Doris Wishman’s fabulously tawdry Love Toy is kind of like a warped predecessor to Indecent Proposal. Marcus (Larry Hunter) loses everything he owns to Alex (Bernard Marcel) in a game of gin rummy. Since Alex is a total perv, he says he’ll forgive Marcus’s gambling debt if he can have one night with his beautiful and innocent daughter, Chris (Pat Happel). When Marcus refuses, Alex and his equally scummy wife Mary (‘60s sexploitation staple Uta Erickson in her next to last role) tie him up and begin to have their way with the waifish Chris.
First, Alex makes Chris act like his childhood pet, Samuel, and forces her to get down on all fours and lap up milk from a saucer like a good little kitten. Then, he wants Chris to be his “Mommy” and makes her breastfeed him. (This dude has a thing for milk apparently.) After that, Alex wants her to roleplay as his “Wife” and then… his “Daughter”. Other games include “Horsey” and “Mistress”. Eventually, Mary gets in on the antics, and finally, Marcus is forced to participate as well.
Moral of the Story: Don’t play gin rummy with sex maniacs.
Wonderfully deranged, Love Toy is probably the nastiest, dirtiest, roughest roughie of Doris’s career. Unlike the majority of Wishman’s projects, the editing is often crisp and concise, which helps the sex scenes pack a punch. The scenes of humiliation wouldn’t work so well if Wishman didn’t do such a good job at setting them up. Alex’s monologues about his past, especially when he’s talking about Samuel (“He had sad eyes… like you…”) perfectly set the stage for the degradations to come. It also helps that the scenes of domination and cruelty have a nasty streak a mile wide.
All four leads are excellent, especially Happel and Marcel. His psychotic babblings are often just as jaw-dropping as his sexual antics. I will say that the stuff with Erickson torturing the tied-up Hunter isn’t quite as memorable or effective (although I did like the scene where she used a bottle of perfume as a marital aid), but it serves as a decent palate cleanser to get you to the next degradation scene.
Like the previous year’s The Amazing Transplant, Love Toy features an opening title sequence of black and white photographs with red lettering. Wishman dropped this motif after this film, which I guess was her way of saying goodbye to the roughie genre. It was also nice seeing the same apartment location that would later turn up in Keyholes are for Peeping and Double Agent 73.
Yes, it’s a Doris movie through and through. There are scenes where the sound is obviously out of synch as lots of dialogue is spoken by actors who are conveniently off screen. There are random instances of actresses staring at themselves nude in the mirror, impromptu dance numbers, and an out of left field flashback to pad out the running time. And as with Bad Girls Go to Hell, we learn in the end (SPOILER) it was all a dream/premonition.
Fans may be disappointed that there is only one incongruous shot of feet in the movie, and that it is a part of older footage that was spliced in after the fact. Because of that, Love Toy is probably her least foot-friendly movie since The Hot Month of August. However, it just goes to show how good the editing was this time around. Doris didn’t need throwaway shots of feet to cover herself in the editing room.
Well, maybe the editing isn’t perfect. Like Keyholes are for Peeping, there’s a scene in color where someone spies on a couple having sex in black and white. Since it takes place within the context of a flashback/memory/fantasy scene, it sort of makes sense. However, this odd digression doesn’t derail the proceedings.
Overall, Love Toy is probably Wishman’s most competent, coherent, and effective movie, in terms of titillation. While it’s missing the anything-goes nuttiness of her best stuff (Deadly Weapons and Let Me Die a Woman), it is really a sight to behold. It’s certainly my favorite new-to-me film on AGFA/Something Weird’s three-part box set.
It's also the final film in the set. I was able to watch and review all twenty-two movies in less than seventy-two hours. (Seventy hours and twenty-five minutes, to be exact.) While that brings the reviews from the box set to a close, I will try to track down a few more other Doris films before the end of the month.
DORIS DECEMBER RANKINGS:
1. Deadly Weapons
2. Let Me Die a Woman
3. Love Toy
4. Bad Girls Go to Hell
5. Double Agent 73
6. The Immoral Three
7. Indecent Desires
8. My Brother’s Wife
9. The Hot Month of August
10. The Sex Perils of Paulette
11. Another Day, Another Man
12. A Taste of Flesh
13. Nude on the Moon
14. Diary of a Nudist
15. Too Much Too Often
16. Gentlemen Prefer Nature Girls
17. Hideout in the Sun
18. Blaze Starr Goes Nudist
19. The Amazing Transplant
20. The Prince and the Nature Girl
21. Passion Fever
22. Keyholes are for Peeping or Is There Life After Marriage?
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