment to find Mr. Matty's appointment book -- and if he doesn't cough it up, Nick is to be eliminated ... Turns out Nick isn't home, but the two hoods catch up to him as he desperately tries to escape down the back stairwell. After he's beaten to a pulp again, Nick confesses that the book is in a certain desk drawer. And since Larry searched that desk the night before and claims to have found nothing, Tony is a little confused. Larry offers the desperate man is lying just to save his hash. Tony mulls it over, then sadistically stabs Nick in the guts until he is dead.

Later, having sniffed out his partner's double-cross, Tony calls the boss, who tells him to kill Larry -- and to do it fast. That evening, as she cries over her layouts (-- since she’s a famous advertising executive. Whatever --), Crystal's phone rings. Its Larry, who asks if she wants to get married and honeymoon in Hawaii. She's happy to hear the news, but before he can go into the details, Larry says there’s somebody at the door. (A funny segment as he says this and THEN hears a knock at the door.) Over the phone, Crystal hears two men enter the room (-- it’s Hook and Tony), and then Larry gets plugged by a starter pistol and falls dead. After which, the two killers go into a clumsy, plot-specific conversation, loudly identifying themselves, so Crystal can hear and know who they are and where they're going, as Tony tells the one-eyed Hook to go to Vegas -- and to stay out of the strip-clubs! -- while he goes to Miami. On the other end of the line, after Crystal hears the door shut, it finally sinks in and she starts screaming.

A short time passes, and Crystal is flooded with fond memories of Larry (-- memories that keep overlapping and don’t make a lick of sense). As the rising tide of emotions builds to a fever pitch, Crystal decides to avenge her lover the only way she knows how -- with her (-- dramatic pause --) DEADLY WEAPONS!

Armed only with the knowledge that one of the killers has one-eye and likes to hang around strip clubs, Crystal heads to Vegas and gets a job as a stripper. (She has no experience, but the club owner is really impressed with her *ahem* talents.) And after a couple of padded burlesque sequences, where Crystal struts her stuff (-- and frankly, her routine is about as seductive as a drunken beaver in heat, trapped in a burlap bag and doing the watusi --), she finally spots a one-eyed man and they wind up back in his hotel room. Pumping him for information on Tony's whereabouts in Miami, once she gets it, Crystal slips a Mickey Finn into Hook's drink, and while he falls into a stupor, she then strips off her top and proceeds to smoother him with her gigantic boom-booms!

Screen history, folks. Screen history.

Her quest for vengeance halfway done, Crystal jumps the next plane to Miami and tracks Tony to the Belmar Hotel, where he's sunning himself in a chair next to the pool. When Crystal plop-plops (-- yes, you read that right --) down beside him and tries to make small talk, he ignores these obtrusions the best he can. Later, Tony and his very jealous girlfriend, Eve (Denise Purceli), go to the hotel bar. Still on his tail, Crystal plop-plops right down beside them and makes a general nuisance of herself. Of course, Eve thinks the philandering Tony is involved with this large-chested trollop and leaves in a snit. Following her back to their room, as Eve packs to leave, Tony turns on the charm and calms her down. Then, for some reason, Eve tells Tony that she overheard his phone call with the boss about the hit on Larry, and he replies by calmly taking off his tie and strangling her with it. Leaving Eve’s body on the floor, he exits...

...And suddenly, he’s in Crystal’s room. (The hell?) She tries to be seductive again (-- god bless her --) as she drugs his drink. (Where does she hide the drugs? Why in her cleavage, of course.) After Tony succumbs to the drug, she first goes into her siren dance of death again, and then promptly smothers him.

Her revenge now complete, Crystal returns home and goes to her father’s house, where she makes a full confession about the past few day's events, including the mysterious appointment book. She knows it must have something to do with Larry’s death and plans to turn it over to the police. Taking all this in, dad thinks it’s a fantastic story and asks if she still has the book. When she nods a yes, it's still in the dresser, he tells her to go home and get some sleep, and then he’ll take her to the police station in the morning. (Anyone else see where this is going? Everyone? Good.)

Later that night, when Crystal hears someone mucking around in her house, turning on the lights reveals her father breaking into the dresser. We then see he has a cross cut into his hand. (So he was the big boss all along?) When Crystal starts to dial up the cops, Pops pulls a gun and tells her to stop. But she continues to dial, saying "You wouldn’t shoot me."

He then shoots her right between the boobs. (How in the hell could he miss them!?)  

As Crystal slumps to the floor, dear old dad turns his attention back the dresser. From somewhere, Crystal produces another gun (-- and did she have that hidden in her cleavage as well? --) and fatally shoots her father in the ass. After he falls dead, in a scene of strong pathos (*snicker*), Crystal drags herself over to her father’s body (*snort*), and expires over the top of him. Awwww, that’s so sad. Excuse me a sec...

Bwahhahhahahhahahhahhh…*sniffle*.

As I said before, Doris Wishman was a ground-breaking filmmaker, and this repute was well earned and went far beyond her gender. Sure, her films were amateurish and not necissarily all that good, but the "female version of Ed Wood" got 'em made, adapted with market, and got them in the can and out in circulation with startling regularity. Born with an apparent itch for show business, the diminutive Wishman at first wanted to be an actress, but when that didn't pan out, and after her first husband passed away, a relative offered her a job as a secretary for his film-distribution company in Miami. Quickly moving up to booking-agent, and then advertising and promotions, Wishman then began entertaining the notion of making her own films. And when the courts decided that nudity in and of itself was not indecent, Wishman found her niche, hit up her relatives for funds, and with no clue as to how to make a movie, wrote, directed, and produced Hideout in the Sun, where a couple of bank robbers on the lam take refuge in a convenient nudist camp. 

With the moral bedrock of the Hayes Code showing a few cracks in its foundation, Wishman pressed on and tested the censors further with Nude on the Moon, which helped move the Nudies out of the summer camps and into everyday life -- or in this case, outer-space, even though it was still banned in several states for going to far. As the Nudies gave way to the more explicit Roughies, Wishman went with the breeze and turned out the likes of Bad Girls Go to Hell and A Taste of Flesh that amped up the violence and degradation, and added a lurid, lesbian overtone that only added to the awfulsomeness of these scurvy sleaze-noirs. When the '60s gave way to the '70s, and soft-core went hard, Wishman followed suit, but according to legend, always left when the sex-scenes were filmed for The Love Toy and The Amazing Transplant, and often used a pseudonym: Louis Silverman, Dawn Whitman, and Doris Chasnick. Soon tired of the formula, Wishman's next project aimed a little higher. Inspired by The Godfather, and combining it with the payback motifs in Death Wish, all she needed was a star to pull off her gonzoidally offbeat tale of vengeance.

Chesty Morgan, born Lillian Wilczkowsky, came to America from Poland by way of Israel in the late '60s. Her 73-32-26-inch frame made her a big hit in the burlesque houses, where she also drew the attention of Wishman; who earlier had made a film with another famous stripper, Blaze Starr. But it was hardly a match made in heaven; it seems the director and star butted heads quite frequently while making Deadly Weapons, because Wishman felt the starlet was unprofessional. With the acting ability somewhere between Anna Nicole Smith and a cinder block, one can empathize, and you'll laugh as Chesty desperately tries to avoid staring into the camera while she fondles her massive trademarks, explaining why she spends half the movie staring at any convenient wall. And you'll laugh again as the cameraman struggles to keep both her face and her bosoms in the frame together. Chesty’s character was also dubbed, and badly, to hide her thick Polish accent. Still, the padded scene where she keeps calling the front desk to see if Mr. Hook has checked into the hotel is a priceless piece of trash cinema.

Despite all the headaches, Wishman did use Chesty again for the more infamous Double Agent 73, where Chesty has a spy-camera implanted in her breast, and only has a certain amount of time to complete her mission before the device will explode. And there was an unofficial sequel, The Immoral Three, where Wishman cashes in on Charlie's Angels by having the daughters of Chesty's character from Double Agent 73 avenge her death in the line of duty. But having had enough of Morgan, Wishman used a double, that was about as convincing as Lugosi's in Plan Nine from Outer Space, until the character was knocked off.

And I'm going to say it right now: there is absolutely nothing sexy or erotic at all about Chesty Morgan’s 73-inch breasts. The one word I can think of to describe them is simple enough, and that word is grotesque. Looking like an Adobe Photoshop manipulation that’s come to life and gone horribly, horribly wrong, these twin dreadnaughts sag past her navel, and her varicose veins are plainly visible. When not naked, she looks like a frumpy old woman, tottering around on six-inch platform shoes -- and, in fact, it's almost worse when she has clothes on! Teetering around constantly, the woman honestly appears to be perpetually on the verge of toppling over. And since nudity is the only thing going for this movie, unfortunately, most of the nudity will have you averting your eyes. Watching Chesty is like watching a train wreck. You can’t help but look, but after a while, your conscience gets the better of you and you stop, rub your eyes, and look away as you realize you’re not very proud of yourself. 

Truthfully, the other actors are just as bad, and coupled with the skanky incidental mood music, nonsensical editing, and quantum leaps in plot logic, Deadly Weapons will send your brain into vapor-lock long before the twist ending. And while the film isn't the sleaziest movie in the world -- it does have some camp value -- you can still occasionally catch a whiff of urine emanating from it. My advice is to get a running start and get blasted before viewing, or you won’t make the end. And allot yourself at least one half-hour of bathing time after viewing to get the stench off.

As for Wishman, after turning out the controversial transgender flick, Let Me Die a Woman, her career pretty much petered out by 1978. And when she and her films experienced a brief novelty-renaissance in the '90s, Wishman was always frank about her place as a female pioneer in exploitation filmmaking:

"I never thought of myself as a woman director. I just didn't think about it. I wanted to work and make movies. As I always said: Not Eastmancolor, but Wishman blood. And when I die, I will make films in hell."

Wow. Can't wait to see them.