(1973/USA)
Reviewed By-Kit Gavin Directed by Doris Wishman Starring Zsa Zsa [Chesty Morgan], Harry Reems, and Greg Reynolds [Richard Towers a.k.a. Gaylord St James] Source: Something Weird DVD Region 1 NTSC [United States]
Platform shoed Crystal [Morgan], is a supposedly successful advertising executive "Beautiful" and "with loads of dough" she prefers and wants to be the wife of a small time mobster named Larry [St James]. She also looks after her father, and garners business allegedly owing to her sizeable assets (yes those!). Larry, unfortunately, is in trouble with the Mob, lead by an eyepatched hood refered to as "Captain Hook". For he has been double crossing them. Later, Larry is killed off by the Mob, and understandably Crystal is upset by his death. Albeit briefly. She therefore seeks revenge on his killing. Through a variety of ways, including participating [badly] in strip shows, she sets about tracking down Larry’s killers, including Harry Reems, and suffocating them in her enormous chest. Having avenged her dead lover, and in an unusual twist ending, Crystal discovers where true loyalties lie closer to home.
Cast in the lead role of Crystal is one of the most bizarre icons of drive-in trasho seventies cinema, Chesty Morgan, in her screen debut under the simple pseudonym of "Zsa-Zsa". "Chesty Morgan", in reality a stipper called Lillian Wilczkowsky of Polish extraction, was discovered by director Wishman, and despite her relatively sparse screen history (she was cast in a Fellini movie) made an undeniable, indelible and memorable impact on B-movie history. This impact was not due to any acting talent, for Morgan could not act, her expression seems to remain static throughout the film, with the rare occasion she shows her decayed teeth; Morgan was not attractive, in fact she had a rather un-alluring face, was plump and short, but she was in possession of the most enormous bosom, reputedly a 73 inch bust (!!). She was also in her early 40’s when the film was made, the wig she is wearing seems to be covering grey hair, which pokes out from time to time. Agreed, older women can be attractive but Morgan, in her attempt to be sexy, fails on every level despite her numerous topless scenes. Her face remains sullen throughout most of the film. As well as that, and as can be seen from the film, Morgan’s breasts were not even attractive, not pert and full like the bosoms and buxom tits of actresses such as Uschi Digart, and Shari Eubank which adorned the epics of Russ Meyer, but this were pendulous, droopy and had protruding veins. In fact, their presence might even be seen as outlandish and freaky, more so than could ever be deemed erotic. But they were large, and they really are the "star" of the film (and it’s pseudo-sequel Double Agent 73).
Also cast in the movie, together with a majority of unknowns, is Harry Reems. Reems was and is better known as a handlebar moustachioed porno star from the late sixties on until the late eighties, starring in the cult porno DEEP THROAT with Linda Lovelace, and appearing in a handful of porno films and hardcore sex scenes with Traci Lords, the underage porno starlet. Here Reems keeps his clothes on for most of the movie, aside from a few moments in his swimming trunks, and he plays a sniggering knife wielding killer. Also cast is "Gaylord St. James", who had played the vengeful Dr. Collingwood in the reviled yet celebrated classic THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT. The film itself was shot in and around Las Vegas, but what is apparently a lively vibrant glitzy city looks fairly drab and more like the dirty suburbs of Detroit.
As always with Wishman films, they were dubbed by different voice artists in post-production, but this does not improve matters. Likewise, Wishman’s direction, isn’t even direction by numbers but is staggeringly bad and at best, could be described as banal, focussing once again on inanimate objects such as furniture and the like make things lively. There is also so woeful padding out of the film with a boring can-pan performance which Wishman shot in a hum drum travelogue fashion. Wishman herself had worked as a director and writer since the early part of the Sixties, mainly with boring sexploiters such as NUDE ON THE MOON and such like. Occasionally her work, though no more competent was enlivened by interesting and unusual entries, such as the two movies starring Morgan, and another pseudo-thriller, THE AMAZING TRANSPLANT which dealt with homicidal tendencies following a penis transplant (!!). Even towards the end of her life and career, with the slasher, A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER, Wishman’s talents had not improved. However, her movies, cheap in the extreme still retain a camp kitsch value and the one under review here is no exception.
Narrative is minimal, and scripting is awful, as seems to be generally the par for the course with movies by the jaded Wishman. Despite this, the film is enjoyable and an extremely trashy voyage into the heyday of low budget un-PC U.S. cinema from the early 1970’s. Despite the fact that title card purports the film to have been made in 1980, this is a brazen lie, and the film is more than likely to have been made in the early years of the 1970s. Morgan and her bosom are the star of the show but the film is also enlivened by hideous 70’s fashions, wigs, color schemes, and glittery kitschness are what makes this movie so, well, entertaining. Not good by any stretch of the imagination, but entertaining, no doubt.
The film was doubtless shot on the extremely cheap, and that fact shines through in every frame captured on celluloid here. The film looks brash, colourful, but muddy smeary and grainy; but no doubt this is how it has always looked and no matter how much cleaning up takes place, it will always have this look and feel. Some of the scenes seem badly shot or out of focus but again, this is how they were shot and not the fault of the dvd or materials used to put the DVD out. The film is presented in open-matte, and full frame. Sound is mono, but the film would hardly benefit, it at all, from souping up the audio track. At times, even during the film, the sound track (made up of library music) sounds jarringly familiar, such as a guitar riff, repeated over and over, sounds staggeringly like the one used in the US release of TORSO. Hmmm…
So why do I enjoy this film (and it’s counterpart Double Agent 73). God only knows, perhaps I need help?!? In conclusion this film is pure cinematic trash at it’s all time best/worst, depending upon, naturally, the sensibilities of the viewer. Truth be told, bottom of the barrel scuzz which perhaps should have been lost, but thankfully ( I write with a perverse sense of glee) they haven’t been. Morgan is thoroughly un-erotic and unappealing as an actress, and the direction of the film would make the flesh on a rotting corpse seem fragrant by comparison. Did I mention that the script is awful too? The dialogue is banal and so badly written, it beggars imagination. The film actually must not be taken seriously, and anyone who does, well it will be their own undoing, as the film is unintentionally hilarious and hugely campy. Silly, bizarre, sleazy, this is a disc worth having in the collection, if nothing else to bring out for a drunken stag party.
Extras include a picture gallery for various Wishman films. Also included are the two trailer for the two films which Wishman and Morgan collaborated on, both being overlong and almost erring on tedium. Also included, and amusingly is another of one of those bizarre little educational films which Something Weird manage to dig up from somewhere – this one in keeping with the presence of Chesty Morgan, being an educational film from the 1950’s instructing women on how to enlarge their breasts the natural way, which is entertainingly silly and amusing. Otherwise extras are pretty thin, an interview or audio commentary with Wishman might have been fun, as this was released when Wishman was alive. Unfortunately, given the experience of listening to the commentary on her A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER, and her lack of familiarity on the concept of audio commentaries, perhaps it is for the best that she isn’t there. None the less, it might have been interesting, given that she and Morgan didn’t care for each others talents, in front of or behind the camera.
Picture: 2 BITCH SLAPS Audio: 2 BITCH SLAPS Extras: 2 BITCH SLAPS Overall: 2.5 BITCH SLAPS [for sheer excess and guilty pleasure value!!]
