Doris Wishman
Encyclopedia
Doris Wishman was an American
film director
, screenwriter
and independent film producer
.
Self-taught as a filmmaker, Wishman was noteworthy for her paracinema
tic, camp
aesthetic and is often referred to as "the female Ed Wood." The majority of her work was designed to be released in the American sexploitation
film market of the 1960s and '70s. Wishman is also one of the most prolific women film directors in the history of the cinema and in recent years has become the object of a cult
following.
(1962) featured legendary burlesque
queen Blaze Starr
. Other titles include Hideout in the Sun
(1960), Diary of a Nudist
(1961), Gentlemen Prefer Nature Girls (1962), Playgirls International (1963), Behind the Nudist Curtain (1963), and The Prince and the Nature Girl (1964).
The most bizarre of Wishman's nudist features was 1961 Nude on the Moon
, an attempt to combine traditional nudist material with a science fiction
plot-line. Wishman abandoned the nudist genre once it had lost its commercial viability.
genre. Several of Wishman's films of this period were directed under the pseudonym "Louis Silverman", the name of her second husband (otherwise uninvolved in the films' production).
Bad Girls Go to Hell
(1965) is one of Wishman's best-known films and includes many elements found commonly in sexploitation movies of the period. The main character is a young woman who runs away to the big city (in this case, after accidentally killing a man who tries to rape her). She soon stumbles into a variety of sexually compromising and abusive situations. Though archetypal in its use of genre situations, Wishman's empathy for her female protagonist
in Bad Girls Go to Hell has been interpreted by some observers as proto-feminist. Bad Girls Go to Hell was also one of the earliest collaborations between Wishman and cinematographer C. Davis Smith, who worked closely with Wishman on much of her output during the 1960s and '70s
, and who would subsequently serve as director of photography on Wishman's final, posthumously completed feature, Each Time I Kill
.
Other films from Wishman's sexploitation
period include The Sex Perils of Paulette (1965), Another Day, Another Man (1966), My Brother's Wife (1966), A Taste of Her Flesh (1967), Indecent Desires (1967), and Too Much Too Often! (1968). All are shot in black and white. Two subsequent features, Love Toy
(1968) and The Amazing Transplant (1970), are shot in color and are closer in substance to the burgeoning soft-core genre.
Wishman is also credited with having dubbed two imported Greek-produced features, The Hot Month of August and Passion Fever, during the late 1960s and is credited with the direction of their American release versions.
s and genre mixes. Keyholes Are for Peeping (1972) is a sex comedy
featuring comedian Sammy Petrillo
. Deadly Weapons
(1973) and Double Agent 73
(1974) are thrillers featuring strip-tease performer Chesty Morgan
, renowned for her 73-inch bust. Wishman's Chesty Morgan films are among her best known and most popular titles and are celebrated for their camp
aesthetic. During the mid-1970s, Wishman also directed at least two explicit hardcore pornographic
films. Satan Was a Lady
(1975) [remade in 2003; see below] and Come with Me, My Love (1976), both featuring performance artist and porn star Annie Sprinkle
.
Although initiated in 1971, Wishman's 1978 feature, Let Me Die a Woman
(1978) is a semi-documentary
about transsexuality. In addition to examining the condition of numerous, actual transgender
individuals, the film also features a considerable number of dramatized scenes, including a cameo by future porn legend Harry Reems
(as "Tim Long").
Noticing the trend toward slasher
movies in the late 1970s, Wishman ventured into the horror
genre with a feature entitled A Night to Dismember, completed circa 1983. Noteworthy for its crazy-quilt construction, the film failed commercially, effectively forcing Wishman into retirement.
status during the 1990s, Wishman managed to complete three additional features late in life: a sex comedy
entitled Dildo Heaven (2002), a neo-sexploitation
feature entitled Satan Was a Lady (not to be confused with her 1975 hardcore
film of the same title), and Each Time I Kill
, a teen horror thriller shot in the Miami area. Wishman completed principal photography on the previous film only six weeks before succumbing to lymphoma
in August 2002, aged 90. The film was later completed by the project's executive producer and has screened at various film festivals.
In 2000, Wishman was featured alongside exploitation icons Roger Corman
and David F. Friedman
in the documentary SCHLOCK! The Secret History of American Movies, a film about the rise and fall of the American exploitation cinema. Excerpts from her interview for this film also appear on the 2007 DVD issue of Wishman's first film Hideout in the Sun
. During her later years, Wishman was also interviewed on National Public Radio's Fresh Air
program, was twice a guest on Late Night with Conan O'Brien
, and was the subject of retrospectives at the Harvard Film Archive
and the New York Underground Film Festival
.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
film director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
, screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
and independent film producer
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
.
Self-taught as a filmmaker, Wishman was noteworthy for her paracinema
Paracinema
Paracinema is an academic term to refer to a wide variety of film genres out of the mainstream, bearing the same relationship to 'legitimate' film as paraliterature like comic books and pulp fiction bears to literature. The term was coined by Jeffrey Sconce, an American media scholar, and...
tic, camp
Camp (style)
Camp is an aesthetic sensibility that regards something as appealing because of its taste and ironic value. The concept is closely related to kitsch, and things with camp appeal may also be described as being "cheesy"...
aesthetic and is often referred to as "the female Ed Wood." The majority of her work was designed to be released in the American sexploitation
Sexploitation
Sexploitation, or "sex-exploitation", describes a class of independently produced, low-budget feature films generally associated with the 1960s and serving largely as a vehicle for the exhibition of non-explicit sexual situations and gratuitous nudity. The genre is a subgenre of exploitation films...
film market of the 1960s and '70s. Wishman is also one of the most prolific women film directors in the history of the cinema and in recent years has become the object of a cult
Cult film
A cult film, also commonly referred to as a cult classic, is a film that has acquired a highly devoted but specific group of fans. Often, cult movies have failed to achieve fame outside the small fanbases; however, there have been exceptions that have managed to gain fame among mainstream audiences...
following.
1960-1964 Nudist period
Wishman completed eight nudist features between 1960 and 1964. Blaze Starr Goes NudistBlaze Starr Goes Nudist
Blaze Starr Goes Nudist is an American 1962 nudist film, produced and directed by Doris Wishman. The film featured legendary burlesque queen Blaze Starr...
(1962) featured legendary burlesque
Burlesque
Burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects...
queen Blaze Starr
Blaze Starr
Blaze Starr is an American former stripper and American burlesque star. Her vivacious presence and inventive use of stage props earned her the nickname "The Hottest Blaze in Burlesque"...
. Other titles include Hideout in the Sun
Hideout in the Sun
Hideout in the Sun is an American 1960 nudist film, written, produced and directed by Doris Wishman. The film stars Greg Conrad, Dolores Carlos and Earl Bauer.This is Wishman's first film...
(1960), Diary of a Nudist
Diary of a Nudist
Diary of a Nudist is a American 1961 nudist film produced and directed by Doris Wishman.The film is also known as Diary of a Girl Reporter, Diary of a Naturist, Girl Reporter Diary, Nature Camp Confidential, Nature Camp Diary and Nudist Confidential.-Plot:Arthur Sherwood , editor-in-chief of The...
(1961), Gentlemen Prefer Nature Girls (1962), Playgirls International (1963), Behind the Nudist Curtain (1963), and The Prince and the Nature Girl (1964).
The most bizarre of Wishman's nudist features was 1961 Nude on the Moon
Nude on the Moon
Nude on the Moon is a 1961 sexploitation film co-written and co-directed by Doris Wishman and Raymond Phelan under the shared pseudonyms "O. O. Miller" and "Anthony Brooks". The film was produced in 1960 but was not released theatrically until 1961. Doris Wishman went on to become a significant ...
, an attempt to combine traditional nudist material with a science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
plot-line. Wishman abandoned the nudist genre once it had lost its commercial viability.
1965-1970 Sexploitation
During the mid-1960s, Wishman began working within the sexploitationSexploitation
Sexploitation, or "sex-exploitation", describes a class of independently produced, low-budget feature films generally associated with the 1960s and serving largely as a vehicle for the exhibition of non-explicit sexual situations and gratuitous nudity. The genre is a subgenre of exploitation films...
genre. Several of Wishman's films of this period were directed under the pseudonym "Louis Silverman", the name of her second husband (otherwise uninvolved in the films' production).
Bad Girls Go to Hell
Bad Girls Go to Hell
Bad Girls Go to Hell is an American 1965 sexploitation film, written, produced and directed by Doris Wishman. The film stars Gigi Darlene, George La Rocque, Barnard L...
(1965) is one of Wishman's best-known films and includes many elements found commonly in sexploitation movies of the period. The main character is a young woman who runs away to the big city (in this case, after accidentally killing a man who tries to rape her). She soon stumbles into a variety of sexually compromising and abusive situations. Though archetypal in its use of genre situations, Wishman's empathy for her female protagonist
Protagonist
A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...
in Bad Girls Go to Hell has been interpreted by some observers as proto-feminist. Bad Girls Go to Hell was also one of the earliest collaborations between Wishman and cinematographer C. Davis Smith, who worked closely with Wishman on much of her output during the 1960s and '70s
1970s
File:1970s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: US President Richard Nixon doing the V for Victory sign after his resignation from office after the Watergate scandal in 1974; Refugees aboard a US naval boat after the Fall of Saigon, leading to the end of the Vietnam War in 1975; The 1973 oil...
, and who would subsequently serve as director of photography on Wishman's final, posthumously completed feature, Each Time I Kill
Each Time I Kill
Each Time I Kill is the final film that was written and directed by Doris Wishman. It was shot in 2002 shortly before Wishman's death from lymphoma, and post-production on the teen horror thriller was completed in October 2006...
.
Other films from Wishman's sexploitation
Sexploitation
Sexploitation, or "sex-exploitation", describes a class of independently produced, low-budget feature films generally associated with the 1960s and serving largely as a vehicle for the exhibition of non-explicit sexual situations and gratuitous nudity. The genre is a subgenre of exploitation films...
period include The Sex Perils of Paulette (1965), Another Day, Another Man (1966), My Brother's Wife (1966), A Taste of Her Flesh (1967), Indecent Desires (1967), and Too Much Too Often! (1968). All are shot in black and white. Two subsequent features, Love Toy
Love Toy
Love Toy is an American 1968 sexploitation film, produced and directed by Doris Wishman. The film stars Bernard Marcel, Pat Happel, Uta Erickson and Larry Hunter...
(1968) and The Amazing Transplant (1970), are shot in color and are closer in substance to the burgeoning soft-core genre.
Wishman is also credited with having dubbed two imported Greek-produced features, The Hot Month of August and Passion Fever, during the late 1960s and is credited with the direction of their American release versions.
1971-1983
During the 1970s, Wishman experimented with a variety of genreGenre
Genre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...
s and genre mixes. Keyholes Are for Peeping (1972) is a sex comedy
Sex comedy
Sex comedy is a term for comedy movies with sexual content usually referring to those made in the United Kingdom in the mid 1970s. They may range from comic pornographic films like the Confessions series to relatively innocent comedies that include jokes about sex and other sexual related humour,...
featuring comedian Sammy Petrillo
Sammy Petrillo
Sammy Petrillo was an American nightclub and movie comedian best known as a Jerry Lewis lookalike.-Early life:...
. Deadly Weapons
Deadly Weapons
Deadly Weapons is a 1974 American sexploitation film directed by Doris Wishman, starring striptease performer Chesty Morgan . The film is based on a story conceived by J.J...
(1973) and Double Agent 73
Double Agent 73
Double Agent 73 is a 1974 movie melodrama directed by Doris Wishman, starring Chesty Morgan, although her voice was dubbed due to her thick Polish accent. It was written by Judy J...
(1974) are thrillers featuring strip-tease performer Chesty Morgan
Chesty Morgan
Chesty Morgan is a Polish-born Jewish American exotic dancer who starred in two films directed by Doris Wishman.-Biography:An orphan, Morgan was sent from Poland to live in Ein Gev, a kibbutz in the British Mandate of Palestine, at the outbreak of World War II.Morgan married an American and moved...
, renowned for her 73-inch bust. Wishman's Chesty Morgan films are among her best known and most popular titles and are celebrated for their camp
Camp (style)
Camp is an aesthetic sensibility that regards something as appealing because of its taste and ironic value. The concept is closely related to kitsch, and things with camp appeal may also be described as being "cheesy"...
aesthetic. During the mid-1970s, Wishman also directed at least two explicit hardcore pornographic
Hardcore pornography
Hardcore pornography is a form of pornography that features explicit sexual acts. The term was coined in the second half of the 20th century to distinguish it from softcore pornography. It usually takes the form of photographs, often displayed in magazines or on the Internet, or films. It can also...
films. Satan Was a Lady
Satan Was a Lady
Satan Was a Lady is an American 1975 explicit hardcore pornographic film, produced and directed by Doris Wishman. The film stars Bree Anthony, Tony Richards, Annie Sprinkle, and Bobby Astyr....
(1975) [remade in 2003; see below] and Come with Me, My Love (1976), both featuring performance artist and porn star Annie Sprinkle
Annie Sprinkle
Annie M. Sprinkle is an American former prostitute, stripper, pornographic actress, cable television host, porn magazine editor, writer and sex film producer...
.
Although initiated in 1971, Wishman's 1978 feature, Let Me Die a Woman
Let Me Die a Woman
Let Me Die a Woman is a semi-documentary film by exploitation film director Doris Wishman, who started production in 1972.-Plot:The film features interviews with sex reassignment surgeon Dr...
(1978) is a semi-documentary
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
about transsexuality. In addition to examining the condition of numerous, actual transgender
Transgender
Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....
individuals, the film also features a considerable number of dramatized scenes, including a cameo by future porn legend Harry Reems
Harry Reems
Harry Reems is the nom de film of one of the most notorious pornographic actors of the 1970s and star of the 1972 cult classic Deep Throat.-Early life and career:Reems was born Herbert Streicher...
(as "Tim Long").
Noticing the trend toward slasher
Slasher film
A slasher film is a type of horror film typically involving a psychopathic killer stalking and killing a sequence of victims in a graphically violent manner, often with a cutting tool such as a knife or axe...
movies in the late 1970s, Wishman ventured into the horror
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
genre with a feature entitled A Night to Dismember, completed circa 1983. Noteworthy for its crazy-quilt construction, the film failed commercially, effectively forcing Wishman into retirement.
Rediscovery/Death
Due in large part to her increasing cultCult
The word cult in current popular usage usually refers to a group whose beliefs or practices are considered abnormal or bizarre. The word originally denoted a system of ritual practices...
status during the 1990s, Wishman managed to complete three additional features late in life: a sex comedy
Sex comedy
Sex comedy is a term for comedy movies with sexual content usually referring to those made in the United Kingdom in the mid 1970s. They may range from comic pornographic films like the Confessions series to relatively innocent comedies that include jokes about sex and other sexual related humour,...
entitled Dildo Heaven (2002), a neo-sexploitation
Sexploitation
Sexploitation, or "sex-exploitation", describes a class of independently produced, low-budget feature films generally associated with the 1960s and serving largely as a vehicle for the exhibition of non-explicit sexual situations and gratuitous nudity. The genre is a subgenre of exploitation films...
feature entitled Satan Was a Lady (not to be confused with her 1975 hardcore
Hardcore pornography
Hardcore pornography is a form of pornography that features explicit sexual acts. The term was coined in the second half of the 20th century to distinguish it from softcore pornography. It usually takes the form of photographs, often displayed in magazines or on the Internet, or films. It can also...
film of the same title), and Each Time I Kill
Each Time I Kill
Each Time I Kill is the final film that was written and directed by Doris Wishman. It was shot in 2002 shortly before Wishman's death from lymphoma, and post-production on the teen horror thriller was completed in October 2006...
, a teen horror thriller shot in the Miami area. Wishman completed principal photography on the previous film only six weeks before succumbing to lymphoma
Lymphoma
Lymphoma is a cancer in the lymphatic cells of the immune system. Typically, lymphomas present as a solid tumor of lymphoid cells. Treatment might involve chemotherapy and in some cases radiotherapy and/or bone marrow transplantation, and can be curable depending on the histology, type, and stage...
in August 2002, aged 90. The film was later completed by the project's executive producer and has screened at various film festivals.
In 2000, Wishman was featured alongside exploitation icons Roger Corman
Roger Corman
Roger William Corman is an American film producer, director and actor. He has mostly worked on low-budget B movies. Some of Corman's work has an established critical reputation, such as his cycle of films adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, and in 2009 he won an Honorary Academy Award for...
and David F. Friedman
David F. Friedman
David Frank Friedman was an American filmmaker and film producer.-Life and career:Friedman first became interested in entertainment after spending part of his childhood in Birmingham and Anniston, Alabama, traveling carnival sites. He met exploitation film pioneer Kroger Babb during his stay in...
in the documentary SCHLOCK! The Secret History of American Movies, a film about the rise and fall of the American exploitation cinema. Excerpts from her interview for this film also appear on the 2007 DVD issue of Wishman's first film Hideout in the Sun
Hideout in the Sun
Hideout in the Sun is an American 1960 nudist film, written, produced and directed by Doris Wishman. The film stars Greg Conrad, Dolores Carlos and Earl Bauer.This is Wishman's first film...
. During her later years, Wishman was also interviewed on National Public Radio's Fresh Air
Fresh Air
Fresh Air is an American radio talk show broadcast on National Public Radio stations across the United States. The show is produced by WHYY-FM in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Its longtime host is Terry Gross. , the show was syndicated to 450 stations and claimed 4.5 million listeners. The show...
program, was twice a guest on Late Night with Conan O'Brien
Late Night with Conan O'Brien
Late Night with Conan O'Brien is an American late-night talk show hosted by Conan O'Brien that aired 2,725 episodes on NBC between 1993 and 2009. The show featured varied comedic material, celebrity interviews, and musical and comedy performances. Late Night aired weeknights at 12:37 am...
, and was the subject of retrospectives at the Harvard Film Archive
Harvard Film Archive
The Harvard Film Archive is a film archive devoted to cinema located in the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It maintains a collection of over 9000 films and related documents, and regularly screens films in its 210 seat theater...
and the New York Underground Film Festival
New York Underground Film Festival
Founded in 1994 by filmmakers Todd Phillips and Andrew Gurland, the New York Underground Film Festival was an annual event that occurred each March at Anthology Film Archives in New York City from 1994 through 2008...
.
Sources
- RE/Search No. 10: Incredibly Strange FilmsIncredibly Strange FilmsRE/Search No. 10: Incredibly Strange Films is a book about American underground and other films edited by V. Vale and Andrea Juno.Among the subjects covered are the work of filmmakers Russ Meyer, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Frank Henenlotter, Larry Cohen, Doris Wishman, David F. Friedman, Edward D....
RE/Search PublicationsRE/SearchRE/Search Publications is an American magazine and book publisher, based in San Francisco, founded and edited by Andrea Juno and V. Vale in 1980. It was the successor to Vale's earlier punk rock fanzine Search & Destroy , and was started with $100 from Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti...
1986, ISBN 0-940642-09-3 - "SCHLOCK! The Secret History of American Movies" Protagonist Productions/Pathfinder Pictures Ent 2003, ASIN: B0000DC13D