Institute History
Description
Cheap Shots is anything but. It’s a black comedy somewhat reminiscent of Blood Simple, in which the get-rich scheme, a rural motel manager and its lone tenant backfire with murderously funny results. As a last-ditch attempt to finance repairs mandated by shady Health Department inspectors, Louie Constantine (Louis Zorich) and Arnold Posner (David Patrick Kelly) hit upon the idea of making sex videotapes, and decide to surreptitiously record the love making of a mysterious couple who’ve taken up residence on the premises. What they end up taping isn’t just sex—it’s murder. Hit men appear, blackmail is attempted and a shoot-out occurs, all with eccentric originality and decidedly unexpected results.
Cheap Shots was produced in upstate New York by the team of Jerry Stoeffhaas, Jeff Ureles and William Coppard, the latter of whom runs the highest-grossing at theatre, per capita, in the U.S. Not surprisingly, the film reflects a keen awareness of art-house tastes: it’s stylishly European, but driven by a wholly American sense of character, humor and locale.