BAD GIRLS GO TO HELL / ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER MAN

Though this DVD is billed as a "Something Weird Video Drive-In Double Feature", in the mid-Sixties, films like these were more likely to be shown in seedy grindhouses than drive-ins.

This was an era of experimentation in exploitation pictures. Audiences were tired of the light and colorful "Nudie-Cutie" pictures that had flooded the adult market. Now, they were after cheap thrills with a harder edge. And so, the "Roughies" were born, gritty black & white features that sold themselves on titillation and shock, much like vintage carnival sideshows. Elements were thrown into plots just to see what kind of "daring" material they could get away with, trying all kinds of kinky stunts to shock the audience. As a result, the films are entertaining for their sleaze quotient more than any actual sexual excitement, with jazzy soundtracks and lots of shots of girls undressing in dirty apartments.

Doris Wishman was a Florida housewife who inherited her husband's film distribution business. Checking out some of the nudist camp films making the rounds at the time, she was convinced she could do better. Thus began the career of one of cinema's most bizarre exploitation filmmakers.

Wishman's films are instantly recognizable, beginning with the fake credits that barely disguised the fact she was doing almost everything herself. She's famous for her odd editing, with the camera often wandering away from her actors to shots of animals, feet, and random objects. This is partially because Wishman shot her films without sound, and she had to use a bag of tricks to disguise the sometimes un-synchable dubbing. She dubbed them at Peter Fernandez' New York studio (often using her own voice), so the films sometimes sound like perverse Speed Racer episodes.

Bad Girls Go to Hell is about an innocent's adventures through the dangers of modern life. In a way, it's like a twisted fairy tale. It's also, tangentially, a horror film -- sort of.

In a Boston suburb, sex hungry blonde nymphet Meg (Gigi Darlene) nags hubby Ted (George La Rocque), who has to work Saturday. Venturing outside to empty the garbage, she's molested by a creepy janitor.

He's frightened off, but later slips a note under her door "Come to my apartment or I'll tell your husband what happened". And what -- get arrested? But fearing scandal (I guess), she goes, and is attacked by her horny nemesis. Before he can complete the act, Meg clobbers him with a big ugly ashtray, killing him. There was always a big ugly ashtray handy in the '60s.

Meg is perhaps the dopiest heroine in movie history. Or perhaps she's merely the product of an age that often blamed crimes of passion on the victim. Instead of calling the police, she runs away, taking a bus to New York City. Once there, she goes home with Al Baines (Sam Stewart), the first stranger she meets. Al seems like a nice lug -- he gives her a place to stay with no questions asked. She attempts to repay his kindness the only way she knows how, by doing some housework and making some clumsy attempts at seduction (which he rejects). Turns out Al's struggling with alcoholism. When Meg makes the mistake of pouring a drink, Al chugs the bottle, and becomes a violent fiend that beats her.

And so, Meg hits the pavement again. She's picked up by Grace, who introduces her to her cousin Della (Darlene Bennett), a predatory lesbian looking for a roommate. Meg moves in, and she and Della pass the time by dancing and doing acrobatics in their lingerie. They find themselves irresistibly drawn to one another -- and so, Meg has to leave.

She takes a room with an annoying couple. But the husband has more than $20 a week rent on his mind. Next, she becomes a live-in companion for crippled Mrs. Thornton. But the woman's son turns out to be the detective assigned to the janitor's murder!

Another pure product of its time is Another Day, Another Man, shot with much of the same cast and locations as Bad Girls. Steve (Rod Reagan) has news for his wife Ann (Barbie Kemp, spelled "Kenmp" in the credits) -- he got a raise! Now Ann can afford to leave her office job (which doesn't allow married women!) and live together. But they can't celebrate, as Ann has promised to talk to her roommate Tess (June Roberts), a tough mobster's girl. Tess gets paid to "entertain" any man her boyfriend Bert (Sam Stewart) tells her to.

Steve carries Ann across the threshold of their new tacky furnished apartment, being careful not to muss her sky-high beehive. The couple is sickeningly happy in their horribly decorated new home. Wishman's easily distracted camera gets a workout browsing the dreadful decor spread throughout this picture.

Meanwhile, Bert has been working on seducing the Dessime twins, Darla and Daisy, into his harem. The twins are portrayed by Rita and Darlene Bennett, real twins who for some reason rarely appeared in the same film.

Gigi Darlene again plays a girl named Meg, this time a sweet young thing that Bert picks up at the bus station. He drops her at the twins' apartment, and Meg is on her way to becoming a prostitute, too. This doesn't go over too well with her fiancee John. When John returns to apologize, he succumbs to the attack of the sex-crazy twins.

With the twins too busy to come to work, Bert finds himself short of girls. Fortunately, Steve gets sick with a mysterious movie disease, probably from looking at the awful wallpaper. Ann needs to make some money fast, and finds Bert's offer of easy cash too hard to resist. Things go well enough, until a fed up and impregnated Tess drops a dime on the operation, leading to a hilariously tragic ending. I don't want to give it away, but it involves a fake mustache and sunglasses, and is at least a bit more original than that of Bad Girls.

All Something Weird DVDs now open with one of their terrific montages. This one has a nicely designed menu with a drive-in theme. As usual, Something Weird has done an excellent job with the transfers -- though one should take into account that these films were shot on 16mm short-ends 35 years ago. Doris Wishman regrets losing the video rights to her films, and unfortunately won't cooperate by recording commentary tracks, which is a shame. To make up for it SWV has loaded up the disc with other extras.

There's a short Michael and Helga pitching sex instruction books that was shown in drive-ins circa 1970. There are three different intermission countdown "clocks", a collection of short concessions ads counting down to showtime. There's also a Doris Wishman Gallery of Exploitation Art, which cycles (a bit too quickly) through posters and ad mats for some of Wishman's movies.

The hyperbolic trailers for Wishman movies were often a lot more fun than the actual features. Included here are ads for Bad Girls Go to Hell, the perverted voodoo film Indecent Desires, A Taste of Flesh, Another Day, Another Man, My Brother's Wife, and Too Much Too Often.

A "Let's Go to the Drive-In" feature is advertised as being interactive, but merely combines some of the drive-in shorts and trailers into a half hour show. However, hidden at the end is a trailer for one of Wishman's most outrageous films, The Amazing Transplant.