For Murder Weapon, one of David DeCoteau’s first mainstream films after a half-decade in gay porn, the director goes incognito via his “Ellen Cabot” nom de plume. However, there’s no mistaking DeCoteau’s penny-stretching, runtime-padding work from the get-go: a superfluous 10-minute wordless prologue that at least establishes, re-establishes and establishes again one character’s fondness for rubbing and re-rubbing and rubbing again tanning lotion onto her big-haired, big-breasted self.
To celebrate their simultaneous release from a sanitarium, mafia princesses Amy (Karen Russell, Vice Academy) and BFF Dawn (Linnea Quigley, DeCoteau’s Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama ) invite all their boyfriends — ex and current — over to their house. Except for the metal rocker (Mike Jacobs Jr., DeCoteau’s American Rampage), who looks like Jerry Seinfeld dressed as Mötley Crüe for Halloween, they appear entirely interchangeable. One of them (Allen First, also American Rampage) has a shaving fetish and convinces Amy to let him Schick her legs while she sits on the toilet.
Then the guys start to get killed, in bursts of gore so unexpected that the first instance — sledgehammer, meet head — is bound to catch you off-guard, even though I just told you. That makes Murder Weapon unique among the DeCoteau oeuvre and, amazingly, the unpredictability doesn’t stop there. Now, that doesn’t mean he fails to deliver his usual completely gratuitous and entirely overlong softcore sex scenes; in fact, each starlet gets her turn, with Quigley’s being the most memorable. Russell may be more beautiful, but only Quigley gives a rousing round of what appears to be “seizure sex,” concluding with nipples so out-and-about, they look like pop-up turkey timers.
For virtually any other movie featuring a post-Carol Burnett Show Lyle Waggoner (Danger USA), mentioning Lyle Waggoner’s appearance would be among its 10 most odd elements. Not with Murder Weapon, so strange it almost approaches a surrealistic genius of happy accidents. Knowing what I know now, wondering what the flick would be stripped of all abnormalities is something I don’t want to consider. To borrow a quote from Amy, it “makes my tits shrink just thinking about it.” —Rod Lott