How did I miss this 1973 film about a cross-dressing homicidal killer by the director of Shanty Tramp? Well for one, this Florida-made whack job of a film didn’t get much of a release. Thought to be lost, it turned up in the vaults of the BFI and now Network has released a super-looking Blu-ray of this rancid rarity. (The Blu-ray is also an all-region and plays on American players).
I’ve written at length about the bizarre films coming out of Florida during the 1970s, such as My Brother Has Bad Dreams, Blood Freak and Aunt Martha Does Dreadful Things. and this film fits in perfectly alongside those incredibly strange movies. Miss Leslie’s Dolls is accredited as directed by Joseph J. Prieto (Savages From Hell, Shanty Tramp), but there is confusion online as to whether Prieto was a pseudonym for Joseph P. Mawra, who did the notorious Olga’s House Of Shame and White Slaves Of Chinatown. The only actor from Miss Leslie’s Dolls that has been tracked down- Charles Pitts who plays Roy- said the director had a Cuban accent, and Mawra is from Queens. For those who haven’t seen Shanty Tramp, check out Nicolas Winding Refyn’s website: bynwr.com to stream a gorgeous, restored version of this sleaze great.
Now back to Miss Leslie’s Dolls. It’s about a teacher (Terri Juston) and her college students (Charles Pitts, Marcelle Bichette, Kitty Lewis) on a road trip from Boston, when their car breaks down outside a cemetery (the headstones look like they were made with pie plates and popsicle sticks).
They head to a nearby house where they encounter Miss Leslie (Salvador Ugarte), a spooky woman stroking a black cat wearing a long-sleeved dress, with a weird gold amulet hanging around her neck. Miss Leslie begrudgingly gives them a place to stay for the night.
The stud-puppy of the group Roy (Charles Pitts), who is bedding both girls, finds a special room in the house where Miss Leslie keeps her oversized wax dolls- which are just live women posed on a stage, trying hard to stand still during the shots.
Now it’s obvious Miss Leslie is a man but no one seems to notice. You’d think the director could have used some make-up to obscure the fact. No, they just dub Miss Leslie with a real woman’s voice, which makes it even weirder when they make a supposedly “surprise” reveal at the end.
The students all keep ragging about their uptight, schoolmarm of a teacher, when in point-of-fact she looks younger and sexier than any of them. When she lets down her hair and seductively gets in bed with one of the female students later, we’re supposed to be surprised by her transformation. But all these bone-headed moves make the movie endlessly fascinating.
There is the requisite nudity. And everyone moves and talks so slow…this is a 90-minute film that could have easily been 65 minutes. Actor Salvador Ugarte gives a good, earnest try in the lead. He/she has an angry soliloquy with the skull of her mother in the basement that will not make you think of Hamlet. But the crux of the movie is Miss Leslie’s supernatural attempts at transmitting her soul into the body of a pretty young woman. Her mistakes end up discarded in her doll room. However, this is transgender transformation at its most basic, which is pretty wild and original for some rural exploitation film.
Typically, the plot goes haywire, with a bonkers Miss Leslie running around with an axe. It also has one of the most head-scratching, ironic endings ever. But it’s so damned odd and wonderful. I just kept shaking my head in delight and often roared with laughter. I have to admit that hasn’t happened to me in a movie theater for in a very, very, long time. You owe it to yourself to track down this deranged treat.
