Search - Bad Girls Go To Hell/Another Day Another Man on DVD

A pair of Roughies from the Doris Wishman oeuvre

Lawrance M. Bernabo | The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota | 08/02/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Doris Wishman (1912-2002) stands out in the history of sexploitation films because she had the distinction of being a successful woman director in a genre dominated by men. Wishman started making films set at nudist camps and probably enjoyed her most success making "nudie cuties" such as "Nudes on the Moon." But the two Wishman films on this Something Weird Video double-feature represent prime examples of the "Roughies" that defined the middle of her film career before she moved on to the "Ghoulies" (e.g., "A Night to Dismember") and soft core (e.g., "Double Agent 73"). This is a SWV "Special Edition" DVD, which means that in terms of the extras you are talking wall-to-wall Doris Wishman. Plus, if you just hit play when you get to the main menu you are treated to a complete Drive-In Theater experience.

"Bad Girls Go To Hell" (1965) is the story of Meg Kelton (Gigi Darlene), whose husband Ted (Alan Yorke) goes off to work one day. Meg is then sexually assaulted by the owner of the building, who warns her not to let her husband know what has happened. When Ted goes off to work again, the sleaze ball leaves Meg a message to come visit him or else her husband will find out what has happened (I guess Meg believes Ted will think it was her fault she was raped). Meg tries to buy off the guy, but when he attacks her again she kills him. Fleeing Boston for New York City, Meg now says she is Ellen Green from Chicago. What happens next is that she ends up in a series of encounters with people who are apparently trying to help her, but who get her into just more sleazy encounters. Then we get something of a "Twilight Zone" twist at the end.

"Another Day, Another Man" (1966) starts with Ann (Barbi Kemp) getting married and moving out of the apartment she shares with Tess (Mary O'Hara), who happens to be a prostitute. Ann is happy for a while, but then hubby falls sick and since she cannot go back to her old job (her boss does not want married women in the office) she turns to hooking instead for Tess's pimp, Bert (Sam Stewart), who provides a film noir voice over when he explains how he put together his stable of prostitutes (including twins). Her husband does not really understand why she has to go out to work for a few hours at night in different places each night but he eventually sees the light and that is not a good thing.

Wishman certainly has a distinctive visual style and since she does all of her sound back in the studio there is sense of dislocation because characters have conversations without their lips moving. However, what makes these two films stand out from most of Wishman's other work is that there is relatively little nudity, consisting mostly of bare backsides. Otherwise you are talking about women who buy bras a couple of sizes too small and men who would rather slap a woman while taking what they want rather than providing even a pretense of affection. Wishman's camera never fully shows what is going on, not just because that would bring on ratings concerns, but also because showing everything would be tantamount to endorsing it, and that is not her goal. If there is a common moral to the two films, which were made consecutively, it would be that once a woman falls, she falls hard and she falls often. Even when Meg/Ellen finds someone to be safe with, it turns out to be another woman, and it is the story as much as any idea of character motivation that leads her to leave and move on to the next act of degradation. The question then becomes what Meg and Ann could have done to avoid their fates, or are they simply doomed because they are women a.k.a. the weaker sex?

Can we put these films in some larger sociological context, specifically the argument that the Roughies are a reaction to the sexual politics of the 1960s the way the nudist camp films were a response to the relative complacency of the Eisenhower years? Sure. But then the undercurrent of violence towards women goes back cinematically to the entire film noir genre where a tough guy is as likely to shoot a dame or at least belt her around as kiss her. For most people these are not erotic films, but depressing tales of a sexual dynamic that belongs back in the Stone Age and not in the great metropolitan area of New York City when the Sexual Revolution was in full swing.

One of the strengths of the Something Weird Video series is that when they focus on an auteur, they go the whole way. All of the trailers are for Doris Wishman films: "Bad Girls Go to Hell," "Indecent Desires," "A Taste of Flesh," "Another Day, Another Man" (which is where we get the theme music for Something Weird Video), "My Brothers Wife," "Too Much, Too Often," and "The Amazing Transplant." There is also a Book Pitch for "Man and Male" and "Woman and Female," a set of books you can get by turning on the parking lights of your car. Besides the Book Pitch and the trio of Intermission Countdowns, there is a Doris Wishman Gallery of Exploitation Art,which covers all phases of her career. You even get some exit bits to complete your drive-in experience ("Please Replace Speaker When You Leave...If Torn From the Stand, Please Leave in Box at Exit")."