The queen of the nudie cuties, roughies, soft-core, the early days of the 42nd Avenue grindhouses was Doris Wishman.

This is part of ChrisJarmick's Erotic Movie Write Off.

I'll tell you a little more about Doris, but one of the best places to start seeing the movies she made is with this Something Weird/ Image DVD. It's one of two quintessential Doris Wishman roughie period double feature on DVD. So you get two of Doris’ best ‘bad girl’ films on one DVD in glorious black and white too. It’s actually even better than that because the DVD is set up so you can play it like it was a double feature at the Drive-In complete with trailers, intermission announcements and more. Image has taken the Drive In Movie idea in conjunction with Something Weird from ELITE ‘s Drive in Disc Series (and maybe the idea actually began with Portland’s Sinister Cinema), but they have picked two great features to use the DRIVE IN MOVIE at home on DVD concept on.

Are the movies any good?

Good is a relative term in the world of very low budget sexploitation movies. Campy? Yes. Innovative? Creative? Outrageous? Yes. Inspiration to people like John Waters?
You betcha.

I'm going to over-do the credits a bit, because in so many places they are either not listed, not known and completely incorrect.

FIRST FEATURE PRESENTATION

What a fantastic title !!!!!

Bad Girls Go to Hell

(b & w - Juri Productions / Sam Lake Enterprises Inc..- 1965)

Directed by Doris Wishman Written by D.W. (Dawn Whitman) Produced by D.W. Cinematography: C. Davis Smith Featuring: Gigi Darlene, Harold Key, George La Rocque, Sandee Norman, Barnard L. Sacket, Marlene Starr Darlene Bennett, Sam Stewart

Here's a film which obviously served as a blue-print for such John Waters/ Divine films as PINK FLAMINGOS and FEMALE TROUBLE. It doesn’t have the gross-outs of the Waters’ films but the plotting, characters, and attitude are all here.

It is Doris Wishman’s first official ‘roughie’ and 10th film.

What's a 'Roughie'? I'll tell you in a few paragraphs.

Meg (Gigi Darlene)is a housewife in either Boston or Chicago (actually she's probably from Boston but lies to cover her tracks that she is from Chicago, but it is done so poorly it feels like a continuity error) who after making love with her husband is taking a shower and then is attacked by a buck toothed janitor. The janitor threatens to blackmail her. When she goes to confront about the attempted blackmail, he tries to attack her again so she kills him with a bowl. Really!!! We even get a dead man’s p.o.v. shot of the bowl!!! It's brilliant.

Meg runs away and arrives via bus to the Big Apple changing her name to Ellen Green and she says she is from Chicago. Close ups of feet, and we hear birds too loudly chirping on the soundtrack when we go to Central Park. A seemingly friendly guy takes a sip of alcohol and starts beating Meg/Ellen with a belt. A newspaper headline states: POLICE SEEK BLONDE SUSPECT IN BOSTON MURDER !

Ellen rooms with Della, a lesbian who claims she is an acrobatic dancer. She stands on her head in her bra and panties to prove it. Ellen is uncomfortable about this.

Later Ellen rents a room for 20 dollars a week and is then attacked by the landlady’s husband.

She flees that scene and becomes a companion for an elderly woman but then discovers her son is a detective working on the Boston murder case.

Just as the long arm of the law closes in on Ellen/Meg. . . well perhaps I shouldn’t spoil the ending but David Lynch would love it.

FROM THE ADS: "Possessed with sex, they know no shame!"

INTERMISSION

If you watch this DVD in it's 'Drive In Format", you'll get a three minute picture is gong to start warning. Then an ad that there's still time to go to the snack bar, then some previews for Wishman movies Indecent Desires, and A Taste Of Flesh before the first feature starts.

After the film we get more trailers for Another Day, Another Man, My Brother's Wife and Too Much, Too Often, plus there's a set of adult books being promoted fro sale and there's snack bar promos.

Doris Wishman was perhaps the most prolific woman director of all time. She directed approximately 30 motion pictures. All of them very low budget, most of them in the sexploitation genre. Her first was in 1959. She made 27 films in 23 years and then mostly retired from 1982 to 1999. Then in her late 80s she made 3 more films before she died at the of 90 in August of 2002.

Most of the movies were made to be part of double and triple features at grind-house theaters and dusk to dawn drive-in shows. There are few of these places left and not many revival theaters even run midnight cult movies these days.

What are 'Nudie Cuties' and 'Roughies'?

The “nudie cuties” from the late fifties and early sixties are naïve and dated. The earliest ones were filmed at nudist colonies. No sex scenes, but plenty of nude volleyball, ping-pong, sun-bathing, skinny dipping and... you get the idea.

The “roughies” (from the mid 60’s to the early 70’s) which Wishman helped pioneer were usually extremely misogynistic (slightly less so in Wishman’s presentations) and violent. Loose 'bad' women were punished for their 'sins of the flesh'. They were roughed up, beaten with belts, turned out, sometimes raped.

Then there were the soft-core films of the seventies which were the forerunners of direct-to-video erotica which are sometimes called ‘skin-e-max”movies. Wishman, in fact, did try to make a few X-rated porno vehicles but found she was too uncomfortable directing the more explicit sex scenes. Doris actually denied ever directing any X-rated material but eventually admitted she might have had something to do with SATAN WAS A LADY in 1975 and COME WITH ME, MY LOVE in 1976.

And Now our 2nd Feature

Another Day, Another Man ( b & w - Juri Productions- 1966)

Directed by Doris Wishman Written by D.W. (Dawn Whitman) Produced by D.W. Cinematography: C. Davis Smith Featuring: Gigi Darlene, Rita Bennett, Darlene Bennett Tony Gregory, Barbi Kemp, Mary O’Hara, Bob Oran, June Roberts, Sam Stewart

After a montage of stills and jazz music, a couple walks in Central Park. Ann (Kemp) and Steve (Gregory) are newlyweds who move into a furnished apartment.

Ann’s ex-roomate is Tess (O’Hara) a prostitute who works for Bert the Pimp (Sam Stewart) . When Bert visits Tess he falls asleep and has a flashback/dream which he narrates in a deep cartoon voice.

Dolly and Daisy (the Bennett twins) like being painted ladies w-w-hores. Bert picks up Meg (Darlene) fresh off the bus (hmm almost a sequel to Bad Girls), the girls bond by dancing in their underwear until Meg’s boyfriend shows up wanting to marry her.

When the dream ends, we spend some time with our newlyweds Steve and Ann. Ann has quit her job to be a housewife after Steve gets a raise.

Then Steve gets sick. He becomes bed-ridden and as the bills pile up, Ann has to figure out something to do. So she works for Bert as a call girl. By day she takes care of hubby, by night she’s a hooker. Steve makes a miraculous and complete recovery and rushes off to tell his wife Ann the good news and then makes a shocking discovery about what she has been doing!!!

Shots of potted plants, radios, underwear, odd hand held camera work and some truly mind bending editing lets you know you are in Wishman land.

FROM THE ADS: “Sex without Shame”.

The dubbing and acting are mostly awful. The movie so cheaply produced, mistakes are left in.

Nothing else like it. Experience the world of Doris Wishman soon.


Also included on the DVD as an extra apart from the Drive In Feature is an interesting slide show of the poster art used for Wishman movies. The movies were usually launched and pre-sold to a group of exhibitors by how good the poster looked. The advertising slogan would often be written before the script was. (There's also an Easter Egg for you to find after you have watched the movies)

Who noticed for instance that the two films we just watched included many of the same cast members and sets? Doris would often use her friends', her actors and crew, and even her own apartment as well as the streets of New York as her sets.

Wishman was very proud of the fact that she always paid her cast and crew. She also went after people who tried to get out of paying her and developed a reputation as a very 'honest' filmmaker who paid her bills on time.

Okay maybe these films are not exactly what you would call EROTIC MOVIES...they are however Adult Entertainment or at least what they called Adults Only Entertainment back in the day.

ChrisJarmick Erotic Movie Write Off Details can be discovered by going here:

http://www.epinions.com/content_234288680580



Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for Groups