“When I die, I’ll make films in hell!” declared exploitation auteur Doris Wishman. Though she may have been the most prolific woman director in the history of American cinema, Wishman has long been overlooked because she worked in the critically disreputable realm of roughies, nudie cuties, and pornography. Nevertheless, her extensive and fascinating body of work is ripe for rediscovery for its singularity of vision (Wishman not only produced and directed but wrote, cast, and edited most of her films), subversive feminist themes, and unique place within the context of experimental and DIY cinema. Provocative, erotic, and often bordering on the surreal, these films from Wishman’s rich 1960s and ’70s period—including the twisted fantasy INDECENT DESIRES and LET ME DIE A WOMAN, an unclassifiable quasi-docmentary about transgender people—are an introduction an innovative director whose work seems to exist in its own wild and wondrously warped parallel universe.
Directed by Doris Wishman and Raymond Phelan • 1961 • United States
Starring Marietta, William Mayer, Lester Brown
The second of the eight nudist films that Doris Wishman produced early in her career, this kitschy, innocently titillating science-fiction fantasy puts a unique spin on the genre by...
Directed by Doris Wishman • 1965 • United States
Starring Gigi Darlene, Barnard L. Sackett, Sam Stewart
One of the highlights of legendary exploitation auteur Doris Wishman’s ultraprolific career, BAD GIRLS GO TO HELL tells the tale of Meg (Gigi Darlene), a Boston housewife who, after she is rap...
Directed by Doris Wishman • 1968 • United States
Starring Sharon Kent, Trom Little, Michael Alaimo
In one the most fascinatingly perverse, surreal, and complex of Doris Wishman’s sexploitation “roughies,” sleazy loner Zeb (Michael Alaimo) discovers a doll and a ring with voodoo-like powers that ...
Directed by Doris Wishman • 1974 • United States
Starring Chesty Morgan, Harry Reems, Richard Towers
After her boyfriend is killed by the mob, busty advertising executive Crystal (burlesque performer Chesty Morgan) sets about getting even with the perpetrators, using the assets god gave her: her...
Directed by Doris Wishman • 1974 • United States
Starring Chesty Morgan, Frank Silvano, Saul Meth
Doris Wishman reteamed with Chesty Morgan, star of DEADLY WEAPONS and possessor of a much-touted 73-inch bust, for this spy thriller. This time around, Morgan plays Jane, a master secret agent who u...
Directed by Doris Wishman • 1977 • United States
One of the earliest films to explore the lives of transgender people, Doris Wishman’s controversial quasi-documentary is a difficult-to-classify hybrid of educational film and exploitation fare in which interviews alternate with staged scenes. Tre...
