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.

DORIS DECEMBER: DIARY OF A NUDIST (1961) **

(Originally posted July 17th, 2007)

A newspaper editor is out hunting one day when he stumbles upon a nudist colony.  Outraged, he sends his cutest reporter to infiltrate the colony to do a smear campaign against them.  When the reporter ends up enjoying being a nudist, he fires her.  Then, he joins the colony himself and falls in love with her (and nudism).  Director Doris Wishman filmed parts of this movie in the same nudist colony she filmed Blaze Starr Goes Nudist.  She crams the screen with buns and boobs and badly dubbed dialogue.  It’s pretty harmless stuff, but endless scenes of naked shuffleboard, volleyball and swimming gets repetitive after a while.  

DIARY OF A NUDIST  (1961)  **

(New review)

If the above review looks really short, it’s because it was originally written for my Video Vacuum fanzine (remember those?) before I ported it over to the old LiveJournal website.  That capsule review gets the job done, but now that I am knee-deep in Doris Wishman movies, I decided to write a new review for Diary of a Nudist instead of just a series of quick bullet points.  If anything, it will help contextualize the picture within her filmography.

The first thing we notice about Diary of a Nudist is that it gets right to the nudism, making it vastly different than the other Doris films so far.  The head of a nudist camp gathers members around and reads “The Nudist Creed”.  Then, the opening titles kick in, accompanied by a song called “Sun Lovers’ Blues”, and like the other title songs in the Doris Wishman repertoire, it is a banger.  Seriously, after the absence of a title song in Gentlemen Prefer Nature Girls, I was a little worried, but this catchy ditty lifted my spirits immensely.  When you have mainlined five Doris Wishman movies back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back in an eight-hour span, you look for any beacon of hope.  

Like Gentlemen Prefer Nature Girls, Diary of a Nudist is pro-nudism propaganda.  (If that opening scene with “The Nudist Creed” wasn’t an obvious tip-off.)  The film hinges on our heroine, a reporter named Stacy (Davee Decker) trying to convince her editor (Norman Casserly) that nudism makes for a healthy and happy lifestyle.  The nudism scenes aren’t bad either.  We get nude flower basket making, nude suntan lotion application, nude swimming, nude sunbathing, nude coffee table discussions, nude shuffleboard, nude volleyball, and nude spraying each other with a garden hose. 

While Wishman stages the set-up in expedient fashion, things quickly get bogged down once Decker arrives at the camp.  The scenes of guests pulling up to the entrance of the camp, getting out of their cars, and futzing with the lock on the gate go on seemingly forever.  The worst form of padding comes late in the game when Casserly sits at his typewriter and writes his big story while wearing tiny shorts.  At seventy-one minutes, the movie is already overlong to begin with.  Had Wishman cut all the needless padding and brought the film to a lean hour running time, it might’ve skated by with ** ½.

Although there are some surprisingly long dialogue scenes (where the dubbing is only slightly off), there are still scenes where we hear people’s thoughts/narration on the soundtrack and telephone conversations where the user strategically places the receiver over their mouth so dialogue can be dubbed in later.  Then again, if we didn’t have these scenes, it wouldn’t be a Doris Wishman movie.  Overall, Diary of a Nudist isn’t Wishman’s best film, but it might be her most competent.  

AKA:  Diary of a Naturist.  AKA:  Diary of a Girl Reporter.  AKA:  Girl Reporter Diary.  AKA:  Nature Camp Confidential.  AKA:  Nature Camp Diary.  

DORIS DECEMBER: GENTLEMEN PREFER NATURE GIRLS (1963) **

OK, this is the first movie in the Doris Wishman boxset I haven’t seen yet, so now I actually have to sit down and craft an actual review instead of half-assing a bunch of notes and tacking them to the bottom of an older review.

Thomas (Lou Alexion) works at a real estate office for his hard-ass boss Bennett (William Mayer, also in Wishman’s Nude on the Moon and Blaze Starr Goes Nudist).  When Bennett learns Thomas is a nudist in his spare time, he fires him on the spot.  It’s then up to Thomas and his wife Ann (Joan Bamford), who also happens to be Bennett’s secretary, to show him there isn’t a stigma attached to being a nudist.  

This is one of those good news/bad news situations.  Unlike the previous Doris Wishman nudie movies I just watched, Gentlemen Prefer Nature Girls doesn’t make us wait a half-hour or so before our characters arrive at the nudist camp.  This time out, we only have to sit through ten minutes of boring plot stuff before we get to the naked sunbathing, naked picnicking, naked hair combing, naked swimming, naked accordion playing, naked archery (naturally), naked gardening, naked seesawing, naked stretching, naked photography, naked volleyball, naked yard watering, naked walks in the rain, naked swinging, naked skipping rocks, naked basketball, naked popsicle eating, naked shuffleboard, and everyone’s favorite… naked sulking around because you lost your job.

However, Doris’ other films at least had the benefit of a marginally interesting hook.  Nude on the Moon was about space exploration.  Blaze Starr Goes Nudist offered an intimate look into the life of the “real” Blaze Starr.  Hideout in the Sun had a bank robbery/kidnapping plot.  This one can’t even muster up an interesting scenario.  

Yes, Gentlemen Prefer Nature Girls belongs in the subset of nudist movies where the characters/filmmakers are out to prove that nudism is a natural and healthy lifestyle choice; not something to be frowned upon.  Because of that, there’s a little bit more thrust to the story than in the other Wishman movies I’ve seen (but not much).  However, without the novelty of a hook, it just never quite takes off.  

Overall, Gentlemen Prefer Nature Girls feels more like a generic nudist picture and less like a Doris Wishman film.  Because of that, it’s lacking that certain quirkiness that makes Doris Wishman movies Doris Wishman movies.  Don’t worry, there are still plenty of those little Wishman touches like underwater shots of skinny-dippers, poorly synched sound, telephone conversations where the listener’s mouth is obscured (which goes hand in hand with the poorly synched sound), and long driving scenes.  One big notable absence is a lack of random shots of people's feet.  Another glaring omission is the lack of a killer title song over the opening credits.  

I guess if you just want to see some boobies, this is an OK way to go.  The ladies vary in attractiveness, but that helps makes it more realistic.  If everyone looked like Blaze Starr, it wouldn’t feel authentic.  

AKA:  Gentlemen Prefer Girls.