Big Zapper (1973) User Reviews

This movie makes 'Charlie's Angels' look good!

[helltopo · 2/10 · 16 July 2004]

Having caught this movie late one night on cable, I had to see it again just to check if it was as bad as I remembered. It was actually worse. Big Zapper is an attempt to cash in on the 'Kung Fu' craze & also the U.S female action sleaze of Pam Grier & Cheri Caffaro which fails miserably.

Linda Marlowe stars as Harriet Zapper, a private eye who is targeted for elimination by a gangland boss. Ms Marlowe has absolutely no martial arts skills, and the inept director Lindsay Shonteff in the days before CGI has no means of disguising this. - usually she kills her inept opponents with a single limp punch!.

The film features plenty of action, but it's all badly done & the director can't seem to make up his mind whether this is a comedy or a thriller!. One minute she is punching her enemies through walls like a WB cartoon character, the next she's bloodily skewering a guy with a knife.

If the action is badly done, the comedy is even worse, her sidekick being a moron who spends the whole film trying to get her to have sex with him. Big Zapper is 70's British cinema at it's very lowest - the acting and cinematography are laughable & it's a film so bad it isn't even unintentionally funny. Shonteff was also responsible for a couple of equally bad spy spoofs featuring actor Nicky Henson & Gareth (New Avengers) Hunt .

If you are a fan of female action cinema, this has to be seen to be believed, just to make one appreciate Hong Kong cinema & U.S grindhouse even more!.

A nadir for the GB film industry

[Dan-359 · 26 September 1999]

This has to mark a low point for the British film industry; it is cheap, slapdash, sleazy, painfully unfunny but, most unforgivably, totally dull. Most of the actors look embarrassed to be involved with the exception of Gary Hope, as Kono, who throws himself into the part with such vigour that he reaches a crescendo in the first scene and has nowhere to go from there. The tone lurches unevenly from one scene to the next: the film opens with the brutal murder of a young girl (naked, of course)after which we are treated to Zapper getting dressed, explaining in a monotonous Marlowe-style voiceover how her boyfriend, Rock Hard, keeps pestering her for a whipping session. From here on the violence is fairly comical, at least I assume the kung-fu scenes are supposed to be funny.

Naturally all this "action" is bogged down by shots of Zapper driving around London, so Shonteff tosses in gratuitous nudity every so often to perk up the interest. When we eventually reach the climax, so to speak, the ending is so abrupt as to be almost non-existent, thus denying those who have had the fortitude to sit through the whole thing the bonus of a payoff.

The concept of a female private eye, along with spoofing James Bond and so on, is a reasonable one; but what these films need more than anything else is a strong visual style and this effort is completely lacking in any style, visual or otherwise. The sets are dismal, as are the locations; the costumes are tacky and the theme music repeated throughout. I thought Shonteff's 'Devil Doll' was bad, but I suppose everything is relative.

Round and round the garden like a teddy bear...

[JohnSeal · 3/10 · 23 January 2005]

This feeble private eye 'spoof' features a catatonic Linda Marlowe as Harriet 'Big' Zapper, a mini-skirted PI out to solve the murder of a young woman. She's opposed by Kono (Gary Hope), a pimp who has a sideline in counterfeit money and dresses a bit like Ronnie 'Z-Man' Barzell, and his gang of inept henchmen. Her loyal sidekick is an impossibly randy loser named Rock Hard (Richard Monette) who spends most of the film snoozing in the back of Harriet's Mercedes in between shags. Screenwriter-director Lindsay Shonteff wavers for the first few reels between straight ahead spoof (witness Big Zapper's badly animated glowing vagina) and video nasty, but wisely decides to amp up the silliness for the film's finale. There's not much to recommend here: the action scenes are dreadfully staged, and the comedy relentlessly unfunny. The film does score points unintentionally for London film fans, who get a nice glimpse of the exterior of the old Angel tube station before its complete reconstruction in the early 1990s.

Dirty Harriet

[kimberlymhn · 1/10 · 22 September 2007]

Director Lindsay Shonteff apparently saw himself as neglected genius frozen out by the film establishment on both sides of the Atlantic, but on the basis of Big Zapper, they were right! It is simply awful in every department - bad acting, a terrible script, shoddy action and lame attempts at 'humour'. The only thing good about this movie is Shonteff gives the female lead all the action, unlike so many action heroines who are relegated to second fiddle behind a male star. Unfortunately, Linda Marlowe, who must have been cast because a slight facial resemblance to the wonderful Diana Rigg is thoroughly unconvincing as a screen fighter. Then again, the likes of Pam Grier or Reiko Ike would probably look just as bad being directed by Shonteff.The action scenes are simply absurd, with pride of place going to a scene near the end of the movie. Confronted by about ten guys, she somersaults through the air landing behind a handy heavy machine gun and shoots them down like ninepins! As a fan of female action cinema, this one was a huge disappointment. looking at the late Mr Shonteff's website it seems there was a sequel made which features the respected actor Alan Lake as a villain. It's a measure of how low things had got in the British film industry that he was forced to act in stuff like this.

Great action! Great film-making!

[justinkimberlake · 9/10 · 7 August 2005]

As the female version of Dirty Harry and one of the most vicious comic book adaptations Big Zapper is a cult favorite that lives on! After Sin City it has become even more acceptable and one can see that it was just ahead of it's time!

It's an unbelievable mixture of surreal sex scenes and nasty slap stick violence and the cynical attitude of the main character is absolutely unbelievable! Plus the way the goofs are saved by the voice over like "I had time just to change my clothes" when Zapper's outfit is changed in the middle the scene!

Absolutely great work!

Harriet's Back In Town!

[Yonilikka-22 · 9/10 · 8 June 2018]

There is a great deal of snobbery directed at low budget movies. 1973's 'Big Zapper' is a good example of this. It is certainly not a lowpoint in British cinema, as one reviewer has stated. This energetic spoof of private eye movies is directed by Lindsay Shonteff, and stars the luscious Linda Marlowe as white-clad, sexy investigator 'Harriet Zapper'. After putting an ad in the Village Gazette, she is hired by wealthy 'Jeremiah Horn' ( Jack May ) to find his missing daughter 'Pandora'. The trail takes her to the deranged crime-boss 'Kono' ( Gary Hope ) who dispatches an army of killers to deal with Harriet. Of course, she's more than capable of looking after herself.

Why did I enjoy this movie so much? Possibly because it serves as a perfect antidote to the increasingly anodyne fare currently served up by Hollywood. C.G.I. is awful when used as the focal point of a movie. 'Big Zapper' is tremendous, insane fun, and Marlowe is a knockout in the title role. Its impossible to take seriously a movie which features characters with names like 'Rock Hard' and 'Strawberry Jim'. There are the odd moments of Pythonesque humour, such as a bright light appearing when Harriet drops her knickers, and a severed head uttering an apology. Never mind the low budget, just enjoy the ride.

Anti-film at its best!

[karlericsson · 10/10 · 17 October 2001]

The fearsome and paid swordsman challenges Zapper. His head flies through the air and lands in the arms of his boss. The head says to the boss 'Sorry boss' and then is silent. Zapper undresses in front of the bad guy. Instead of the beaver You see a flashing star, blinding the bad guy. Everything is played by the actors as if it was Shakespeare, but it isn't Shakespeare - it's far better than that! This isn't pretentious society-glorification. Taken to its maximum (or minimum?) or, in any case, to its extreme, this movie proves that society cannot be taken seriously and especially not entertainment and sex. A film for all those, who have seen enough of main-stream entertainment.