Murder Weapon

So bad it's great. It was made at the very end of the 80s but still feels like the quintessential cheesy 80s slasher- it feels very 1986. This movie has an abundance of tits, sex, gore, bad acting, and awful dialogue. So it's perfect if you're looking for something to laugh at.

Dawn (B movie goddess Linnea Quigley) and her friend Amy ("Tenement" hottie Karen Russell) are the mentally unstable daughters of mobsters. They spend some time in a mental institution before being let back into the real world, and decide to invite a bunch of ex- boyfriends to a party to celebrate. Wouldn't you know it: a mad killer arrives to make mincemeat of the partygoers.

This ultra cheap trashy slasher from writer Ross A. Perron and the prolific David DeCoteau is hard to stick with for a while. It drags like you wouldn't believe, with a lot of set-up to sit through. Much time is devoted to institution flashbacks, with the sexy gals being interviewed by doctors played by Lenny Rose and token big name Lyle Waggoner. Fortunately, DeCoteau is smart enough to include a bit of sex and T & A to break up the tedium. It's also a mild bit of fun to watch a cast that also includes Eric Freeman of "Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2" infamy. But it isn't until late in the game that this gets a lot more amusing. The makeup effects are crude but deliciously over the top. The movie also ends with a pretty decent fire gag. And Linnea and Russell prove quite easy to watch.

A passable time killer for 83 minutes.

Six out of 10.

I can't believe that Quigley would want to produce this awful gore-slasher film! Badly acted, badly plotted and bad special effects! I'm surprised that former "Carol Burnett Show" co-star Lyle Waggoner would participate in this film as a counsellor. And there's also Cheesy B-movie star Karen Russell who plays Quigley's sister. And there's an actor that I'm sure played the Santa Clause killer in "Silent Night, Deadly Night 2", with a different name. Well this movie didn't hit theatre's no doubt, and it was made when the slasher craze was going out of style, until Wes Craven brought it all back in 1996 with "Scream", now that's a movie that Quigley should've produced! She was better in movies like "Return of the Living Dead", "Night of the Demons", and "Sorrority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama!"

To celebrate their release from a mental hospital, two hot young girls (played by blonde scream queen Linnea Quigley and sexy brunette Karen Russell) hold a party, inviting their ex-boyfriends (all stud-muffins—this is, after all, a David DeCoteau movie). While the party-goers chill, drink beer, play ball, soak in the pool and have sex with the two girls, someone starts to kill them one by one.

The first forty or so minutes of Murder Weapon are a real test of patience: overly talky, with numerous lengthy flashbacks in which the girls talk to a psychiatrist (played by Lyle Waggoner, Steve Trevor from Wonder Woman), only a smattering of T&A prevents this half of the film from being a total loss (wearing a skimpy bikini, Russell is given a full five minutes to oil her arms and legs).

Then, at roughly the 45 minute mark, a guy gets his head smashed to pulp with a sledgehammer and things pick up a bit from thereon-in; the talky stuff continues, but is now interspersed by sporadic sex and violence. Linnea Quigley strips off and humps a dude, a guy is force fed his own heart (a hand inexplicably erupting from his chest), someone gets a broken champagne bottle in the throat, and another guy is shot in the head. The effects are cheap and trashy, but enthusiastically gory, and the film ends in style with an impressive full body burn stunt, the killer doused with petrol and set on fire.

Overall, an unexceptional late '80s slasher, but worth persevering with for the inept but juicy deaths, and Quigley's sex scene. 5.5 out of 10, rounded up to 6 for IMDb.

the most interesting thing about this awful piece of trash is that there are three people in the credits with the last name "Squatpump". taking into consideration that "Betty Flinstone" and "Wilma Rubble" are also listed, i looked on the trusty imdb to see if these "Squatpumps" were real, and it does indeed seem that yolanda (the matriarch of the clan?) has a few more credits under her belt, including "The Usual Suspects", and may therefore actually exist. but back to the film: the wordless, pointless 10-minute intro actually made me wonder if the filmmakers couldn't afford sound equipment. the next scene, an agonizingly long dialogue scene between linnea quigley and her shrink, proved that yes, they did have sound equipment, but that they had apparently lost their sets, as the scene apparently takes place in a black hole.

so i actually continued watching this crap. and about an hour later i was treated to a downright hilarious sledgehammer-(mannequin)-head-beating and an even better shotgun-to-the-(mannequin)-head death. ultimately one of the frizzy-haired psycho girls killed everybody, apparently. i don't know. i actually was more entertained picturing david decoteau, who directed under the odd alias "Ellen Cabot", showing up to the set every day in a smart grey skirt suit and sensible shoes (as, in my mind, someone named Ellen Cabot would).