Double Agent 73 (1975)
Directed by Doris Wishman
Something Weird DVD
THE FILM
BOOBS!
The boob as entertainment. The boob as a fetish. The boob as an indelible, primal image. The boob as the pivotal plot point for an intrigue-filled Secret Agent adventure!
Yeah! It's another Chesty and Doris number. Chesty, who will do "whatever", and Doris, whose mind is continually NOT having regular human thoughts, have teamed up for their second film. They've made this very parochial epic about a Secret Agent with a top secret camera hidden inside one of her not-so-secret tremendous breasts. (The other breast plays 8-tracks and is just as pendulous.) Secret agents, communists, heroin rings, nudist colonies and some strange anti-cool fashions conglomerate into a series of scenes that seem like absolute madness...except that when you hear interviews with Doris, she is as sane as sane can be. She is your Gramma and she is employed in making a movie starring a woman who has a 73" chest.
The boob stuff is strange enough. If the plot of this movie makes it seem like a "Crazy-Ass" version of Lady Street Fighter, than the use of Chesty's pair is a lot like an all-boob version of Freaks. They're out...a lot...we spend long strings of minutes looking at them and they're never, ever anything but odd looking. One begins to feel sympathy for her after awhile. Does her back hurt? Is it comfortable sleeping? People must stare at her a lot, many of them in confusion. Does Doris feel the sympathy? Probably not. All this strange leering is simply the way Doris does her thing.
And, Chesty just stands there and lets Doris do "whatever". The look on Ms. Morgan's face very plainly says "Yes, I am so, so sexy and, yes, it is a burden." But, that doesn't quite match with what we actually see: a middle-aged woman with dangerously large breasts. Chesty does look a bit dazed at times. From boredom or something else, I couldn't say. During highly charged scenes, she looks at the camera as if she really thought she was a secret agent and is suddenly very confused by the presence of a camera not hidden in a boob. Maybe the real premise of the film is that Agent 73 is being tailed by another woman with a camera in her boob. That's why Chesty keeps looking at the camera. Why does that woman have her boob out too?
The thing about this film that keeps dogging my mind is that Chesty plays a top Secret Agent within the U.S. Government. (They say her character's name 30 or 40 times but I always think of her as "Chesty". Jane, maybe?) She has that camera in her boob that seems to have a built-in flash. She wears different, strange clothes in almost every scene... And, this is all presented to us via the glorious mise-en-scene of Doris Wishman...we see the feet, the nudists play their volleyball, strange edits, kickass random music, at-home locations, familiar looking people. It all coalesces together into a steamy bouillabaisse of smells and nipples. Pair this one with Lady Street Fighter for a Very Special evening with two cool ladies.
AUDIO AND VIDEO
Is "fab" a proper descriptor here? I have the SWV double-feature set with this film and Deadly Weapons. 73 looks great and sounds great in that way that all of Doris's films look and sound. My only note is that the old VHS I used to own contained a very brief moment that isn't on the DVD. When Chesty's friend shows up (the one who showers and is killed by mistake) on the DVD, they say Hi and then Chesty is suddenly leaving and her friend is in the shower. Doris!!! In the old VHS, Chesty says that she has to go to the store and her friend says that she's going to take a shower. That oddness is print trouble, not Doris.
EXTRAS
This disc was pre-SWV's epic discs. So, there are just a few extras but, rest assured, they are Boob-Related.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Setting aside all my blab, what really amazes me is that this film exists. What made Doris attempt an action-filled spy thriller, a la James Bond? I can't say. What made her think Chesty (someone who just seems generally awkward even when walking around) would be the perfect star for this intrigue? Who knows? I can only raise my hands to the heavens and let loose a "Hallelujah!"
God bless the day Doris met Chesty.
— Dan Budnik, 09.14.11 |
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