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Doris Wishman (b. June 1 1912, New York City - d. August 10 2002, Miami) was a Jewish American screenwriter, film director and independent film producer whose paracinematic oeuvre encompasses 30 feature films from 1960 to her death in 2002 at the age of 90. Self-taught as a filmmaker, Wishman might best be described as an outsider artist. She is considered to be 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 film following.
1960-1964 Nudist period
Wishman's earliest films were within the nudist film or nudie film genre.
Wishman completed eight color nudist features between 1960 and 1964. Blaze Starr Goes Nudist (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). By far, the most bizarre of Wishman's nudist features is 1961's Nude on the Moon, an attempt to combine traditional nudist material with a science fiction plot-line. Wishman eventually abandoned the nudist genre when it has lost its commercial viability.
1965-1970 Sexploitation
During the mid- to late 1960s, Wishman began producing black and white features within the sexploitation 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 their 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 accidentally kills a man in the course of an attempted rape then flees to New York. There, she stumbles into a variety 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 lauded 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 later serve as director of photography on the last Wishman project Each Time I Kill (filmed in 2002).
Other films of 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). Love Toy (1968) and The Amazing Transplant (1970) are shot in color and are closer in substance to the soft-core genre.
1971-1978
During the 1970s, Wishman experimented with a variety of genres 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 measurement; both are currently among Wishman's best-known titles and are celebrated for their camp aesthetic. During the mid-1970s, Wishman directed at least two explicit hardcore pornographic films. Satan Was a Lady (1975) and Come with Me, My Love (1976) both feature performance artist and porn star Annie Sprinkle. Wishman denied authorship of hardcore features until late in her life.
Although initiated in 1971, Wishman's penultimate feature of the period, Let Me Die a Woman (1978) is a semi-documentary about transsexuality. In addition to examining the condition of numerous, actual transgendered individuals, the film also features a considerable number of dramatized scenes, including a cameo by future porn legend Harry Reems (as "Tim Long").
Rediscovery and swan songs
Noticing the trend toward slasher movies such as Friday the 13th, Wishman completed the gory horror feature, A Night to Dismember, in 1983. The film failed commercially, effectively ending Wishman's career.
Due in large part to her increasing cult status during the 1990s, late in life Wishman managed to complete two additional features: a sex comedy entitled Dildo Heaven (2002) and a neo-sexploitation feature entitled Satan Was a Lady (not to be confused with her 1975 hardcore film of the same title). Wishman's last feature, Each Time I Kill, was a teen horror thriller shot in the Miami area. She completed principal photography on the film only six weeks before succumbing to lymphoma in August of 2002.
References
- RE/Search No. 10: Incredibly Strange Films RE/Search Publications 1986, ISBN 0-940642-09-3
- "SCHLOCK! The Secret History of American Movies" Protagonist Productions/Pathfinder Pictures Ent 2003, ASIN: B0000DC13D
External links
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