“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.
The Criterion Channel. “Direct By Doris Wishman,” n.d. https://www.criterionchannel.com/directed-by-doris-wishman.