Double Agent 73

Super spy Jane, sporting a 73 inch bust, a blonde wig, and some of the most outrageous outfits(outfits that would make Cher cringe), is hot on the trail of exposing a drug ring and capturing its drug czar. To do this, she must go undercover as a regular gal out for guys to buy her drinks and the like. That's right...she is suppose to be a normal girl just out at the club, zoo, or any old place. Not quite. She sticks out like a sore thumb!...well, okay, two sore thumbs! This film carries on the tradition of sleazy exploitation captured so nicely in Doris Wishman's and Chesty Morgan's first collaboration, Deadly Weapons. Actually, this film is a lot better. It has a bigger budget, some better acting(not much better), and a better story. Chesty still can't act. Her acting range goes from quietly disinterested to disinterested. She has no facial expression at all except for one scene where she pulls tape off of one of her breasts. Maybe Wishman wanted realism and used a real adhesive. This time around Chesty has to remove her blouse and bra to take secret pictures with the camera that has been implanted in one of her breasts. She takes many pictures. Big surprise. The big difference in this film, however, is that Wishman has some fairly brutal killings and shows a good bit of gore. She pays an obvious homage to Alfred Hitchcock and the Psycho shower scene. Also, for my money, the second best thing after Morgan(alright, the third best thing) is the music used in the film. What a great soundtrack...it was lively and funny. It was an action-type score played over and over that really made the action on the screen seem all the more farcial. Kudos to Ms. Wishman, Ms. Morgan, and company. Thanks for the mammaries...I mean memories!

In a comment I wrote about Doris Wishman's 'Nude On The Moon' recently I described it as one of those cult "classics" that you only really watch just so you can say you've seen it. Well this is even more the case with 'Double Agent 73', a movie which is literally a chore to sit through. Despite having a running time of just over an hour and ten minutes I'd say it's still about twenty minutes too long. Wishman's freakish discovery Chesty Morgan plays super spy Jane Genet (hyuk, hyuk) a.k.a. Agent 73, cos she's got a 73 inch bust, see? Chesty can't act to save her life, and is seriously unsexy. I really don't see her appeal, and it's no real surprise that her career as an actress was short lived. The plot? Agent 73 is called in to help kill drug lord Toplar. She's given an address book with some leads but as no one knows what Toplar looks like she's told to photograph all the bad guys she kills, and they'll sort it out later. She does this via a camera surgically implanted in her left breast. Some of her methods of execution are also novel. My fave is death by ice cubes. If you're a big time fan of Seventies sleaze you might enjoy 'Double Agent 73' a lot more than I did, but my response was a yawn and please pass me the Russ Meyer.

I had heard this was an unbelievable movie before I actually watched it, but even that didn't prepare me for what I witnessed when I sat down to watch it. Where should I start? Well, I'll start with star Chesty Morgan. She is an extremely unlikely movie heroine. She's not very attractive, for one thing. Although she was in her 30s when she appeared in this movie, her face looks about 15 years older than her actual age. Then there are those gigantic... well, you know. I did not find the constant revealing of them to be erotic in any way. They look grotesque and unnatural.

The way that the movie was filmed just makes the experience even worse. It was obviously shot silently, and director Doris Wishman tries in vain to hide this by long periods of time with no talking. And when people do talk, most of the time it's shot in a way where you don't see the speaker's face and moving lips. Wishman also brings in next to no production values to the movie, resulting in such things as a hospital sequence shot in someone's house. But the biggest sin Wishman makes is that the movie is so boring. There's almost no plot, and even with just a 73 minute running time it goes on and on past the breaking point. This movie is a chore to sit through

"Double Agent 73" is an amateurish and inept movie, yet there is an honesty about its amateurishness and ineptness: you get the feeling that the people involved didn't want to cheat you, they really did try to make an espionage / action movie, they just lacked the talent and budget required. Sure, you could complain all day long about the pointlessly long shots of, say, horse-racing, or the sped-up "car chase", or the lack of logic in the story, but you also have to give credit to the film's creativity: it's not every day you can see a punch with the breast replacing the fist, or death via ice cubes stuffed into the victim's mouth! Chesty Morgan gives a somewhat catatonic performance (she's no worse than anyone else in the cast, mind you), and there can be little argument that her breasts are unerotic (bigger is not always better), however she does have a pretty face and nice legs. (*1/2)

So hard to rate. I want to give it a low score for being one of the worst films I've seen in ages. But I want to give it a high score for being absolutely hilarious. I guess it all depends on how you take the genre. If you're a fan of grindhouse and low-budget exploitation flicks, look no further. If you don't get why people find bad movies good, maybe this isn't for you.

While I think Chesty's unfeasibly large breasts were somehow supposed to be titillating (excuse the pun), they're actually rather unfortunate. As the plot revolves entirely around her hauling them out at every opportunity, it's a bit like watching a car wreck. You want to look away, but can't. Her 'acting' is self conscious verging on just plain scared.

The cameraperson hoses their rig around zooming and panning with total disregard for their shadow. If they'd been able to afford a mic boom instead of badly overdubbing, I'm sure the camera would've caught that too.

The cutaways are absolutely classic. Found footage is spliced in with total disregard for what's around it. My favourite scene involves a car blowing up. If you look really closely, you might just notice it's not the car they were driving. Especially as it's a different colour. And make. And it's not in the same place…

In short, Double Agent 73 is pure genius. You couldn't make a movie this bad if you tried. And that's exactly what makes it so good.