Doris Wishman week (July 21 – 27) Doris made the loopiest of movies. A self-proclaimed prude who made nudist camp movies, her filmography is filled with contradictions. When she tried to be mean spirited with something like Bad Girls Go To Hell there was always an undercurrent of silliness and fun, but when she tried to be silly and fun in things like Keyholes Are For Peeping there was an underlying seediness and grime that couldn’t be wiped off. It’s hard not to love her!  

I’ve seen some strange movies, but Doris Wishman’s films often feel like they belong to my favorite genre: movies made by beings not from our reality, beamed to us in the hopes that we won’t notice that there isn’t a single moment of normal human behavior in what they have created.

Arthur Barlen (João Fernandes) starts the movie by visiting his ex-girlfriend Mary (Sandy Eden) to propose to her. As she happily celebrates, he catches a vision of her earrings, loses his mind and chokes the life out of her in a way that only appears in roughies. The police are chasing him for the murder, while his mother Ann (Linda Southern, The Headless Eyes, A Night to Dismember) asks her police detective brother-in-law Bill (Larry Hunter) to find her son.

Let me see if I can explain why this happens, if I can do the narrative of this movie justice. Dr. Cyril Meade (Bernard Marcel) treated Arthur because the young man was upset about being a virgin. Dr. Cyril also had an assistant, Felix (Sam Stewart). He loved Felix to the point that he glows when he talks about him. He also introduced Arthur to Felix, who tried to set him up on a double date and ended up having sex with both women (Linda Boyce, The Curse of Her Flesh, and Uta Erickson, The Ultimate Degenerate) at the same time while Arthur helplessly watched. Yet Arthur also loved Felix and once he realized that his friend was dying, he was surprised that Felix wanted to live on, giving Arthur his gigantic penis to replace his micro cock. However, once the surgery — which trust me, if it was a real surgery it would happen every day — is complete, the sight of golden earrings makes Arthur insane with lust and anger.

If that isn’t strange enough, keep in mind that every environment has just a touch of strangeness happen. When we first see Mary, she’s naked and playing a zither, a stringed instrument that looks kind of like a miniature harp. Some of the apartments have paintings that look cursed, another has a moose head, yet another has a gigantic saddle, which causes Bill to ask the owner of the place, “Do you ride horses?” and she nonchalantly says, “It came with the apartment.” An entire wall of riding equipment, like how Ponderosa used to have that crap up on the wall, and she didn’t take it down or redecorate?

Speaking of Bill, he’s just as creepy as his nephew, often eyeing women as they cross and uncross their thighs while telling him of the horrifying assault they have endured at the hands and transplanted wang of his brother’s son.

You know, Wishman also made Let Me Die A Woman and you’d expect this movie to have a gory trouser snake transplant moment, but no. It’s like a lone moment of self-restraint in a movie that starts with black and white images of its protagonist attacking women and has a scene where he attacks a lesbian, causing her to throw up all over the place.

Speaking of that young lady with the saddle on her wall, that’s Ms. Evans. She’s played by Kim Pope, who appeared in many of the Golden Age of adult films like The Passions of Carol, White Slavery In New York and Deep Sleep, which was the first movie of Alfred Sole. Janet Banzet plays another victim, one who comes on to Arthur in the stairwell before he notices those earrings. Always those earrings. She was also in The Party at Kitty and Stud’s, the movie that started the urban legend of Stallone being in a hardcore movie. Suzzan Landau (Keyholes Are for Peeping) also shows up.

Is this kind of a giallo? Is it a remake of The Hands of Orlac that could only be named The Cock of Orlac? Why is there happy jazz playing over the sexual assaults? How bad can the dubbing get? Why is every home in this movie festooned with bric a brac? Why are there ransom shots of shoes and carpet? Why does a child choir sing along when one of the victims turns Arthur’s attack into lovemaking? How did raincoaters feel when they thought they were getting something to jack off to and were confronted by this blast of dada?

Stranger still, star João Fernandes started his career shooting second unit and acting in adult films — he was given the name Harry Flex by director Gerard Damiano during as he used an Arriflex camera — before being the cinematographer or director of photography of Legacy of Satan, Darktown Strutters, The Kirlian Witness, Human Experiments, The Prowler, The Nesting, Children of the Corn, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, Hollywood Vice Squad and Red Scorpion, In the 1990s, he shot eight episodes and directed three episodes of Walker, Texas Ranger. That may be because after working on Joe Zito’s Norris movies Missing In Action and Invasion U.S.A., he also shot Chuck’s movies Braddock: Missing in Action III, Delta Force 2: The Colombian Connection, The Hitman, Sidekicks, Hellbound, Top Dog and Forest Warrior.

I have seen so many weird movies. This has moved way to the top of the list of the oddest.

Doris Wishman week (July 21 – 27) Doris made the loopiest of movies. A self-proclaimed prude who made nudist camp movies, her filmography is filled with contradictions. When she tried to be mean spirited with something like Bad Girls Go To Hell there was always an undercurrent of silliness and fun, but when she tried to be silly and fun in things like Keyholes Are For Peeping there was an underlying seediness and grime that couldn’t be wiped off. It’s hard not to love her!  

After years of softcore, Doris Wishman directed two hardcore pornographic features. We already covered Come With Me, My Love and Wishman directed another movie — this one — with that film’s star, Annie Sprinkle. Wishman made more films than any other female director of the sound era and she didn’t really enjoy making hardcore; she denied these movies for years.

Claudia (Bree Anthony, also known as Gloria Hadott, Lauri Suesan, Bree Anthony Fredericks, B. Anthony Fredericks and Sue Richards, the name she used as the editor of High Society) and Victor (Tony Richards, the Tweedledee to Anthony’s Tweedledum in Bud Townsend’s Alice in Wonderland: An X-Rated Musical Fantasy) are engaged, but that won’t stop her sister Terry (Sprinkle) from sleeping with her sister’s fiancee. He’s not exactly innocent, as he’s also sleeping with C.J. Laing — and who would blame him? — while Terry’s mother and Claudia’s stepmother Ada (Sandy Foxx, who also used the alter egos Diana Ames, L’il Annie, Sandy Morelli and Sandy Sludge; she was married to director Lawrence T. Cole) is ready to cheat everyone out of their inheritance.

The inner voices of the sisters comes from Wishman; this also has an ending — spoilers! — where Terry gets Victor a poisoned glass of water, putting Claudia into shock for the rest of her life. Who in the raincoats on 42nd Street realized they were watching Wishman cover Diabolique?

Also: none of the bodies in this movie look like women in adult today and Annie Sprinkle to this day remains as wild and incredible as she was then.