This infinitessimal budgeted sexploitation movie was directed by an 88 (at the time) year old woman named Doris Wishman.

It's Doris' 28th film. She had just completed principal photograph on her 30th movie, when she died in August of 2002 at the age of 90.

I find the story of how this project happened to be very interesting. Doris Wishman who had been making movies since 1959, basically retired after the horrible experience she had making her first horror movie in the late 70's: A Night to Dismember which was finally released in the early 1980s.

She moved to Florida to be close to her sister. As much as she tried however, she just couldn't completely give up on the idea on making another movie. When HBO's REAL SEX program did a segment on her in the late 1990s, Doris pretended that she was making a new sexploitation movie called Dild-o Heaven.

Well she actually wound up shooting footage to do another film as a result.

DVD company ELITE asked Doris to do a feature length commentary for the DVD release of A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER.

Wishman used the money she received from DISMEMBER to do some more editing on her DILD-O HEAVEN project. While she was doing the editing she met a struggling director named Beau Gillespie who was trying to finish editing on his movie PUEBLO SIN SUERTE. Wishman offered Gillespie some help in editing his movie and told him dozen of ideas and plots for low budget movies that she would make if she only had the money.

Gillespie convinced Wishman to let him raise money for a brand new project that he would produce. Wishman had not really ever worked for anyone but herself before but she agreed to do a film from a script called: SATAN WAS A LADY. Gillespie liked that title and didn’t care that it had been used as the title of a porno back in 1975 (that Doris had done). Wishman recycled the plot of her movie Too Much Too Often from the late 60s to create this one. The bit difference this time is that the central character of the original film was a slime-ball con man named Mike and in SATAN the central character would be slime-LADY, a true femme fatale.

Gillespie was involved in casting the movie and wound up doing the final edit--which is why the film has a faster pace and slicker feel than most Wishman movies. For the leading lady, Gillespie convinced Wishman to meed with the star of an impressive and twisted cult film that had been winning several festival awards called MEN CRY BULLETS name Honey Lauren. Several friends of Beau and his wife (who owns a Goth boutique in the Miami area) were cast as well.

Wishman and Lauren wound up going on a shopping trip, having lunch and laking about their careers, husbands and movies. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this story,” Lauren told me over the phone, “We were walking through Cocoanut Grove and Doris says to me, ‘Oh, look, there’s a dild-o store over there.’ It was the Pink Pussycat boutique and Doris said she knew the owner. This guy comes over and says to Doris ‘You know people still come in here asking for you, Doris?’ I didn’t know what to say. I mean, Doris used to work there? This woman, who looks like my Grandmother, was selling dild-os at Porno Bob’s?”

The SATAN shoot lasted about two weeks and Wishman shot it in 35mm with sync sound in several Miami locations. She was constantly changing the script, coming up with the new ideas but it drove Gillepsie crazy and there was concern they wouldn't actually finish the movie.

They did.

Satan Was a Lady (Color –Boomshadow Pictures - 2001)

Directed by Doris Wishman Written by D. W. Produced by Beau Gillepsie. Cinematography by Willem Van Vark Music by Glyn Styler, Gene Coman and Jeff Treffinger Featuring: Honey Lauren, Glyn Styler, Edge, Hans Lohl, Laudet Torres Lourdes Graves, Harry Frederick, Greg Gillingham, Anne Case, Al Reidel, Rene Coman, Victoria Morrison, Kerry Johnston, Lindsey Amodeo, Tabatha De Mercado, Arturo Reyes

In this new, Wishman DVD there’s some good acting, 3 decent songs, a leading lady and a supporting actress who both look fabulous naked.

Lauren is a much better actress then we are used to seeing in these kind of films and certainly better than just about any other actress Wishman ever used in her movies.

There's a concise plot that sets up enough situations to keep the pace fairly brisk. Most of the characters are low-lifes and a bigger budget would have given us a more exciting ending,-- but Satan winds up being one of Wishman’s most entertaining offerings.

Some jokes are over-played, one actor in particular is utterly wooden and amateurish—but it really wouldn’t be a true Wishman film any other way. The entire film has a retro-feel to it. It’s a tawdry, slightly sleazy grindhouse type of film that gives us a conniving sadistic woman front and center driving the action. It's a lot more interesting than most direct to video or cable low budget erotic thrillers because Wishman injects the film with strange quirky people who have interesting faces, accents and talents. She isn’t merely making sexy films, but rather films that do something different than any you have ever seen before.

She dares to be utterly outrageous and unique. Add her trademark quirks, obsessions with feet and bric-a-brac, and the unique Wishman naïve’ sleaziness factor and you have a film difficult to stop watching once you’ve begun.

Honey Lauren plays the tough, big haired Chloe Irane who must have a full-length mink. She does outcall dominatrix bondage work and does a shift at the strip club. Her boyfriend is a hip beatnik type musician named Ed (Glyn Styler) who sings some memorable lounge song ditties that are sometimes used by Wishman to move the story along. Ed's addicted to drugs and isn't giving Chloe the sex or money she wants. Of course Chloe is nearly bipolar turning from an allurring over-sexed kittenish woman to a full blown violent dangerous one in a matter of seconds.

So Chloe decides to blackmail one of her clients (Edge) and that way at least she'll get a mink coat.

Things don't go smoothly for anyone of course.

The film has lots and lots of nudity and there's even a unique striptease in reverse sequence where a dancer puts on her clothes.

DVD EXTRAS
The DVD also features behind the scenes footage and out-takes which allows you to see the surreal site of an 88 year old woman directing an erotic film. There's no interview with Wishman, but we do see her working and at times acting along with the actors from behind the camera.

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Details:

http://www.epinions.com/content_234288680580


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening