Satan Was a Lady (Doris Wishman, 2001)

When the leading lady in Doris Wishman's Satan Was a Lady decides to exploit the secretary who works for the man she's currently blackmailing for monetary gain, I thought to myself: Now we're getting somewhere. Don't get me wrong, I loved the kooky vibe the film was putting out there up until this point. And I even loved the songs by Glyn Styler, who plays "Ed Baines," the lead character's musician boyfriend. But the film was missing that certain something. That all changes when Cleo Lauren (Honey Lauren), a self-described whore, tells Lotte (Laudet Torres) that if she hands over the names of her boss's richest clients, she will give her a makeover. My eyes lit up like a rotten Christmas tree, one of course that's been set on fire and tossed off the roof of a recently condemned Denny's, when she says this. I was like, oooh, I can't wait to see what Cleo's got in store for Lotte. Seriously, someone cue the makeover montage. Unfortunately, Lotte refuses to hand over the names of her boss's clients. Which is a freakin' shame. Or was it? Think about it. Lotte doesn't need a makeover. Her glasses, her hair, her mousey clothes are pretty much perfect. In other words, I wouldn't change a damn thing. As for Cleo. She's the last person who should be giving fashion and style advice. I mean, for starters, look at that mane of unkempt hair sitting atop her head. It's a fucking mess. Um, hello? Helena Bonham Carter called. She wants her hairdo back. Zing!

If you're wondering if this film is in anyway connected to Doris Wishman's Satan Was a Lady from mid-1970s. You can stop right this minute. Other than the fact that they're both directed by Doris Wishman, the film's have nothing really in common. (So... why do they have the same title?) Your guess is as good as mine. It does make sense, if you think about it. Who else would remake their own movie some thirty years later and have them be totally different movies? I'll tell you who, Doris Wishman.

While it was somewhat troubling to see a Doris Wishman film that employs live sound (most of her classic films were shot without sound), you can still see subtle flourishes here and there that prove that she's still got it.

Got what, I'm not quite sure. But it's blatantly obvious whose behind the camera. This sleazy exploitation noir/musical practically oozes Doris Wishman at times.

While the production design isn't as gaudy or as heinous as it is in her other films. The furniture, the wall art and the decor in general is still pretty egregious. And, of course, I mean that in the nicest way possible. If I want to see uninspired production design, I'll watch any random porno film made during the last fifteen years. On the other hand, if I want to see furnishings that will make me gag by simply looking in their general direction, I'll watch a Doris Wishman film.

And, judging by the words I'm currently typing, it looks like I just did. It's just too bad every other film I watch couldn't be a Doris Wishman film, as they are simply better than most of the crap I watch. Okay, maybe "better" isn't the right word. But they're definitely more interesting.

Take, for example, the way Glyn Styler combs his hair. It's a thousand times more interesting than 99% of the stuff I see in most movies. I ain't kidding around. In fact, I would put Glyn Styler's floppy side part up there with the likes of Kyle MacLachlan's floppy side part from Showgirls. (Didn't you say that just the mere sight of Kyle MacLachlan's floppy side part in Showgirls gave you a yeast infection?) Yeah, so? (Aren't yeast infections bad?) Are you kidding me? I would kill for a yeast infection, especially one that was induced by a floppy side part.

Speaking of Showgirls, the strip club scenes are a real hoot and a half. Mainly because the strippers strip in reverse. That's right, they start off naked, and slowly put their clothes on... to the cool, hip, way-out songs of Glyn Styler.

In case I forget, the plot basically about a Miami whore who dreams of buying a fur coat. Wait. There's got to be more to it than that. Let's me see. A Miami whore, low on funds, decides to blackmail one of her clients in order to buy a fur coat. Um, yeah, that's pretty much it. Of course, this plan of hers hits a few roadblocks along the way; she eventually turns her attention to her clients' son (Hans Lohl, a.k.a. the worst actor ever). But that's the gist of it. Oh, and the actor who plays the client the Miami whore is blackmailing is called "Edge." No, not The Edge, just Edge. Is that crazy or what?

As far as other Doris Wishman-fostered anomalies go. I would say the cat with bum paw and lesbian strip club bartender were my favourite. The sight of Cleo's cat limping around her shitty apartment will break your heart. And while there's nothing really that odd about a lesbian strip club bartender, the part where she's turned down by that sun-baked whore with the long blonde braids was kinda off. I mean, what kind of person says no to what will surly be a night of super-wild lesbian sex? It makes no sense.

Oh, and who wears fur in Miami?!? Though, it does explain why Cleo's hair looks like an abandoned bird's nest most of time. (Huh?) The humid weather in Miami isn't exactly hair-friendly. (Oh.)

Anyway, Doris Wishman, who was pushing 90 when she made this, proves that you're never too old to make sleazy trash. Oh, and Glyn Styler rocks.

The Immoral Three (Doris Wishman, 1975)

Whoever decided to give the three characters at the centre of The Immoral Three names that all end in 'y' is going to feel my wrath someday. Oh, and don't worry, I'm not blaming Doris Wishman, as she only directed this film. That being said, she could have chimed in and said something. Nevertheless, I doubt she had anything to do with naming the characters. No, from the looks of it, the only thing Doris was responsible for was the wonderfully garish interior design and the sex scenes that focused primarily on the participant's feet. Actually, that's not entirely true, as you can see Doris Wishman's fingerprints all over this film. Everything, from the colour of the carpet, to the sudden bursts of violence practically screamed Doris Wishman. Though, I have to say, she's come along way from the black and white roughies she made in the mid-1960s. In those films, you would be lucky to travel beyond a two block radius. Yet, in this film, we travel the globe, as we visit Moscow, Las Vegas, Munich, New York City and exotic Fresno, California. Yep, you heard right, I said Fresno. It's true, it might not have been really Fresno, but when a curly-haired redhead wearing a dress–one that sported so many slits, that I literally lost count–shows up at the house of some German guy who may or may not have been her dead mother's lover, I totally bought that it was Fresno; yeah, it was that convincing.

While it's pretty simple to fake Fresno, it's another thing all-together to fool people your film is taking place in New York City and Las Vegas. In order to overcome this difficulty, Doris Wishman shoots the curvaceous Cindy Boudreau walking the streets of both cities.

I know, the film is called "The Immoral Three," not The Immoral One. In other words, where are the other two? Why don't we get to see Sandra Kay and Michele Marie walking the streets of any of these cities?

This question proceeded to nag me throughout the film, as it would seem that Cindy Boudreau is doing the majority of the heavy lifting. To put it in less diplomatic terms, I don't think the other chicks are pulling their weight.

Sure, Sandra Kay's Nancy performs oral sex on a banana and a gardener (not at the same time, mind you) and Michele Marie's Sandy visits fake Fresno in a slit-heavy dress, but that's pretty much all they do.

If that wasn't enough, first time and last time actress Cindy Boudreau plays a duel role. Playing Ginny and...

Wait a second, I think I might have mixed up the names of the other two chicks. It says here that Sandra Kay plays Sandy, the grumpy brunette who performs oral sex on a banana and a gardener. And Michele "with one 'l'" Marie is Nancy, the enthusiastic redhead with killer gams. To make matters even more confusing, Ginny is a redhead, too. On the plus side, however, Ginny's red hair is straight, while Nancy's is curly.

Anyway, Cindy Bordreau plays Ginny, a vivacious redhead who discovers that her recently deceased mother was a secret agent, and she also plays–you guessed it–Jane Tennay, Ginny's mother. And, as it turns out, Jane's the mother of Sandy and Nancy as well.

In the flashbacks that show Jane in secret agent mode, they depict a woman who doesn't take no shit from anyone. Wielding her DeLeeuw-esque frame like a spear made out of pure, unadulterated shapeliness, flashback Jane fucks men and then she kills them. Present day Jane, however, dies like some two-bit whore.

The film opens with present day Jane relaxing on a balcony in a yellow bikini, when all of a sudden, a man starts choking her. Instead of fighting back, like flashback Jane would, present day Jane just lies there and gets strangled to death.

What gives, present day Jane? You were such a bad ass in the flashback sequences. Take, for instance, the flashback that shows you in Moscow. After fucking some lumpy guy with a beard, you attempt to steal a microfilm from his pants while he slept in a dried up puddle of his own jizz. Catching her in the act, the lumpy guy tries to straight up kill her shapely ass. Not wanting to get killed, flashback Jane stabs him with some sort of medieval fire poker.

In order to make it seem like they were in Moscow, Doris Wishman puts flashback Jane and the lumpy guy in coats and tells them to act cold.

To collect their inheritance (one million dollars each), Ginny, Sandy and Nancy must avenge their mother's death (we never see the face of the man who choked her on the balcony). Not to worry, though, she left her daughters an envelope containing photos and the location of the four men Jane thinks might have wanted her dead.

Using Jane's house as their base of operations, the three women plan their next move. Well, Ginny and Nancy plan their next move, as it would seem that Sandy doesn't want anything to do with this convoluted revenge plot. I'm with you, honey, this movie kinda sucks.

Putting on a red bikini, Sandy relaxes on a lawn chair with a banana.

Speaking of things that are yellow, check out the yellow wall-to-wall carpeting. I must say, watching the heels of Ginny, Sandy and Nancy's shoes grind seductively into the thick carpet of Jane's swanky pad is the only thing this film has going for it so far. (Are you nuts? Sandy just gave oral sex to a banana!) Did she, really? I mean, it's just a piece of penis-shaped fruit. No, I prefer to watch women digging their heels into thick carpet. (Weirdo.)

Since there's barely enough material to justify it being called a movie, we're shown Sandy attacked by a delivery boy and a pointless scene where Ginny has sex with a stranger while trapped in an elevator.

Impress your friends and get an "OH SHIT" belt buckle. (What are you blathering about?) The film just got interesting again when, for some strange reason, we're given a close up shot of Sandy's saucy belt buckle.

You see, while Ginny is scouring the streets of New York City and Las Vegas looking for her mother's killer, Sandy's sitting on a gaudy couch doing jack shit in an "OH SHIT" belt buckle and Nancy's in Fresno talking to some asshole named Hans in a dress with six maybe seven slits. (Wait, this Hans asshole was wearing a multi-slitted dress?) No, Nancy was wearing the multi-slitted dress. If it's okay with you, I'm going to stop writing about this film now. It blows.

My Brother's Wife (Doris Wishman, 1966)

It just dawned on me: What am I going to do when I eventually run out of Doris Wishman movies to watch? Ahhh, just the mere thought of watching a film that isn't directed by Doris Wishman is enough to make my skin crawl. Now, some of you might be thinking that I'm currently suffering from a severe case of Stockholm Syndrome, or, in this case, a severe case of Doris Wishman Syndrome. But I can assure you that I'm not. Seriously, though, the prospect of watching a film that isn't obsessed with showing close ups of feet, doesn't linger on inanimate objects for no discernible reason, and has zero frazzled women on the brink of insanity is a frightening thought indeed. Realizing this, I approached My Brother's Wife with a new-found appreciation for Doris Wishman as an artist. Every time we would get a close up of some feet, I would nod approvingly. The same goes for the shots of inanimate objects (ashtrays, table settings, lamps, garbage pails, etc.) and, of course, the scenes where the characters not speaking dialogue would appear onscreen while those speaking dialogue would appear off-screen. You could view this film as a Doris Wishman best of album. Only problem being, the story isn't all that compelling. Sure, all the elements are pretty much in place, but something is missing.

The first thing that struck me was just that, no one gets struck in this film. I don't even think a woman gets slapped once during its spry running time. Not that I want to see women slapped around. It's just that this film is supposed to be a "roughie." I know what you're thinking, the film opens with two guys punching and kicking each other in a pool hall for an extended period of time. Yeah, but, if I wanted to watch two guys beating up one another, I'd watch hockey.

Judging by the way these two guys are going at it, the woman their fighting over must be quite something. What's that? How do I know their fighting over a woman? What else could be? It's true, they could be fighting over a lot of things. But let's get real, it's probably a woman.

Proving that she's still got some storytelling tricks up her sleeve, Doris Wishman shows the film's final scene at the beginning. At first I was like: I don't get it. Why show the end of the movie right off the bat? Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. This was all one big tease to get us interested in knowing how these two men managed to find themselves rolling around with one another in the middle of the afternoon on a dingy pool hall floor. And I have to admit, I was somewhat curious to find out how these two men ended up where they did.

Just as my curiosity was about to go into overdrive, the reason they were fighting finally appears onscreen. Tilting her head inquisitively at the man standing in her apartment doorway, Mary (June Roberts) invites him in when Frankie (Sam Stewart) identifies himself as her husband's brother. That's right, that means to Frankie, Mary is his brother's wife.

Instead of filming Mary and Frankie sitting on the couch in a normal manner, Doris Wishman insists on keeping her camera trained on their feet for the duration of the scene. According to my calculations, we get three separate cutaways to their feet as they talked (the third cutaway lasts twice as long the two previous foot-based cutaways). And just for good measure, we get a shot of Mary's heels as she walks to the kitchen. If that good measure wasn't enough for you, we get another shot of Mary's feet as she fixes her hair in the blender. What I mean is, she uses the reflective surface on the base of her blender to calculate the structural integrity of the hair follicles that sit atop of pretty little head.

When her husband, his brother, Bob (Bob Oran), comes homes, we're all thinking the same thing: How did a major hottie like Mary end up with a middle-aged slob like Bob? Wait a second, "major hottie" doesn't do Mary justice. She's a luminous flower, one that is too beautiful to be defiled by the likes of Bob. And that's just the thing, he doesn't defile her. Oh, sure, he might have defiled in the early days of their marriage, but it's been quite some time since he's defiled anything.

You know what that means, right? Congratulations, Frankie. Your cock is in for a treat. Picking the perfect time to visit his older brother, it would seem that Frankie has stumbled upon not a loveless marriage, but definitely a sexless one.

Oh, and before you start chewing out Bob and his lackluster genitals for not wanting to smear his face all over his wife's stocking-encased legs–and believe me, they're always stocking-encased–let's try to understand his point of view, shall we? Maybe he can't keep up with her, if you know what I mean.

Yes, I realize you don't need an erection to smear one's face all over stocking-encased legs. But he is at least twenty-five years older than her. So, maybe it's a stamina thing. Hell, maybe he just doesn't like sex.

After dinner, Bob tells Frankie that his old flame, Zena (Darlene Bennett) is still town. When Bob mentions Zena's name, Frankie's eyes light up. According to Frankie, "Zena's got everything, and a little bit more."

Hosting a party for her sleazy friends, we meet the well put together Zena as she's overseeing the orgy that is currently taking place in her living room. In-between all the shots of feet in heels, feet in stockings and, my personal favourite, feet in stockings and heels, Frankie and Zena get reacquainted with one another.

Oh, would you look at that, someone does get slapped in the face in this movie. After a close up of Mary's feet standing in the kitchen, Frankie makes a play for her. Put off  by Frankie's clumsy attempt to grope her, Mary expresses her displeasure by slapping him across the face.

Giving her husband one last chance to give her the ripe dicking she deserves, Mary slowly undresses in front of Bob.

Removing her white bra first, Mary takes off her tan stockings, then her black garter belt. As she stood there, admiring the shape of her body in the mirror, I couldn't help but notice that Mary is the first character I've seen so far in a Doris Wishman movie to not wear black undergarments. Sure, her garter belt was as a black as the night sky, but her bra and panties were definitely white. I wonder if that was done on purpose?

Anyway, after getting nowhere with Bob, Mary heads straight into the arms of Frankie, who literally sweeps her off her feet. Carrying her into his bedroom, Frankie goes to work on Mary's lingerie. Work that lingerie, Frankie. Work it!

Instead of showing Mary's throbbing pussy reacting positively to Frankie's tender caresses, Doris Wishman substitutes it for Mary's throbbing belly button. The throbbing belly button motif returns in the next scene, when we get a shot of Mary's belly button throbbing underneath the black mesh midriff section of her dress while getting ice for the stiff drink she's making for Frankie.

Even though I can't really comment on June Robert's performance, as we never really get to see her utter any lines of dialogue onscreen. The sight of her getting ice from the freezer is the epitome of sexy.

As you might expect, Frankie is torn between Mary, the bored housewife, and Zena, the wild party girl. Oh, and if you're thinking that Frankie is worried that he'll hurt his brother's feelings. Think again. Frankie doesn't give a fuck.

Up to his chin in brunette pussy, Frankie has got two leggy goddesses gunning for his cock. In other words, things couldn't be better. Or are they?

A wild card named Della (Dawn Bennett from Bad Girls Go to Hell) shows up to put crink in Zena's plans. A staunch lesbian in a leather jacket, one who wouldn't look out of place in the front row at a Bikini Kill concert, Della puts the moves on Zena. This scene is awkward because I think Darlene and Dawn are sisters. But then again, they barely touch one another. Incest averted.

Featuring too many scenes that have Frankie demanding that Mary get 2000 dollars out of Mary and Bob's joint checking account and one's that have Zena demanding that Frankie get 2000 dollars, "No money, no Zena," she tells him, the film, much like this review, starts to overstay its welcome after awhile. That being said, from an aesthetic point of view, you're not going to find a more perfect movie. Close up shots of feet, stockings, inanimate objects, heavy eye-makeup and off-screen dialogue, this film's got everything and a little bit more.