Reviewed by
Christopher Armstead
Where in the hell does Media Blasters find this stuff? This movie ‘Posed for Murder’ came as a triple feature disc featuring a trio of ‘lost’ movies with the other two called ‘The Death Collector’ and ‘The Disturbance’. Media Blasters has like a half dozen of these triple feature disks which after doing the complex math adds up to like eighteen movies. But damn, based on ‘Posed for Murder’ I don’t know if I’ll be able to muster up the courage to watch the other two movies on the disk much less the fifteen movies spanned on those other five disks.
Say hello to Laura Shea (Charlotte J. Helmkamp), former centerfold for the mythical Thrill Magazine. Yes, this is the 1980’s so don't be too surprised at the lovely Ms. Helmkamp’s appearance as she certainly has a lotta top but a behind so flat that at times it looks to be inverted. I know this lopsidedness may shock some of you today as we tend to prefer symmetry in our women in this century, but back then this was actually okay, even preferred by a large number of the male population. No sir, I would not among those numbers. Though Laura isn’t ashamed of exposing herself to the world, she is trying to distance herself from it as she is taking acting classes from a very strange acting teacher to enhance her acting skills.
Little does Laura know that there is somebody out there spying on her as we get see things from this person’s point of view with this cat breathing so heavy that Darth Vader thinks he needs to invest in a respirator. The question in this movie is ‘who is stalking Laura’, and it could be just about anybody. It could be the super creepy magazine publisher Clifford Devereaux who has is demanding that Laura pose in his Thrill Girl of the year pictorial, or she’s heading back to the Honky Tonk. Laura doesn’t really want to do this but then her sick mom calls because she’s out of meds which leaves our poor busty but broke girl with very little choice in the matter. I’m not to sure what Laura’s mom looks like but that voice we heard on the phone sounded an awful lot like Milton Berle.
Or maybe it’s the super freaky maintenance man stalking Laura, a man who has built a shrine to all kinds of naked ladies in his shed. Or perhaps it’s the planet’s most physically unnatractive schlock film director Serge LaRue? It could be Laura’s new muscle bound boyfriend with the Stallone lip and the bad mullet, or perhaps it’s Laura’s best friend Terry who seems just a little resentful that her tits aren’t as big as Laura’s and her ass not nearly as flat. Laura’s ex-boyfriend could also be the heavy breathing weirdo considering my man just got out of jail, or maybe it’s Laura’s slimy agent or Serge LaRue’s creepy producer buddy. As you can plainly see the list of suspects is lengthy but considering one by one these people are getting murdered by just standing there allowing somebody with a knife to casually walk up to them and stab them in the gut, it will become fairly obvious who is doing all this killing. The question is why? For satisfying answers to that might I suggest you watch another movie.
If ‘Posed for Murder’ has anything going for it, and we’re reaching here, it is THE ultimate 80’s movie. Somebody somewhere should bury this movie in a time vault so that future generations can have a good idea what the 1980’s were all about. Big hair, curly mullets, loud obnoxious synth laden music with equally loud and obnoxious electronic drums, leg warmers… even worn by men. One of my best friends walked in at where I was working one 80’s summer wearing a pair of suede boots and leg warmers. We might’ve only been teenagers and I realize that this was a time of some sexual ambiguity but I told my boy that we can’t hang out if he insists on wearing those. Screw that. To top off the pure 80’s theme my girl Charlotte Helmkamp was driving a 300ZX replete with a T-top. The only thing that marred the total 80’s feel was the fact that the mulletted boyfriend was driving a Corvette. An 80’s mainstay to be sure, but not nearly as representative of the decade as say… wait for it… the Trans-Am baby.
Once we get over the awesome 80’s-ness of ‘Posed for Murder’ we still have the movie itself to deal with and that, my friends, is a struggle all unto itself. I’m not even sure what genre to stick this thing as it exists on island all by its lonesome. It’s kind of a slasher flick in a way with people waiting around patiently to get gutted, and I think it has some thriller aspects while consisting of no actual thrills. It’s looks like it kinda wants to be some kinda sleazy exploitation movie but Ms. Helmkamp only flashes her breasts a couple of times and director Brian Thomas Jones probably spends more times focusing in on the mulleted boyfriends naked ass during a fake sex scene, and he also spends an inordinate amount of time locked in on this dudes numerous work out scenes than locking in on our lone naked woman. You would think a movie that has a central theme surrounding the shenanigans at a men’s magazine would have naked women all over place. They flipped the script on us, and not in a good way.
In between all the sweaty dudes constantly working out we have to deal with Ms. Helmkamp’s inability to act and some questionable plot elements. I particularly liked when our eventual muscle bound bad guy voluntarily stuck his hand in a whirring garbage disposal to grab a knife that he didn’t need to kill this 100 pound woman. But that’s roids for you. You see, this cat was killing these people to purge the world of the dirty whore, which could’ve been easily accomplished by simply killing the dirty whore outright and not everybody who had the misfortune of passing by the whore on the street. But then he wouldn’t have had the opportunity to purify the whore with his magical dick. I’m simply paraphrasing what my man said.
If ‘Posed for Murder’ just wasn’t so damn dull and slow and had more than one reluctant naked woman in it this could’ve been a all-time craptastic classic. As it stands now, unless we get a ‘director’s cut’, it is simply a testament to the sexual ambiguity of a long forgotten decade.
