The Sexy Melodramas of Doris Wishman

            “Lingerie and lunacy” is another way to describe this second glorious Blu-ray box set of the films of pioneer female exploitation director Doris Wishman from AGFA and Something Weird.

            The Blu-ray collection is called The Moonlight Years (the first box set contained her later, more outrageous films and is reviewed here). This deliriously demented set covers the nine films she directed from 1965 to 1968. The nudist camp films she had been making were getting unprofitable and Doris had to change gears and wisely began a series of sexy black & white melodramas. Often lumped in the “roughies” which were exploitation movies that combined more violence in with the sex, Wishman’s films were more sexy thrillers but always starring scantily clad women in wild lingerie with towering, teased hair, lounging around apartments (most of them Doris’s). Aside from the bizarre plots, bubble baths and big hair, what sets Wishman apart from other filmmakers are her baffling, often maddening cut-away shots to ashtrays, bad art on the wall or mostly feet. In her defense, this was a way Wishman chose to edit her films (it was what she thought had to be done), but it has a hallucinatory effect on the viewer. The repetition of feet shots feel fetishistic and mad. It is her signature, in a way, and makes me love her films all the more. The real hero of her films during this period is her cinematographer C. Davis Smith, who shot them fast and furious and very effectively.

            Bad Girls Go to Hell (1965) stars pretty Gigi Darlene as Ellen, lounging around in lingerie in her Boston apartment while her husband Ted is at work. Bringing the garbage down the back stairs she is sexually assaulted by her sleazy super, who tries blackmailing her and she ends up killing him with an ashtray (a key prop in Wishman movies). Ellen goes on the run to New York City, “I can get lost in the crowd there,” and has a series of calamitous encounters: with an angry alcoholic; a lesbian with amazing see-through mesh lounging outfits; a leering husband who sexually attacks her while she’s sleeping and an elderly woman whose son is a detective actually hunting poor Ellen for the murder of the super. (There’s a moment at the lesbian’s apartment where director Doris Wishman can clearly be seen reflected in the window). The film ends with a twist ending, the kind Doris loved throwing in. Gigi Darlene appeared in plenty of exploitation movies from 1961 until she left the business in 1967 and ended up assistant to a hypnotist act. The audio commentary by director Frank Henelotter and Anthony Sneed is hilarious as it is informative.

            Indecent Desires (1967) Truly one of her more bizarre films. Doris used many pseudonyms in her career and here she uses Dawn Whitman as screenwriter and Louis Silverman as director. This bonkers voodoo-doll tale is about creepy loner Zeb (Michael Alaimo), who spends his days looking for forgotten change in phone booths. In a trash can one day he finds a ring and a plastic doll and then begins to stalk a pretty blonde named Ann (Sharon Kent) from her home to the office where she works. When he puts on the found ring and fondles the doll (thinking of Ann) she feels invisible hands caressing her. She is unable to talk to her boyfriend or co-worker about it because she thinks she’s losing her mind. When Zeb gets angry he stubs out a cigarette into the face of the doll and a burn appears on Ann’s face. He later whips the doll with a belt and Ann experiences every lash. The loony wonder has excellent audio commentary by Elizabeth Purchell.

            A Taste of Flesh (1967) Another “directed by Louis Silverman” credit for Doris. This one’s about attractive apartment roommates Carol (Darlene Bennett) and Bobi (Layla Peters), and Bobi’s blonde, visiting friend Hanna (Peggy Steffans). Posing as telephone repairmen, two armed thugs- Frankie (Buck Starr) and Nick (Indecent Desires’ Michael Alaimo) force their way into their apartment. They are planning the assassination of a Prime Minister (from some made-up country) who will secretly be arriving at 6AM at the hotel directly across the street from that apartment. It’s like the Frank Sinatra movie Suddenly but with sex and bubble baths. There is also much lingerie, startling shots of ugly lamps, and even a fantasy dream sequence where Bobi (in a man’s suit, shirt and tie- but without pants) fantasizes about going to bed with Hanna only to have her scarily morph into Nick. There’s also a lulu of an ironic ending. 

            Another Day, Another Man (1966) With a mile-high blonde beehive hair-do and wearing a fur coat, Ann (Barbi Kemp) meets her husband Steve (Tony Gregory) in Central Park. He is excited about getting a new raise and being able to move them into a nice, expensive, furnished apartment. When Ann sees the garish flat, filled with ugly furniture and a clown painting, and says, “It’s lovely,” you want to smack her. After an ill-fated home-cooked spaghetti and meatball dinner, Steve becomes violently ill and has to stay bed-ridden for months. Panicked as to how to pay the medical bills, Ann turns to her old roommate Tess (Mary O’Hara), and asks to meet with her pimp boyfriend Bert (Sam Stewart from Bad Girls Go to Hell) so she can become a prostitute to pay the bills. With lots of lingerie; inanimate object close-ups; voice-over narration; a flashback with an uncredited Gigi Darlene and one memorable moment where one man yells “whore” at his girlfriend. I guess the moral of the story is that spaghetti and meatballs can turn you into a prostitute.

            My Brother’s Wife (1966) Frankie (Sam Stewart again) shows up at the apartment of a brother he hasn’t seen for two years. The door opens and he meets his brother’s wife- pretty, young Mary (June Roberts), and thinks to himself “she means trouble.” But it’s sleazebag Frankie who’s trouble. His brother (Bob Oran) kindly invites him to stay only to have Frankie start an affair with the sexually frustrated wife Mary. Frankie also rekindles relations with an ex-girlfriend Zena (Darlene Bennett). In one of my favorite Wishman moments, Zena comes out of the shower, slips into some lace panties and proceeds to sit on the camera. Doris Wishman historian Michael Bowen does audio commentary.

            Passion Fever (1969) This was a Greek film that was given to Doris Wishman to insert sex scenes in to spice the film up for American audiences. They must not have been any screenplay so they made up the story as it went along, often dubbing people on the screen just describing things we’re looking at. It’s about Yarkos (Panos Kateris), who dreads a life working for his furrier father and all he wants to do is hang out with his buddies in the town square or pick up girls. Doris injects shots of people undressing and making love without showing their faces but her lingering shot of lingerie makes it unmistakably Wishmanesque. Yarkos romances a blonde he discovers is a prostitute, and a pretty teenage girl forms an unhealthy crush on him which results in tragedy. At least I think that’s what it’s about.

            Sex Perils of Paulette (1965) Leave it to Doris Wishman to begin a movie showing a couple having an impassioned conversation in Central Park and then keep cutting away to an out-of-focus squirrel. The girl is Paulette (Anna Karol), who is trying to explain to her boyfriend Allen (Tony Lo Bianco long before The Honeymoon Killers) why she has Band-Aids on her face. She begins to tell him the “whole sordid story” of how she got off a bus in New York filled with hopes and dreams of becoming a famous actress. She gets an apartment with Tracy (Wishman favorite Darlene Bennett) who answers the door in bra and panties and takes two month’s rent (practically all Paulette’s money). But every talent agency she goes to is a wash-out. One has stills from Wishman’s Blaze Starr Goes Nudist on the wall, another employs a secretary played by the director herself. Paulette’s roommate introduces her to sleazy agent boyfriend (Sam Stewart) who procures tricks for Paulette to earn money, and she descends into prostitution. “I’m what you call a bad girl,” she admits to Allen, in this crackpot, cautionary tale.

            Hot Month of August (1966) Another Greek import Wishman was hired to spice up with sexy inserts. The plot is about Jason (Giannis Fetis), traveling by boat home from Athens, not finding much job success and returning “a defeated man.” He meets pretty Hope and her mother aboard ship and considers that marrying a wealthy girl like her might be an option. He also meets Makris on the boat and when he asks him what he does for a living, Makris replies, “I provide a certain service for women who are past middle-age who still feel the need for male companionship. You know, to get laid.” He also encounters a mysterious, married woman aboard named Alexis and they start a hot and heavy affair that continues back home, unwittingly implicating him in a murder plot. Doris interjects vaguely similar body doubles for the sex scenes, obscuring their faces.

            Too Much Too Often! (1968) Wishman reunites the usual suspects (Buck Starr, Sharon Kent, Sam Stewart, Darlene Bennett) for one of my favorites. It’s the portrait of a real heel- Mike Thorson (Buck Starr), who is first seen wearing sunglasses while whipping shirtless masochist Gordon for money. Gordon (Bob Oran) turns out to run a big advertising agency and Mike blackmails him into giving him a high-paying job. “What kind of a man are you?’ Gordon asks Mike, “Where do you come from? Hell?” “That’s right, Creek, Tennessee. Where I come from is hell,” Mike replies. Mike seduces Gordon’s secretary and even Gordon’s daughter. Mike meets a married woman on the pier, brings her home and offers her a drink before having sex with her. “I like my liquor strong and my women weak,” he admits. If that isn’t bad enough he’s a pimp making money off a prostitute and gets a pretty college student pregnant, and, when she threatens to make trouble, terrorizes her by saying, “You have a pretty face. It won’t be pretty anymore.” Gordon warns his daughter about Thorson, “He leaves a trail of hurt and grief everywhere he goes.” Just the best!

            This mind-blowing box set comes with an insert booklet with an affectionate and astute essay by Something Weird’s Lisa Petrucci entitled: “Blonde Wigs and Ashtrays,” in which she writes, “It’s wonderful that Doris is finally getting the accolades, attention, and recognition she so rightly deserved. All hail the Queen of Exploitation Cinema.”