The Immoral Three (1975)

Chesty Morgan reportedly pissed off Doris Wishman sufficiently during the making of the second 'Agent 73' movie that she dropped Morgan completely from the third film in the series - The Immoral Three (1975).  As a result, the trilogy found itself being rounded out by a strange quasi sequel that kills off the heroine of the previous films within the first few minutes - although this isn't the last we see of her, as she appears later in the film in a series of flashbacks.  Not that she's played by Chesty Morgan in any of theses appearances, of course.  Instead, we have a somewhat less chesty actress, who also doubles up in a different role, playing one of the film's three leads.  Because, it seems, during her career as a secret agent, Agent 73 got pregnant three times, gibing birth to three daughters, all of whom ended up being fostered or adopted.  (While Agent 73's equivalent to Q branch clearly didn't issue her with any contraception devices, they must have had some pretty good rejuvenation technology as the Agent 73 seen in the 'present', being murdered, not only appears to be the same age as her younger self in the flashbacks, but also the same age  middle daughter, played by the same actress, is in the 'present').  These three meet for the first time at the funeral, where their late mother's lawyer and her former spy boss fill them in on Agent 73's career.  On top of this, it turns out that they've been left an inheritance of three million dollars, with the catch that to get it, they have to find which of six suspects - who could include their biological fathers - murdered their mother.  The money will be split between the survivors of the mission.

Now, it's pretty obvious from the off who is behind the various attempts on the lives of sisters as they investigate the suspects, (although the film does provide another, equally obvious twist at the end), but plot dynamics are pretty much irrelevant in what is, essentially, a softcore porno movie.  The plots of such films exist solely to provide a series of scenarios whereby the main female protagonist or protagonists, get naked and have sex, more often than not in novel locations.  On that count, The Immoral Three delivers to the best of its resources, with one sister having sex with a stranger in a lift, another seduces a gardener by fellating a banana, but not before molested by a priapic delivery boy, while the third gets pawed by a horrible old man.  They also all take off their clothes and wander around naked at the slightest excuse.  The three leading actresses are interesting, not because of their acting abilities, which are, at best, serviceable, but because, as was often the case in seventies sex movies, they don't look remotely like the sort of photographic models you'd see in contemporary adult magazines.  They are decidedly not at all glamourous, bore 'girl-next-door' types.  Only the moody eldest daughter, who refuses to become involved in the hunt for their mother's killer, comes anywhere close to looking like a centre fold girl.  But not that close.

While you'd expect the film's running time to be more or less evenly split between the three female leads, this isn't the case, with the middle daughter, (who also played their mother), getting the lion's share of the acting, while the youngest barely gets a look in.  Possibly this reflected the fact that Wishman considered her the strongest performer of the three, both in the sex scenes and the dramatic sequences.  Certainly, she seems able to keep a straight face more regularly than her 'older sister', who is quite clearly laughing as she is attacked by that delivery boy.  To be fair, that and most of the early scenes do seem to be pitched as being broadly comedic, in its last act, the film shifts into a totally different gear, with the blood flowing and the bodies piling up as things get dark and serious.  Indeed, the final scenes come on like the last act of 'Macbeth', as characters are dispatched, often unexpectedly, left, right and centre, resulting in a pretty bleak ending for what is, ostensibly, a light-hearted sex movie.  It's quite a contrast to the average British sex comedy of the era, with the only analogy, in terms of climactic tonal shift, that comes to mind is The Playbirds (1978), which has an even more downbeat ending.

That the film is cheaply made goes without saying - no matter where any particular scene is meant to be set, it is clearly still Florida.  The only possible exception being the Las Vegas scenes where, in between all the stock footage of casino exteriors, it does look as if there are a handful of on location street shots involving the main actress.  The supposed globe-hopping of the action does, at least, mimic the plot structure of the average Bond movie, which represents the film's only real attempt to parody contemporary mainstream spy films.  I have to say here that the version of The Immoral Three that I saw was missing nearly fifteen minutes of footage and had the on screen title Too Hot For Hell.  Quite why the footage was cut isn't clear, it certainly wasn't to excise sex, nudity or violence (and let's face it, doing so would be a weird decision with regard to a porn movie) - all of which are still present in abundance.  It seems unlikely that it was to trim an excessive running time as, on its original release, the film only ran seventy five minutes.  Whatever the reasons for them, the cuts - which are abrupt and crudely made - render some parts of the film incoherent, particularly early on, where one of the flashbacks is cut short.  Despite this, I can't deny that I enjoyed The Immoral Three quite a lot.  Sure, by any objective critical standard, it's rubbish, but, within the limitations and conventions of its genre, it is highly entertaining rubbish.