(Originally reviewed November 11th, 2021)
A slack-jawed loser named Zeb (Michael Alaimo) finds a Kewpie doll in a trash can and brings it home. He cleans it up, makes a little shrine for it, and he soon learns it possesses a voodoo doll-like quality. Whenever he fondles the doll, the sexy Ann (Sharon Kent) feels it. Zeb fantasizes about making love to her, and when he realizes he can’t have her, he takes to inflicting pain on the doll.
Indecent Desires is a nutty black and white skin flick full of whiplash-inducing editing, overwrought music cues, random shots of people’s feet, poorly dubbed dialogue, and awkward telephone conversations. That could mean only one thing: It’s a Doris Wishman movie!
As far as Doris Wishman films go, it’s pretty good. It offers a nice balance of your typical softcore action with enough touches of S & M (albeit in semi-supernatural form) to appease the raincoat crowds of the roughie market. The plot is silly to be sure, but it’s a solid hook for this sort of thing. It’s also just novel enough to make it a mini-classic. It certainly helps that Wishman’s pacing is brisk as she swiftly gets you from one scene of Kent undressing to the next.
Kent (who was also in Wishman’s Too Much Too Often!) is a real presence, always looking sexy in her skimpy outfits and while undressing down to nothing. Dramatically, she does a fine job of conveying her character’s bewilderment at having phantom orgasms. Jackie Richards, who plays Ann’s sultry brunette gal pal Babs, is great too. She looks hot while doing nude ballet exercises and has a memorable scene where she gets so worked up looking at herself nude in the mirror that she has to make out with her reflection. Richards also participates in a brief foot fetish scene, which allows Wishman to combine her two passions, shots of feet and softcore sex into one sequence!
In short, Indecent Desires is highly desirable for Doris Wishman fans!
AKA: Indecent Desire.
DORIS DECEMBER NOTES:
1) Indecent Desires keeps up the theme of using moody jazz accompanied by black and white still photographs for the opening credits sequence. While I do miss the fun songs from Doris Wishman’s Nudie Years, it’s a good fit for the off-kilter antics that follow.
2) The scene where Zeb meets Ann for the first time is fucking great, and the shot of the Kewpie doll superimposed over Ann’s body is as Martin Scorsese would say, “Cinema”.
3) Likewise, the scene where Babs makes out with her own reflection can only be described as “Cinema”.
4) And the scene where Babs randomly does nude ballet exercises? “PEAK Cinema”. Seriously, Babs needed her own spin-off movie.
5) Wishman’s trademarks like awkward phone conversations, bad dubbing, and random shots of feet are in full effect. However, the interior scenes are reminiscent of Bad Girls Go to Hell. The scenes of Zeb moping around in his apartment are quite claustrophobic, and hammer home the character’s sense of isolation, and the stuff where Ann does domestic chores and feels shame for having her indecent desires is thematically similar to Bad Girls as well.
6) One interesting way that the film is different from Bad Girls is the way the heroines handle their trauma. While Meg repeatedly runs away from abusive situations, Ann locks herself in her apartment and refuses to go out, for fear of being assaulted again.
7) The film might not be as visually impressive as Bad Girls Go to Hell, but the print is very good, and certainly a vast improvement over the version I saw a year ago.
8) Although Indecent Desires isn’t as consistently entertaining as Bad Girls Go to Hell, its many peaks easily outweigh the occasional valley.
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