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.