Murder Weapon

My review was written in January 1990 after watching the film on Cinema Home Video cassette.

From the makers of "Deadly Embrace" comes another minimalist video feature, aimed squarely at fans ol scream queen Linnea Quigley. Static, talky nature of this cheapie is a big drawback.

Incomprehensible plot line, which is unusually scatterbrained even for the video thriller genre, has Quigley and buxom Karen Russell as nutcases let loose from the asylum who invite some boys over for a party. Some maniac is killing off the boys and the bogus ending comes as no surprise.

Before then, the star (who also produced) removes her clothes for some sexy footage, while Russell is uncharacteristically prudish this time out.

Script crudely establishes that both heroines come from gangster families, but little is made of this irrelevant plot peg. Executive producer David DeCoteau, directing as "Ellen Cabot", fails to generate much humor or campiness here. Likewise, guest star Lyle Waggoner has little to do in his token role as a shrink.

Tech credits are threadbare, with a confusing editing structure and many scenes consisting of simply talking heads.

This fun slasher was made when the slasher craze was going out of style.

But it's still enjoyable. From the cheesy dialogue, Linnea Quigley and Karen Russell getting naked, and the very gory death scenes made this movie very entertaining. I'm a fan of Linnea's she never fails to entertain me. Her dialogue that she is always given is so hilarious. She's a great comedian. Anyway, I give this movie a 9! Great cheesy fun!

Though a bit confusing at times.

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!"

This movie is a bad movie. But after watching an endless series of bad horror movies, I can say that it is a little different from many I have seen. Not in the plot, which is a fairly regular slasher story, but more the way the scenes are cut. Murder Weapon gives us a lot of inane dialogue scenes, but they go on for a lot longer than in most movies of this type. Because of this some of the victims seem slightly less like cardboard cut-outs. Just slightly. I had a difficult time figuring out exactly what was happening at the beginning and kept wondering if certain events were dream sequences. My favorite scene is when two guys are on the run from the killer and take refuge in a car. In the glove compartment, they find a handgun. "Thank you, God!" one of them happily exclaims. That guy's head suddenly looks like a mannequin's head, and it went on for just enough time for me to wonder, "What is that? Where is that mannequin in relation to the two guys in the car?" Then BOOM! The head explodes and I figured out that it was supposed to be one of the guys in the car getting his head shot off with a shotgun. I love that scene, but the movie is a very bad movie. 3/10.

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.