In All About Evil, the character played by Natasha Lyonne is a vicious maven of the grindhouse, a female filmmaker who isn’t afraid to spill some blood for the perfect take. While Lyonne’s character is purely fictional, those who know their Peaches Christ lore are more than well aware of the fact that the character draws inspiration from a very real (albeit less murderous) auteur.
Indeed, early in Evil’s development, filmmaker Joshua Grannell was discussing his vision for the character of Deborah Tennis with Lyonne, and he told her that he was particularly inspired by a female exploitation filmmaker.
“Oh,” Lyonne said, “You mean Doris Wishman.”
The mutual respect and admiration for Wishman created an instant bond between director and star, and laid the foundation for what soon would become an iconic cult performance. In essence, Doris Wishman was, in her way, the distant fairy godmother of Deborah Tennis.
But who, you may ask, is Doris Wishman?
Not only one of the most significant female filmmakers to ever work in horror, Wishman’s enduring legacy has proven to be a milestone in the overall history of cinema. However, at initial glance, such lofty claims might seem a bit peculiar. After all, Doris Wishman’s empire was one built on the spectacular nature of tits.
Referred to often by her peers as “the female Ed Wood,” Wishman’s career in cinema began with a run of nudist features, exploiting the then rare nature of nudity on screen. Films with such titles as Diary of a Nudist andGentleman Prefer Nature Girls showed Wishman as a director who was more than willing to exploit flesh to pull in an audience. However, dissatisfied with nudity alone, Wishman’s sleaze flicks became increasingly more ambitious. With each film, the filmmaker invested more and more vision into the “nudie cuties,” bringing a camp aesthetic to films that otherwise would have been sold solely on filth.
Wishman’s final out-and-out nudist picture, Nude on the Moon, marked a turning point for the director and served as an omen of the unique style to come. The film, which sought to meld the basic tenets of the nudist picture with the grandiose style of a sci-fi epic, showed that Wishman understood that sexuality could be part of a greater, more outrageous whole. Though Wishman would perpetually return to the world of sexploitation, Nude on the Moon was the point in her career that finally saw the visionary filmmaker move away from sex as a film’s sole motivation.
In 1965, Wishman directed one of her most popular films, a sexual violence-tinged featured titled Bad Girls Go to Hell. Riffing on the rougher rape/revenge style films being popularized by peers like Herschell Gordon Lewis and David Friedman, Wishman’s movie about a woman raped by a janitor and then forced to flee after murdering him was a revelation for those who only knew the director as the creator of nudist fluff. Gritty and dark, Bad Girls Go to Hell became a definitive film of the grindhouse era, giving Wishman standing amongst a pantheon of male peers.
During the 70s, Wishman collaborated with strip-tease performer Chesty Morgan to create several thrillers that accentuated the busty starlet’s overly large endowments. The most popular of these, Double Agent 73, is likely Wishman’s most known film. A secret agent tale of murder and betrayal,Double Agent 73 is played surprisingly straight, despite several scenes of Morgan using her monstrous breasts as accessories in her espionage. The earnest story melded with a direct sense of ridiculousness signified an arrival to the style Wishman had initially begun to create with Nude on the Moon years before. Double Agent 73, as well as Wishman’s other outing with Morgan, Deadly Weapons, are considered to be signature strokes in Wishman’s oeuvre, and the closest she came to having a definitive aesthetic.
1978 saw Wishman break ground with the controversial Let Me Die a Woman. Arguably one of the first films to truly tackle the issue of living as a transgendered person, Woman was a semi-documentary, padded with dramatizations of sexual reassignment surgeries filmed by Wishman. Shocking and bold, the movie drew gore fans who were interested to test their meddle by watching the overly gratuitous surgical scenes, but also was a starkly honest testament of a struggle previously not discussed by society. Forever occupied with the notion of sexuality, Wishman was invested in exploring all of its various aspects. Whereas her early films shined a spotlight on the fun and frivolity of sex, Let Me Die a Woman proved that Wishman also understood its occasional grave and serious side. Although outdated now with the emergence of films such as Boys Don’t Cry and Transamerica, Let Me Die a Woman may well be Wishman’s most significant contribution to the cultural canon…a movie both shocking and sentimental, as well as way before its time.
Following the release of Let Me Die a Woman, Wishman took note of the emerging world of horror cinema at the box office. As a woman with a vested interest in all things shocking, Wishman decided to try her hand at the world of terror. In 1983, Wishman released her first discernible horror picture, a movie cleverly titled A Night to Dismember. The film, about a mental patient with a penchant for dismemberment, was initially a critical and commercial failure. Effectively pushing Wishman into a temporary retirement, Dismember looked to be the cult auteur’s last film. However, as with most midnight movies, A Night to Dismember slowly found its audience amongst the horror fans of the 80s and early 90s, resurrecting Wishman from the filmic ashes and encouraging her to move forward into the world of horror. Before her death from lymphoma in 2002, Wishman would direct two more blood-soaked flicks, Satan was a Lady and Each Time I Kill, ensuring her status not only as a sexploitation icon, but as a true mistress of fright.
With a legion of fans (Peaches Christ, Natasha Lyonne, and yours truly among them), Doris Wishman’s legacy in the world of cult cinema continues to thrive. As a pioneering woman in the world of sexploitation and horror, Wishman dared to touch upon levels of sleaze and sin that her male counterparts delicately avoided. Her brash sense of filmic bravado was unhindered by gender or convention. Doris Wishman was the rare artist who was willing to carve her own path, leaving behind an array of gritty, yet remarkably honest works of filthy fun.
For helping to inspire a small portion of All About Evil, Doris is a fan favorite here at Peaches Christ HQ. But for being a powerfully unique and daring auteur bound by no barriers of sex or violence, Doris Wishman is even more importantly a Cult Filmmaker You Should Know.
So please, for me…
…take a moment and dismember Doris.
Until next time!
