DORIS DECEMBER: A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER (THE “LOST” VERSION) (1983) * ½

A cloaked figure (he’s kind of like a half-assed Crypt Keeper) appears in a snow covered cemetery to tell us the story of Mary Kent (Diane Cummins).  He says if a person is struck by lightning in a certain part of their brain, it can give them “Satanic powers”.  That’s exactly what happens to poor Mary.  

After surviving the lightning strike to the cranium, Mary begins hearing voices that urge her to kill those who have wronged her.  When she finds her boyfriend Frankie (Frankie Sabat) is cheating on her with her best friend Sandy (Sandy Sabat), the pair are later found with their heads chopped off.  Then, her brother Billy (Bill Szarka) steals money and blames it on Mary.  It doesn’t take long for him to get bludgeoned to death and buried alive in a shallow grave.  Another heartless friend is axed in the bathtub.  Mary eventually finds herself pregnant, and when her parents want her to give it up for adoption, they are later found hacked up.  

So far, so not bad.  About halfway through the movie, Mary dies while giving birth.  We then flash-forward to her daughter Vicki (Dee Cummins) celebrating her sixteenth birthday.  Her mother’s voice soon begins haunting her, and eventually convinces “Crazy Vicki” to kill those who have wronged her as well.  

Apparently, the story goes that the original version of A Night to Dismember was burned by a disgruntled employee at the film lab.  This forced writer/director Doris Wishman to hastily assemble a new version on the fly using nothing but outtakes and deleted scenes.  Others claim that the star of the version that was eventually released (porn star Samantha Fox) paid Doris to put her in the movie and she used the money to film new scenes with her.  That would explain why so much of the original footage was scrapped and why Fox is nowhere to be found in this version.  Lucky(ish) for Doris fans, the original “Lost” version was found and uploaded to YouTube, which is where I finally caught up with it.

I watched the released version a few years ago and it was godawful.  It is by far Doris’s worst effort.  However, it’s been a while since I saw it, so I can’t say how much the two versions really differ.  One thing is for certain, it’s a Doris Wishman movie through and through.  There’s weird narration and voiceovers, out of synch sound, sunset footage recycled from Satan was a Lady, awkward phone conversations, the familiar apartment setting, scenes of women looking at themselves in the mirror, a death in a bathtub accompanied by an overly bombastic score, a solarized sex scene, a negative image dream scene, and of course… FEET!

While The “Lost” Version is better than the one that was eventually released, it is by no means good.  The first half is coherent, but it doesn’t exactly work.  At least the body count is healthy, although Doris really goes overboard with the shots of shadows of assorted weapons silhouetted against a white wall.  The murders are all appropriately grungy looking, and there is one truly priceless line of dialogue to be found.  (After Mary flips out, her mother asks, “When did you menstruate last?”) 

The second half (which seems to be heavily inspired by Carrie) is a real chore though.  There’s a lot of pointless slow-motion scenes and extraneous narration to help cover some of the big gaps in time (and logic).  While it’s noticeably weaker than the first half, this stretch of the film does have some decent gore.  It’s a long time coming, but the heart-ripping, head-crushing, finger-hacking finale is pretty good.  I probably wouldn’t have been so hard on it if it wasn’t for all the damned slow motion.  If Doris played all these scenes at their regular speed, the movie probably would’ve been sixty minutes instead of eighty.

Here’s the review of the version that eventually wound up being released:  

A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER  (1989)  ½ * 

(Originally posted October 31st, 2019)

Doris Wishman is my kind of filmmaker.  She goes out there and makes the movie her way.  You can look at one frame of a Doris Wishman film and know it was made by Doris Wishman.  If it’s got lots of close-ups of feet, no synch sound, and looks like a series of people’s last known photographs, you can bet your ass it’s a Wishman flick.

When Wishman is cooking, she often hits it out of the park.  Anyone who’s ever sat through Let Me Die a Woman, Deadly Weapons, or Nude on the Moon will attest to that.  However, her misses are about as bad as they come.  (The Amazing Transplant, anyone?)  That’s why it pains me to say A Night to Dismember just might be her worst flick.  

It’s not really her fault.  You see, according to legend, some disgruntled lab employee burned the film print.  Wishman then had to scramble, cutting the movie together using odd ends, discarded footage, and whatever scraps she could find.  She added some newly shot footage, and then cobbled it all together and released it on an unsuspecting public.  

Trying to follow the story will give you mental whiplash.  It revolves around the bizarre murders of a troubled family.  Things kick off with a gruesome ax murder in the tub, but then the murderess slips and falls on her ax.  Most of the time, the editing is so rapid fire that simple scenes are hard to figure out.  Shots are repeated, slow motion is used for like, two seconds, shots alternate from night to day, and there are long negative scenes; all of which are usually accompanied by overbearing, out of place library music.

A narrator constantly runs his mouth to try to make sense of the plot.  (It’s really nothing more than your standard let’s-drive-a-relative-crazy plot, but the way it’s told is just confusing as fuck.)  This movie has more narration than The Creeping Terror and Monster a Go-Go combined.  Occasionally, we do hear a snippet of dialogue or two, but it’s clearly just Wishman’s voice dropping in a few lines here and there.  

I like Wishman.  That’s why it hurts to say this flick is a disaster of epic proportions.  Still, it’s a miracle it exists in any way, shape, or form considering the circumstances.  That alone is a testament to Wishman’s tenacity.  

Recently, a print of the original version was miraculously found.  I don’t know if my nerves could stand to watch that one so soon after subjecting myself to this.  Judging solely from the evidence here, I’d say they burned the wrong movie.

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. Come with Me My Love

9. My Brother’s Wife

10. The Hot Month of August

11. The Sex Perils of Paulette

12. Another Day, Another Man

13. A Taste of Flesh

14. Nude on the Moon

15. Diary of a Nudist

16. Too Much Too Often

17. Gentlemen Prefer Nature Girls

18. Hideout in the Sun

19. Satan was a Lady

20. Blaze Starr Goes Nudist

21. The Amazing Transplant

22. A Night to Dismember (The “Lost” Version)

23. The Prince and the Nature Girl

24. Passion Fever

25. Keyholes are for Peeping or Is There Life After Marriage?

26. A Night to Dismember

Well, that brings Doris December to a close.  If you still can’t get enough retrospectives of cult directors, be sure to keep your eyes peeled as I will be ringing in the New Year with another set of reviews spotlighting a B movie auteur.  Join me for Janua-RAY when we will be celebrating all things Ray Dennis Steckler!

DORIS DECEMBER: SATAN WAS A LADY (1975) **

Satan was a Lady was Doris Wishman’s first foray into hardcore pornography.  Up until then, she had made many “roughie” movies, but none of them crossed the line into full-on penetration.  I tried to be as forgiving as I could seeing as Doris was just getting her feet (no pun intended) wet in the genre.  Even with that in mind, it’s kind of tough to sit through in some places.

Terry (Annie Sprinkle) catches her little sister Claudia (Bree Anthony) engaging in pre-marital sex with her fiancé Victor (Tony Richards).  She then goes running into the arms of Bobby (Bobby Astyr) for a little bondage action.  Later, it’s revealed Terry is also romancing Victor behind her sister’s back.  

Other than Sprinkle’s bondage scene, the sex scenes are mostly cliché (there’s even a part where lovers bang on a bear skin rug in front of a fireplace for God’s sake) and unsexy, which is the main problem, seeing as this is a sex flick and all.  It doesn’t help that one of the scenes plays out in a long loop, unapologetically replaying the same footage again and again.  Even with the engaging presence of Sprinkle, they are mostly lackluster.  It’s telling that the best part of the movie is Sprinkle’s solo scene where she pleasures herself.  I have a feeling Doris did very little directing on this sequence.  She just put the camera down and let Sprinkle do all the work.  In fact, if it wasn’t for Annie’s sex appeal, Satan was a Lady would’ve been completely forgettable.

This isn’t one of Wishman’s best, but there are plenty of her trademarks on display:  Awkward phone conversations, odd dubbing and voiceovers (that’s Doris’s voice as the characters’ “thoughts”), the recycling of stock footage from her old nudie movies, pointless scenes of people walking in Central Park to help pad out the running time, a long negative image sex scene, and of course, feet (although, quite honestly, not as many as I was expecting).  It’s all pretty much plotless and dull until the completely random Diabolique-inspired twist ending occurs.  Since there had been so little plot leading up to the big reveal, it was hard to care about the outcome either way.   

DORIS DECEMBER: COME WITH ME MY LOVE (1976) ***

I bet you guys and gals thought Doris December was over.  Well, after watching twenty-two Doris Wishman movies in three days’ time, I just needed a little break.  Before the month is out, I plan on watching a couple of her forays into the world of hardcore smut.  First up is Come with Me My Love.  

In 1925, a jealous husband (Jeffrey Hurst) catches his wife (Ursula Austin) and her lover in the throes of passion.  Enraged, he guns them both down before turning the weapon on himself.  Fifty years later, a woman who resembles his dead wife (also Austin) rents the apartment where the murders took place.  Before long, the ghost of the husband is not only seducing her, but also killing anyone who makes love to her.  

This is actually a decent little horror porno, made all the more interesting by all the trademark Doris Wishman touches.  Wishman’s films always had a handmade feel to them, and this one is no different.  Her fingerprints are all over this one.  (She obviously dubbed the “voice” of the ghostly whispering.)  If you’re hoping to see Doris’ signature cinematic flourishes on display, Come with Me My Love doesn’t disappoint.  She gives us random shots of feet, inexplicable narration, shoddy voiceovers, predominantly one apartment location (when Austin goes to Annie Sprinkle’s apartment, she remarks it looks exactly like hers) gratuitous shots of clothing hitting the floor, long scenes of characters looking at themselves in the mirror, bathtub scenes with an overly bombastic score, and awkward phone conversations.  There’s also an instance where Doris reuses footage from one of her previous films, in this case the sparking ring scene from Double Agent 73 to simulate the sparks during the bathtub electrocution scene.  Her penchant for negative shots also crops up again during the (overused) shots of the “ghost” spying on Austin.

Surprisingly enough, Doris does a more than competent job on the sex scenes as they are above average as far as ‘70s smut movies go.  (The stereotypically ‘70s porn music is particularly good.)  Editing was never Wishman’s strong suit but Come with Me My Love is put together rather well.  There’s a real rhythm to the cutting during the sex scenes (especially the group ones) that help enhance the sensuality.  Many of these scenes even have a sense of humor about them (like when Vanessa del Rio says she’s giving her boyfriend “something to eat” and the camera cuts to him going down on her), which helps make them even more engaging.  

It also helps that the story is simple but effective.  Besides, there’s enough sex and violence here to satisfy fans of either the XXX or horror genre.  Even though some may look down on it because it’s a porno, Come with Me My Love remains one of Wishman’s best efforts.  

AKA:  Come with Me, My Ghost.  AKA:  Stay with Me My Love.  AKA:  With Me My Love.  AKA:  The Haunted Pussy.

DORIS DECEMBER: LOVE TOY (1971) ****

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?

DORIS DECEMBER: KEYHOLES ARE FOR PEEPING OR IS THERE LIFE AFTER MARRIAGE? (1972) *

(Originally reviewed September 13th, 2019)

Sammy (Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla) Petrillo gets his marriage counselor diploma in the mail and sets off to make a name for himself in the profession.  Meanwhile, his own personal life is a wreck.  His girlfriend (Kristen Steen) won’t marry him because he always has to care for his dominating mother (also Petrillo, with his voice dubbed by the director, Doris Wishman).  As Petrillo meets with his patients, the superintendent (Phillip Stahl) in his apartment building spies on various tenants by looking through their keyholes.  

The naughty footage looks like it might’ve been taken from outer sources, perhaps old stag reels or even from Wishman’s other films for all I know.  Many of the sex scenes are tinted yellow for some damned reason.  Others are filmed through a negative filter which makes it impossible to tell what the hell is going on.  None of them are remotely sexy.  

Most Wishman movies are unintentionally hilarious.  If you’ve ever seen Let Me Die a Woman or Deadly Weapons you know what I’m talking about.  With this one she tries to be funny on purpose and the results are disastrous.  

Petrillo made his living imitating Jerry Lewis.  He unwisely dropped the act for this movie.  Sporting long hippie hair and doing random impressions (everyone from The Invisible Man to Porky Pig), and telling unfunny jokes, he never once elicits a single laugh from the audience.  You know they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel when he shows up in drag.  The results are pretty dire, even for Wishman’s standards.  

The film falls into a predictable pattern early on.  It goes back and forth from the unfunny scenes of Petrillo (who also may be familiar to you from his bit part in The Brain That Wouldn’t Die) interviewing women to the voyeur peeping on lovemaking couples.  Neither plotline hits its intended marks, making Keyholes are For Peeping or is There Life After Marriage? a frustrating experience to say to least.  

Wishman’s made some bad movies in her time, but this one just might take the proverbial cake.  

AKA:  Keyholes are for Peeping.  

DORIS DECEMBER NOTES:  

1) When Doris Wishman added newly shot sex scenes to older movies in the past, the results were wildly uneven.  Here, she tosses in a bunch of old sex scenes (I spotted bits from The Hot Month of August and Passion Fever, but I’m sure there were others) with newly shot footage.  She doesn’t even attempt to make them match.  When the building’s super peeps through keyholes, he’s in color and the people fucking in the room are in black and white.  (I’ve seen lots of movies where it turns from night to day within the same scene, but very few that go from color to black and white and back.)  Sometimes they’re solarized so you can’t make heads or tails of it.  (Let Me Die a Woman also contained a random solarized sex scene.)  

2) I liked Sammy Petrillo in Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla, but BOY, is he bad here.

3) Director Trademarks:  Random dance scene, shower scene (this time the score isn’t overly bombastic, just overly annoying), off-kilter narration, poor dubbing (when Petrillo is in drag), whiplash editing (the Hawaiian sequence is a fever dream of incompetence), shots of undergarments hitting the floor, and (what else?) feet.

4) Sigh.

5) You know that overused joke I make about Martin Scorsese calling a particular moment in a Doris Wishman movie “CINEMA”?  You won’t find that joke here.

6) To add insult to injury, the movie never answers the question in the title.  In fact, the film ends asking the audience, “So… is there life after marriage?”  You would at least think that after an hour and nine minutes of fast motion “comedy” scenes, incoherent editing, and lame “comic” sound effects, Wishman would’ve had the decency to answer that query.

DORIS DECEMBER: THE IMMORAL THREE (1975) ***

(Originally reviewed April 24th, 2019)

Jane (Cindy Boudreau) is strangled to death while sunbathing on a balcony.  At her funeral, Jane’s three long-lost daughters, Sandy (Sandra Kay), Nancy (Michelle Marie), and Ginny (also played by Boudreau) meet for the first time.  They also learn their mother (whom they never met) was a special agent who slept with and killed enemy agents.  That means her daughters were “occupational side effects”.  Jane’s will states the three girls need to team up and find her murderer before they can collect the three-million-dollar inheritance.  They are given a list of four suspects and set out to determine which one is the killer.  

Early on in Doris Wishman’s The Immoral Three, one of the characters mention in passing that Jane was known as “Agent 73”.  That means this is actually an under the radar sequel to Double Agent 73!  All I have to say is that Cindy Boudreau is no Chesty Morgan, but then again, who is?  While she may not have Chesty’s impossible bustline, unlike Chesty, Boudreau can recite intelligible dialogue, which helps.  I guess.  There’s no camera boob gimmick this time out though, which is a little disappointing.  

The good news is, this is a Doris Wishman movie through and through.  It may not be up to the dizzying heights of Wishman’s classics like Double Agent 73, Let Me Die a Woman, and Deadly Weapons, but The Immoral Three has enough moments of WTF (Wishman’s Type of Filmmaking) to make it worthwhile.  There’s the oddball plot.  Misogyny.  Murder.  Nudity.  Shots of people walking slowly towards the camera.  And of course, random shots of feet.  As a bonus, the flick features what has to be the most inexplicable use of a xylophone found on a soundtrack.

The Immoral Three is one of Wishman’s better put together films.  Sure, it kind of drags around the halfway mark, but her Kitchen Sink approach assures you’ll be riveted.  While most of this plays like some sort of sexed-up mash-up of Charlie’s Angels and Mission:  Impossible, some scenes feel like a prototype for a slasher movie with a black-gloved killer stabbing people.  We also get a not-bad double twist ending.

The main draw will be the shit-ton of nudity.  The lovely ladies in the cast get naked at the drop of a hat.  Whether getting changed, skinny-dipping, or having sex (willingly and otherwise), there’s never a shortage of skin on screen.  

The nuttiest scene comes when Kay simulates fellatio with a banana to arouse a potential suspect.  When she goes down on him, Wishman superimposes shots of Kay sucking the banana over his face, which scores maximum laughs.  While I can’t say The Immoral Three lives up to the promise of Double Agent 73, moments like these assure exploitation fans will have loads of fun with it.

AKA:  Hotter Than Hell.  

DORIS DECEMBER NOTES:

1) This print features both titles, The Immoral Three AND Hotter Than Hell.  

2) One can only imagine what the film would’ve been like had Chesty Morgan reprised her role as Agent 73.  Then again, it would’ve been a shame to see her killed off so early in the film.  (Or I guess she could’ve played a dual role as Boudreau does here, although it might’ve been weird seeing her playing her own daughter.)

3) The $3,000,000 inheritance the heroines are trying to get is the same amount the hero of Nude on the Moon received.  

4) I think the secret to The Immoral Three’s success is that it has a sense of fun about it, something that really wasn’t present in Doris Wishman’s films since her nudie movie days.  Oh, and the rampant nudity helps too.

5) Director Trademarks:  Odd dubbing, weird narration, awkward telephone conversations, women staring at their nude frame in the mirror, random dance sequence, and naturally, feet.

6) The banana scene is, as Martin Scorsese would say, “CINEMA!”

7) The theme from Double Agent 73 is heard again to cement the fact that this is indeed a sequel, albeit a loose one.

8) The death by candy dish scene is a direct homage to (or “blatantly stolen from”, however you want to phrase it) Bad Girls Go to Hell.

DORIS DECEMBER: LET ME DIE A WOMAN (1977) ****

(Originally posted July 17th, 2007)

In many ways, this is director Doris (Deadly Weapons) Wishman’s ultimate movie.  It’s a crazy, anything-goes pseudo-documentary about sex changes and transvestites.  It would make a perfect double feature with Glen or Glenda.  While it doesn’t match that film’s fever dream WTF? power, it comes pretty close.  It also delivers what Glen or Glenda promised and couldn’t show:  actual footage of a sex change operation performed in graphic detail.  

Wishman intercuts an interview with “Leslie” (“A year ago, I was a man!”) a real transgendered Puerto Rican with footage of a real doctor, Leo Wolman (who relies heavily on cue cards) who introduces us to several real transvestites and transsexuals.  He refers to their plight as a “monstrous biological joke”.  There are even sex scenes with said transsexuals and some simulated scenes with porn vets Harry Reems and Vanessa Del Rio.  The craziest part (if you don’t count the operation scenes) is Wolman’s story of a man who wanted to become a woman so much he cut off his own penis using a chisel and a hammer!  This incident is lovingly recreated in graphic detail for your viewing pleasure.  If that doesn’t make you squirm in your seat, I don’t know what will.  

This is one of the craziest movies ever made and only the strongest of stomachs need apply.  If you loved Glen or Glenda (or maybe even Faces of Death) then what are you waiting for?  Wishman started filming this as early as 1971 (as Adam or Eve) but later added the interview footage and released it in ’77.

AKA:  Man or Woman?

DORIS DECEMBER NOTES:  

1) Let Me Die a Woman and Glen or Glenda would make a fascinating double feature.  Both films tackle the subject of transition within the confines of an exploitation movie.  Both films offer a plea of tolerance and acceptance for their subjects.  However, since they are at their core, exploitation movies, the addition of sensationalism and smut (remember the bondage scenes in Glen or Glenda?) give them an extra layer of weirdness that makes them strangely even more appealing.  Although these scenes somewhat cheapen the message, it certainly makes them memorable, especially when you consider no one was really making movies that addressed the subject in a serious manner (unless you count The Christine Jorgensen Story).  

2) The scene of our main subject, Leslie getting dressed in front of the camera is supposed to be kind of like a slice of life sort of thing, but yeah, it kind of feel a little exploitative.  Despite that, she remains an engaging presence and helps to put a friendly and down to earth face to trans women for the audience.

3) Doris Wishman Trademarks:  Feet, random narration, showers featuring overly bombastic scores, and surgery scenes.

4) The scene where a guy uses a hammer and chisel to hack off his dick is one of the greatest scenes in exploitation history.  

5) Despite the air of overriding exploitation elements, this is probably the most progressive movie of the ‘70s in regard to gender identity.  Some of it hasn’t aged too well, but its heart is in the right place (most of the time) and it makes every attempt to show the various trans participants as real people with real problems and showcases their plight with sincerity.   

6) The Mondo movie aspects kind of run against the grain of the film’s positive messaging, but it helps to make it truly a one-of-a-kind experience. 

7) The sex change surgery sequence shows in graphic detail what Glen or Glenda could only hint at.  Like the chisel scene, it helps cement the film’s place in the annals of exploitation history.

8) The only scene in the movie that doesn’t really work is the long, solarized sex scene that occurs near the end, but then again, what would a Doris Wishman flick be without a gratuitous eleventh-hour sex scene?

DORIS DECEMBER: THE AMAZING TRANSPLANT (1970) * ½

(Originally posted August 17th, 2007)

Doris (Deadly Weapons) Wishman directed this nutty flick about a virginal schmo who gets his dead lothario friend’s penis transplanted onto his body.  He soon discovers he’s got game with the ladies, but the procedure has one unfortunate side effect:  it turns him into a crazy eyed rapist whenever he sees a pair of ladies’ gold earrings.  All of this sounds a hell of a lot better than it actually is, the main problem being that we don’t learn the facts about the so-called “amazing” transplant until the hackneyed “twist” ending.  Although the sex scenes will appeal to most fans of ‘70s “roughies”, much of the flick is so abysmally edited and acted that most viewers will probably give up on it before it reaches its “shocking” conclusion.  Rabid Wishman fans will undoubtedly have a field day with it as it features all her trademarks (badly synched dialogue, atrocious editing, and lots of close-ups of feet), but everyone else will want to steer clear.  Wishman later directed the ultimate elective surgery flick, Let Me Die a Woman seven years later.

AKA:  Sex and the Swinging Girl.

DORIS DECEMBER NOTES:

1) Even though this film is in color, Doris Wishman still uses her old standby of having a title sequence that features a bunch of black and white stills.  This time, the titles are red, which is a nice touch.

2) This movie begins with a naked woman playing a zither.  No matter how bad the rest of the movie gets (and it gets pretty bad), at least it has that going for it.

3) Director trademarks include:  Telephone conversations, shower scenes with overly bombastic music, obviously overdubbed dialogue, and (say it with me) FEET! 

4) Parts of this movie really feel like a color version of one of Wishman’s ‘60s roughies.  In that respect, it functions as a transition film between her second and third career acts.  I just wish the attack/sex scenes were worth a damn.

5) A killer being set off by the sight of golden earrings is a good idea for a movie.  A guy getting a penis transplant is a good idea for a movie.  Promising the audience a film about a guy getting a penis transplant and then giving them a film about a killer being set off by the sight of golden earrings is not a good idea.  

6) The opening strangulation scene is fairly decent.  However, the ensuing police investigation is a straight-up bore.

7) This is one of those movies where Doris just repeats the same motif again and again until she gets to seventy minutes and calls it a day.  The killer strikes.  The detective interviews one of his past victims.  They relate a flashback about the killer’s attack.  Repeat.  

8) I could’ve done without the scene where Doris zooms the camera in on an actress’s pimple-pocked butt while she vomits.

9) Man, sitting through an hour of quasi-giallo skin flick tedium just to get to a transplant that isn’t even shown is a total rip-off.  I think the only “Amazing” part about it is that is was done outpatient.

DORIS DECEMBER: DOUBLE AGENT 73 (1974) *** ½

(Originally posted July 17th, 2007)

Chesty Morgan returns in Doris Wishman’s follow-up to Deadly Weapons.  If that flick was Death Wish With Big Boobs, this one is James Bond With Big Boobs.  This time, Chesty is a spy with a camera implanted in her breast.  After she kills someone, she takes out her gigantic boob and squeezes it, and there is a shutter effect.  The camera will also self-destruct if she doesn’t complete her mission in time.  She doesn’t smother anyone with her boobs this time, but she does use them to beat one guy up and puts chloroform on them to knock another guy out.  Double Agent 73 isn’t as fun as Deadly Weapons, but it still has its moments.  With the Wishman trademarks:  lots of close-ups of feet, lots of bad dubbing and lots of big boobs.  She even tosses in a Psycho shower scene rip-off for good measure.  After this flick, Chesty parted company with Wishman and went on to work with Fellini!

DORIS DECEMBER NOTES:

1) Ah yes, another great Doris Wishman title sequence.  This time, there’s a catchy James Bond-esque theme (which is fitting since it’s a spy movie) where Chesty flashes her tits at the audience at regular intervals.  Since a camera has been implanted in her breast, there’s a shutter effect every time she does it, so it’s like she’s flashing us LITERALLY.  

2) Another thing I love about the title sequence is the little cartoon sketch of Doris that accompanies her name in the credits.

3) There are plenty of Doris trademarks to enjoy, such as shots of feet, weird voiceovers, stolen nude volleyball footage from her old nudie movies, odd telephone conversations, and shower scenes with an overly bombastic score.  (In this case, a murder sequence a la Psycho.)

4) I admit that the conceit of having a camera in your boobs isn’t as cool as killing someone with your boobs, but it’s just weird enough to work… well, in a Doris Wishman movie that is.

5) I think Chesty looks more attractive here than she did in Deadly Weapons.  She’s photographed in more flattering light, her hair (READ:  Wig) and make-up looks better, and her wardrobe is sexier (especially her outfit in the end).  She still acts as stilted and bewildered as ever though.  I wouldn’t have it any other way.  

6) The surgery scene where the camera is implanted into Chesty’s boob is wonderfully inept.  Surgery scenes would also crop up in Wishman's The Amazing Transplant and Let Me Die a Woman.  

7) Oh, the camera in Chesty’s boob will blow up if she doesn’t complete her mission on time.  I wonder if John Carpenter saw this before he made Escape from New York.

8) Despite not living up to the dizzying heights of Deadly Weapons, Double Agent 73 is chockful of scenes of Chesty killing people and then flashing her boobs at them.  She also flashes her boobs every time she finds important documents.  Because of that, it’s OK in my book.  

9) The scene where Chesty has a problem removing a Band-Aid from her boob and Doris keeps the camera running is what Martin Scorsese would call, “CINEMA!”

10) The part where Doris suggests to the audience that the characters are in a nightclub by shining lights against flapping aluminum foil is fucking priceless.

11) The slow-motion fight scene in which Chesty uses a form of fighting that can only be described as “Titty Fu” is equally priceless.  She may not kill the guy with them, but she shows that her massive mammaries are still deadly weapons after all.

12) Despite the fact that Chesty doesn’t kill anyone with her boobs, the scene where she murders a guy by shoving ice cubes down his throat is bizarrely effective.  

13) Aside from the camera boobs, other James Bond-style gadgets include:  Exploding lipstick, a whisky decanter that shoots gas, deadly earrings, and a firecracker ring.

14) The movie kind of runs out of steam by the end, but it still remains one of Doris’s best, if only for the unique screen presence that is Chesty Morgan.  

DORIS DECEMBER: DEADLY WEAPONS (1974) ****

(Originally posted July 17th, 2007)

Nudie director Doris Wishman directed two movies back-to-back with Chesty Morgan, a Polish actress whose only talent was her 73-inch bust.  In their first film together, Chesty plays a woman whose husband is murdered by the Mob.  She gets revenge by seducing gangsters and suffocating them with her humongous breasts!  Pure genius!  Chesty can’t act and looks embarrassed, but you won’t care.  Unlike their follow-up, Double Agent 73, this one actually works pretty good as a revenge thriller (with 73-inch boobs that is).  Porn star Harry Reems co-stars.  This is a must-see cult film, that should be viewed at least once in your lifetime, though once is probably enough.

DORIS DECEMBER NOTES:  

1) We are in Doris Wishman’s ‘70s exploitation era and that means one thing:  COLOR!

2) There have been many great theme songs in Doris’s films throughout the years.  Deadly Weapons’ “Hard Selling Woman” is at the very top.  Second only to “The Hell Raisers” from Another Day, Another Man, in my humble opinion.  

3) Doris also continues her hot streak with another awesome title sequence.  Boobs and great music.  What’s not to like?  Especially when they are seventy-three-inch-boobs, and they belong to Chesty Morgan.

4) The first thing we see after the title sequence is over?  FEET!  This is Doris’s magnum opus.

5) Awkward sounding phone conversations, shoddy dubbing, random narration, women looking at their boobs in the mirror, shower/baths featuring an overly bombastic song on the soundtrack (“Hard Selling Woman”, again), everything you could possibly want from a Doris Wishman movie, PLUS Chesty Morgan’s incredible bustline.

6) The scene where the grieving Chesty’s tears fall onto her breasts is, as Martin Scorsese would say, “CINEMA!”

7) Deadly Weapons is one of the greatest revenge movies ever made not just because Chesty uses her boobs to kill the men who murdered her husband… but… yeah.  It’s because of that.  But honestly, the idea of a woman using the very thing that men desire most to lure and kill them is ingenious, and when the thing they desire most is a size 73, it just makes it that much better.  People are often fond of saying bigger doesn’t always mean better, but Deadly Weapons proves those dumbasses wrong.

8) Chesty’s performance is one of the strangest in cinema history.  Is she embarrassed, ashamed, and feeling exploited in her striptease scenes, or is just trying to act sexy and she’s just such a terrible actress that she fails spectacularly?  Whatever the case may be, it’s one of those things that keep me coming back to this movie again and again.  Well, that and her seventy-three-inch bust.

9) I love the one-eyed bad guy, Captain Hook.  More revenge movies need mobsters with Peter Pan-inspired nicknames.

10) If Chesty looked embarrassed during her strip numbers, she looks lost and confused during Captain Hook’s breast suffocation scene.  There are moments where she’s looking at the camera for direction that make the scenes even stranger than it would be if the character was played by someone with actual acting skills.  

11) I’m not sure, but I think the guitar sting that is heard every time Chesty unveils her massive mammaries was stolen from the Torso trailer.  

12) Wow. I never realized this before, but Doris stole some of the scenes of naked girls swimming underwater from her old nudie movies.

13) Harry Reems is great as the cackling mustachioed hitman and has one of the best death scenes in screen history.  If I have a choice of how to shuffle off this mortal coil, that’s exactly how I want to go.

14) Despite successfully getting her revenge on the men who killed her husband, the film still ends on a downbeat and depressing note, which keeps it thematically aligned with Wishman’s roughie pictures.

DORIS DECEMBER: TOO MUCH TOO OFTEN (1968) **

Mike (Buck Starr from A Taste of Flesh) is a loutish pimp who has a hot young college gal (Sharon Kent from Indecent Desires) for a plaything.  He moonlights as a gay prostitute and blackmails his married Madison Avenue client (Bob Oran from My Brother’s Wife) into giving him a job at his ad agency.  Mike then sets his sights on seducing the boss’s daughter (Yolanda Signorelli).  Eventually, Mike’s loathsomeness catches up with him.   

Like all the movies found in Doris Wishman’s roughie period, we begin with a title sequence that plays out over black and white photographs.  The music that accompanies this sequence isn’t one of the best found in Wishman’s films, but it’s not bad.  Other Doris trademarks include scenes of women gazing at themselves in the mirror (in the name of equality, Starr often looks at himself in the mirror too), women showering to an overly bombastic score (a theme that has been cropping up more and more of late), and of course, feet… glorious feet!

Starr’s character is suitably nasty (it seems like the kind of role Sam Stewart should’ve played), but Too Much Too Often (surprising gay S & M opening scene aside) is lacking the punch of Wishman’s other films of this period.  It has a basic Plot… Sex… Plot structure of your average ‘60s skin flick and is missing that certain kookiness that makes Wishman’s films so memorable.  Other than the scene where Starr eats chocolates from Kent’s tits, the sex scenes are mostly forgettable this time around.

Stewart does show up later in the movie as a man previously wronged by Starr who gives him his just desserts.  Unfortunately, the dubbing on Stewart makes him sound like Speedy Gonzalez, which undercuts most of his menace.  Then, just when the movie should be over, there’s an eleventh-hour flashback to explain Stewart’s motives.  This scene probably wasn’t necessary, but it does prominently feature Darlene Bennett naked, so it’s not a total wash.

Starr gets the best line of the movie when he says, “I like my liquor strong and my women WEAK!”

AKA:  Too Much… Too Soon.

DORIS DECEMBER: THE HOT MONTH OF AUGUST (1969) ***

Jason (Yanis Fertis) is a young man who left his hometown for Athens to make a name for himself.  He failed miserably and is now using his last dime to return home first class aboard a cruise ship.  On the boat, Jason bumps into a carefree gigolo who tells him he should think about becoming a male prostitute.  Jason also meets a hot cougar on the cruise, and they begin a mad love affair.  Problems brew when her husband finds out about their fling, and Jason soon finds himself at the center of larger scheme.

Like Passion Fever, The Hot Month of August was another Greek import Doris Wishman got her mitts on, added new scenes, and released stateside.  Thank goodness Wishman didn’t edit this one to smithereens.  She must’ve sensed that the film was just fine in its original form, and she was smart enough to let it play out naturally without too many intrusions.  Her sex scene inserts, while no means seamless, are a vast improvement over the ones found in Passion Fever, and even manage to be a little bit steamy… despite the fact that everyone’s head is cropped out of frame.

Since Doris was only responsible for about 20% of the footage, that leaves very little room for her various cinematic fetishes.  In fact, there is only one random shot of a person’s foot, and it’s hard to tell if it was filmed by Doris or if it was part of the original film.  Of course, one distinctly Doris touch prevails:  The black and white photograph title sequence.  The only problem is the music sucks this time out.  It sounds like something you’d hear at a skating rink.

If you felt burned by Passion Fever, don’t write off The Hot Month of August just because it’s another one of Wishman’s Greek imports.  It’s like ten times better than that haphazard concoction.  The plot of this one is actually rather interesting, and it takes some unexpected twists and turns.  It feels like a Greek attempt at an American film noir but set in bright and sunny locations.  There’s a lot of double crosses and backstabbing, which keeps you invested in the story.  Everyone seems to have ulterior motives and aren’t exactly who they seem.  Except for that poor dope Jason, that is.  

In fact, you get so caught up in the plot that some of Doris’s inserts are kind of a distraction.  The most random insert occurs at a pivotal moment in the movie when a major character’s corpse is discovered and there is a random-ass flashback to her having sex.  Only Doris would do something like that.  

Some may have a different reaction to the film as I did.  If you come in hoping to see Doris’s many cinematic flourishes on display, you’re bound to be disappointed.  However, after sitting through so many of Wishman’s movies in such a short amount of time, The Hot Month of August felt like a nice change of pace.

Best Dialogue Exchange:  

Jason:  “This is wrong.  You’re only a child.”

Hope:  “But with you… I’m a WOMAN!”

DORIS DECEMBER: THE SEX PERILS OF PAULETTE (1965) ** ½

Before starring in cult favorites like The Honeymoon Killers and God Told Me To, Tony LoBianco made his screen debut in this Doris Wishman flick.  He plays Allen, the boyfriend of Paulette (Anna Karol).  He wants to know why she won’t commit to him, so she tells him the long story of her sordid past.  A long-ass flashback reveals why.

Paulette moves to New York with dreams of being an actress.  She moves in with Tracy (Darlene Bennett) who introduces her to a sleazy agent named Sam (Sam Stewart).  She attends wild parties, is disgusted when Sam and Tracy bang in the floor in front of her, and quickly realizes the Broadway producers won’t give her the time of day.  Paulette tries her hand at waiting tables and when she fails at that, she eventually resorts to a life of prostitution to make ends meet.

Karol is quite good as the innocent waif who slowly becomes corrupted.  Her best scene is when she takes a seductive bubble bath.  It’s also fun seeing all the usual Wishman regulars on hand yet again.  Bennett in particular is becoming a favorite of mine.  She especially looks great while lounging around the house wearing nothing but her bra and panties.  

I’ve watched so many Wishman movies in the past thirty-two hours that when one of her cinematic trademarks appear, it’s cause to triumphantly fist-pump in the air.  A title sequence with black and white photos and snazzy theme music?  Characters taking a walk in Central Park that utilize footage from other Doris movies?  Random shots of feet?  Impromptu dance numbers?  (One of which reappeared in My Brother’s Wife.)  Shots of discarded undergarments lying on the floor?  The same couple of apartments used in her other movies?  All these moments are cause for celebration, and The Sex Perils of Paulette has a lot of them.  

Oh, and how could I forget the lack of synched sound?  Since the whole thing is told in flashback, Doris can get away with narrating nearly the whole dang thing without even attempting to match the actors’ dialogue with their lips.  Oh, and did I mention Doris herself provides the narration?

Too bad Paulette doesn’t get into any Sex Perils until the last five minutes of the movie.  Because of that, it’s ultimately more tease than please, and lacking a generous helping of sleaze.  But as a vehicle for Doris Wishman to trot out all her cinematic fetishes yet again, it works.  Almost.

AKA:  Love Perils of Paulette.  AKA:  Paulette.  AKA:  The Perils of Paulette.  AKA:  The Problems of Paulette.  AKA:  The Depraved, the Demented, and the Damned.

DORIS DECEMBER: PASSION FEVER (1969) *

Doris Wishman bought a Greek movie called Fever, cut most of the footage out, added some new scenes, and called it Passion Fever.  There’s no passion and no fever to be found anywhere.  It’s only fifty-one minutes long.  You’ll wish it was shorter.

Yarkos (Panos Kateris) is a young man who is happy to be out of his parents’ house.  He spends his free time speeding around Greece and looking for chicks.  (“The only thing that makes life worth living is women!”)  Predictably, his womanizing ways catch up to him, leading to tragedy.  

In typical Doris fashion, the opening titles are arranged over black and white photos from the film.  The music that plays over this sequence is a zippy little Greek instrumental.  I don’t know if the music was present in the original version, or if Doris hired someone to make it sound Greek.  Whatever the case, it’s another fun title sequence.  

It goes without saying that it’s going to be poorly dubbed, but the fact that it’s a foreign film probably gave Wishman license to just lean into the shoddy dubbing.  We’ve all seen terribly dubbed foreign skin flicks before, right?  They don’t try to match the lips, so why should Doris?

And with that, I am quickly running out of nice things to say about Passion Fever.  This is a trainwreck in just about every regard.  The editing is so jarring it’s enough to give you whiplash.  First, Yarkos is at a parade, then he’s on the street getting some gal’s number, then he’s sitting on a park bench talking to a friend… all in the space of like a minute.  Stretches like this make you feel like Doris threw the footage in a Veg-O-Matic and whatever got spit out was held together with Elmer’s Glue.  

To give Doris the benefit of the doubt, it is possible that some of the snippets that are missing might have been stolen from some greedy projectionist at a seedy grindhouse for his own collection.  Even then, that doesn’t excuse the slipshod whirlwind back and forth in some scenes.  

The funniest bits are the Wishman-lensed sex inserts.  The way she not-so cleverly tries to crop out people’s faces and heads is a riot.  What’s worse is that it is painfully apparent that the footage doesn’t match at all.  Like, not even close.  As in, the guy in the Wishman scenes is wearing glasses and Yarkos clearly is not.  Boy, oh boy.  

I haven’t seen the original version of Fever, so I can’t say if it’s better than Wishman’s version, but I know it can’t be much worse.  The set-up is sound enough.  A dude driving around trying to get laid.  It’s hard to screw that up.  Somehow, Doris managed to do just that.  

AKA:  Fever.

DORIS DECEMBER: MY BROTHER’S WIFE (1966) ***

My Brother’s Wife features yet another amazing instrumental theme during the opening credits sequence.  Say what you will about Doris Wishman’s technical shortcomings, but her ability to secure legitimately terrific music for her films time and again is simply amazing.  Once again, the theme plays over black and white images from the movie.  Some would call this repetitive.  For me, it’s that kind of serial adherence to form that I respect from my filmmakers.

The film begins with a brawl between brothers in a billiards hall.  Flashbacks reveal how the trouble all started.  It seems the mildly handsome Frankie (Sam Stewart, getting typecast as a nogoodnik in yet another Wishman movie) came to stay with his tubby, bald brother Bob (Bob Oran) and his sexy young wife Mary (June Roberts).  You know it’s just a matter of time before Frankie and Mary are going to be knocking the boots.  Naturally, Frankie breaks her heart, which leads to tragedy.

This time out, Wishman uses voiceovers in a rather respectable manner.  When Frankie and Mary first meet, we hear their thoughts on the soundtrack as they sexually size up one another.  The dialogue isn’t bad either and sometimes takes on a noir-ish quality (which is fitting considering all the double-crosses in the third act).

The usual Wishman touches abound.  Extraneous shots of feet?  Check.  Gratuitous shots of strewn undies?  Got it.  Obviously out-of-synch dialogue?  You bet.  Long scenes of women gazing at their reflection in the mirror?  Yup.  A completely random dance sequence?  It’s here.

It’s those distinctly Doris hallmarks that prevents My Brother’s Wife from being just another run-of-the-mill adult drama.  If you noticed, I called it an “adult drama” and not a roughie.  I hesitate to use that term because it’s strangely… normal for a Doris Wishman movie?!?  Yes, there are scenes where Frankie tries to force himself on women (including Darlene Bennett from A Taste of Flesh), but they are quite restrained… again, for a Doris Wishman movie.   

Yes, this is a surprisingly straightforward entry in the Wishman filmography.  Despite the fact that it is lacking a certain sleaziness that we’ve come to expect from Wishman, it is nevertheless a competent (mostly) drama, and remains effortlessly watchable.  If anything, it was proof Doris could make a “real” movie if she tried.  I mean some of the camera angles she managed to pull off in such a cramped apartment are rather inspired (the POV shot of a stool where Bennett’s ass comes rushing towards the camera is a doozy) and the lesbian lovemaking sequence is positively poetic.    

DORIS DECEMBER: ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER MAN (1966) ** ½

(Originally reviewed November 30th, 2020)

I’m a big fan of Doris Wishman, although I readily admit I much prefer her wild, anything-goes ‘70s work to the nudies and roughies she made in the ‘60s.  Having said that, this one is pretty good.  It has all the hallmarks you’d expect from a Wishman joint, namely:  Awkward editing during the dialogue scenes (to disguise the fact she didn’t have synch sound), random ass cutaways to planters and clown paintings (again, to disguise the fact she didn’t have synch sound), and gratuitous close-ups of feet and breasts whenever things slow down (again, to disguise the fact she didn’t have synch sound).  

Ann (Barbi Kemp) just got married to Steve (Tony Gregory).  When Steve comes down with a mysterious illness, it leaves their household without an income.  Forced to support her ailing hubby, Ann turns to her former roommate’s lecherous pimp for help, who promptly puts her to work hooking.  Naturally, when Steve finally figures it all out, it leads to predictably tragic results.

A lot of the fun comes from seeing Ann’s transformation from mousy housewife to sexy lady of the night.  By that I mean, the change is almost immediate.  One minute she’s wearing demure wardrobes, and the next, she’s slinking around in a skintight bodysuit and sporting a beehive hairdo.  Her hubby is often hilariously oblivious to the change in her.

Like many of Wishman’s films, Another Day, Another Man looks great.  Wishman’s cinematography is usually on-point, and this is no exception.  The big issue is the odd plot detours that often lead to a bumpy ride.  At one point, the plot stops abruptly and goes into the pimp boyfriend’s backstory.  The stuff with the pimp courting twin sisters into a life of prostitution, and the subsequent subplot about a boyfriend breaking off his engagement because he learns his girlfriend’s a hooker eats up a lot of screen time and gets in the way of main plotline.

Another Day, Another Man is also kind of tame and a lot less seedy than Wishman’s best work.  It’s still fairly enjoyable though.  I’d say it’s about on par with Bad Girls Go to Hell, but it’s far from the dizzying heights of Let Me Die a Woman.

The most memorable part is the awesome music.  The main theme, “The Hell Raisers” by The Syd Dale Orchestra is one of the greatest pieces of music ever written.  It later became the iconic Something Weird theme, and if you’ve ever watched one of their videos, you know it will be stuck in your head for days after you hear it.  The rest of the music in the movie isn’t quite as memorable, but it’s still pretty darn good.

The dialogue is often a hoot too; my favorite line being:  “I haven’t seen you since yesterday… and that’s almost twenty-four hours!”

AKA:  Another Day, Another Way.

DORIS DECEMBER NOTES:

1) In my original review, I said Another Day, Another Man was “about on par with Bad Girls Go to Hell”.  Now that I have revaluated that film and elevated it to Four Star status, I would amend that statement and say it’s “about on par with A Taste of Flesh”.

2) Once again, we have another title sequence features black and white photographs.  This one has the distinction of featuring “The Hell Raisers”, the best piece of music Wishman ever put into a film.  

3) Like Gentlemen Prefer Nature Girls, our heroine has a boss who doesn’t approve of married women working.  Is this a reoccurring theme of strong women rallying against patriarchal expectations and outdated mores?  Or is Wishman just repeating herself?  

4) Another reoccurring element that has been cropping up during Wishman’s roughie period is the random cutaway to a discarded undergarment lying on the floor.  It’s not as pronounced as the shots of feet, awkward telephone conversations, and bad dubbing, but it’s becoming more and more prevalent in each passing movie.

5) Sam Stewart, who had a memorable role in Bad Girls Go to Hell, plays yet another lout who likes to smack women around.

6) Another reoccurring element in Wishman’s roughie period:  The downbeat ending.  All the characters walked happily off into the sunset (nude) in her nudie era.  With the exception of A Taste of Flesh, Wishman’s heroines in this period are left to a depressing fate.  

7) Like The Prince and the Nature Girl, Wishman once again resorts to stealing footage from her earlier movies, in this case, Bad Girls Go to Hell.

DORIS DECEMBER: A TASTE OF FLESH (1967) ** ½

A Taste of Flesh kicks off with a great opening instrumental theme song.  It’s not quite up to snuff with “The Hell Raisers” from Another Day, Another Man, but it is definitely a toe-tapper.  (Luckily for Another Day, Another Man fans, “The Hell Raisers” appears later in the film.)  In fact, all the music in the movie is top notch and helps give it a larger than life feel that a low budget, apartment-bound sex flick might not have otherwise had.  Naturally, like Doris Wishman’s other roughies, the theme song accompanies black and white photos of what we will see throughout the picture.  

The plot is essentially a remake of Suddenly, but because it’s Doris Wishman doing the remaking, it’s Suddenly, but with Lesbians.  

The film begins with a great bubble bath scene where Hannah (Peggy Steffans) is soaking in the tub.  Her friend Bobi (Layla Peters) interrupts Hannah and begins putting the moves on her.  From the awkward cutting to the blank, lifeless expressions on the actresses’ faces, it’s hard to tell if this scene is supposed to be consensual or not.  That just makes it that much more bizarrely fascinating.  

Hannah is in the city for a few days and stays with Bobi and her lesbian roommate Carol (Darlene Bennett).  A pair of gunmen worm their way into Carol’s apartment and take the ladies hostage.  It seems a foreign dignitary happens to be staying at the hotel across the street, and Carol’s apartment has the perfect vantage point for an assassination attempt.  While waiting for the dignitary to arrive, the men amuse themselves by beating, harassing, seducing, and raping the women.  

Because of the cookie cutter plot, you might be inclined to think A Taste of Flesh is going to be more like a “real” movie than a Doris Wishman skin flick.  It’s not one of her best, but if you’re patient, there’s some Wishman-y goodness in store for you.  The foot shots and scenes of dialogue occurring while the actress speaking the lines is off screen are a given, but the most entertaining aspect of the film comes in the form of its padding.  About halfway through, the plot stops dead in its tracks for a long dream/fantasy scene where Bobi dresses like a man, has a romantic champagne toast with Hannah, and then takes her to bed.  Another unnecessary but welcome scene involves Carol undressing, looking at herself nude in the mirror, and then rolling around on the bed for no good reason whatsoever.  

A Taste of Flesh has its merits, but it falls short of some of Wishman’s other roughies.  While there are a few novel bits spread throughout, it’s nothing crazy enough to put it over the top.  The ending is a bit rushed and unsatisfying too, which doesn’t help matters.  

DORIS DECEMBER: INDECENT DESIRES (1968) ***

(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.

DORIS DECEMBER: BAD GIRLS GO TO HELL (1965) ****

BAD GIRLS GO TO HELL  (1965)  ** ½

(Originally posted July 17, 2008)

In the ‘60s, Doris Wishman was the Queen of the Nudie Movies.  This one is sleazier than most.  Meg (Gigi Darlene) is a housewife who gets raped by a janitor.  She kills him with a candy dish and high tails it to New York where she moves in with a handsome guy.  He turns out to be a drunk and beats her with a belt.  After he passes out, she kisses him goodbye (!!!) then shacks up with a lesbian.  Meg tells her she’s an “acrobatic dancer”, but all she really does is stand on her head.  The lesbian puts the moves on her, and she splits.  She rents a room from a couple and the hubby rapes her, so she leaves and gets a job taking care of an old woman.  When her son comes to visit (he comes in through “the front door” which is clearly a CLOSET!) he turns out to be a detective looking for Meg.  And then… it was all a dream!  Wow.  With all the Wishman trademarks:  lots of bad dubbing and lots of close-ups of feet.  Wishman also did Diary of a Nudist and Double Agent 73.  

BAD GIRLS GO TO HELL  (1965)  ****

(Critical Re-evaluation, December 7th, 2022)  

When we think of artists having different “periods” that define their work, we mostly think about painters and sculptors.  However, Doris Wishman is one of the few directors to have very distinct periods throughout her career.  That was mostly because of the market demands and shifting trends within the adult movie genre.  Doris, ever the chameleon (and workhorse) never met a subgenre she didn’t like.  The eras of her work are so pronounced that the AGFA Blu-Ray boxset is broken up into three parts.  Bad Girls Go to Hell is one of the films that defined Wishman’s time in the “roughie” genre and is one of her best.

Wishman’s nudie films ran about seventy minutes or so, but they often felt much longer.  At a lean, mean sixty-four minutes, Bad Girls Go to Hell flies by.  The first thing we notice is the music in the opening credits.  Gone are the sunny, upbeat theme songs that populated her Nudie Period.  It has been replaced with moody jazz that is a perfect fit for the starkly photographed pictures that accompany the title sequence.  It nicely sets the table for the rest of the film.

With Bad Girls Go to Hell, Doris seems to be leaning into her cinematic fetishes/limitations.  The effort to synch up the actors’ lips and dialogue is much more relaxed (READ:  Slipshod), and the random shots of feet could be put into the Louvre.  Whereas Wishman was using the weird cutaways of feet to fit to cover herself in the editing room during her nudie era, here, the foot photography has an eerie, gothic, dreamlike quality to it.  

There are also some truly bizarre touches that I just love.  Like when our heroine, Meg (Gigi Darlene) takes a shower with her husband.  Usually, a shower scene is memorable unto itself, but it’s the random bit where she kisses a portrait of two cats before she enters the shower that will stay with me.  Another touch I loved was the way Gigi wipes her attacker’s blood off her face by licking a tissue and dabbing it as if it were stray spaghetti sauce.  And of course, there’s the hilarious scene where a front door is portrayed by a closet.  

I first watched Bad Girls Go to Hell on VHS as a part of Joe Bob Briggs’ “The Sleaziest Movies in the History of the World” series.  I’m not sure how many Wishman movies I saw before then, but seeing it hot on the heels of the films in her Nudie Period, it feels like a revelation.  The black and white photography is beautiful, a sharp contrast to the sunny color cinematography in her early career.  The print is flawless too.  The film was always one of Wishman’s better looking films to begin with, but this is the best it’s ever looked.  Bravo, AGFA.

Also, much of the movie takes place indoors, another big difference from the nudist camp era.  This is also psychologically important as the claustrophobic surroundings feed into the psyche of Meg.  The drab domestic scenes where she dutifully does housework are miles away from the bright sunshine days of carefree nude shuffleboard.  When the film does open up and steps outdoors, Doris’ lens makes the seedy New York streets look foreboding and surreal.  Carnival of Souls by way of film noir. 

As inept as some of this is, the first rape scene is surprisingly shocking and effective.  The chaotic editing and camera placement perfectly puts the audience in Meg’s disoriented state.  The leering close-ups of her attacker and the shots of her frightened face pack a punch too.

Of course, the inept stuff is a lot of fun too.  Meg’s time spent with the lesbian (Darlene Bennett) in a bad blonde wig is a hoot.  The part where she claims to be an “acrobatic dancer” and randomly performs handstands, backbends, and crabwalks for her new roommate is the kind of scene that elevates Bad Girls Go to Hell from mere exploitation to bizarre art.  It’s just so out of left field that you have to admire it.  

Bad Girls Go to Hell is ultimately a film about guilt and shame.  Whenever Meg is attacked, she runs away from her problems, unwittingly setting off a chain reaction and dooming herself to repeat the cycle yet again.  I love it when a director takes one idea and does repeated variations of a theme/cinematic fetish for reel after reel until they finally have a movie.  This wouldn’t be Wishman’s first or last rodeo in that regard, but it is one of her most effective.

DORIS DECEMBER: THE PRINCE AND THE NATURE GIRL (1964) *

Frank Prince (Jeffrey Niles) isn’t a real “prince”, but he’s rich and has a high-profile job, so that’s close enough to a prince for a half-assed modern fairy tale/nudist movie directed by Doris Wishman.  Prince only has eyes for his coworker, the blonde Eve (Joni Roberts), but her twin sister, Sue (also Roberts), a brunette, is secretly in love with him.  Her solution?  Slap on a blonde wig, pose as Eve, and trick him into going on a date with her.  

It’s a miracle that The Prince and the Nature Girl exists.  Previously thought lost, a print turned up in Germany, and it looks pretty good, all things considered.  Watching a Doris Wishman movie in German with English subtitles adds a layer of weirdness to the proceedings that would’ve been sorely missed had we been watching the original version.  

That said, I think it was lost on purpose.  

Heavily padded with footage from Wishman’s other nudist movies (most noticeably Blaze Starr Goes Nudist and Gentlemen Prefer Nature Girls), The Prince and the Nature Girl is a poor hatchet-and-patch-it job.  I know I’ve been watching all these movies in a single sitting, and there’s a possibility there are starting to run together, but the repeated footage of naked canoeing, volleyball, swimming, seesawing, walks in the rain, checkers, photography, sunbathing, swinging, gardening, popsicle eating, chess, picnicking, basketball, and archery (of course) are definitely not the byproduct of sleep deprivation, déjà vu, or my overactive imagination.  

The newly shot scenes of naked orange picking, naked games of horseshoes, naked punching bag practice, and naked wood chopping (which, if you ask me, doesn’t seem like a safe thing to do au natural) aren’t exactly great.  Wishman also relies way too much on narration to string everything together (which probably saved a pretty penny when it came to synching the sound).  The weird dubbing and the random shots of feet are there to remind you it is indeed, a Wishman joint, and the idea of characters trying to balance work with nudism is thematically in line with other Wishman efforts.  However, it just feels like her heart wasn’t in this one.  

Even with a skimpy fifty-seven-minute running time, The Prince and the Nature Girl feels much, much longer.  The movie really runs out of gas about two-thirds of the way through when we get a random-ass montage of flowers, shrubs, and ducks that is only there to pad things out.  I’m all for finding lost movies, but ultimately, this Prince probably deserved to stay in exile.