DVD...

Skin...

1965/1966
Directed by: Doris Wishman
Written by: Doris Wishman
Produced by: Doris WIshman
Studio: Juri Productions

Starring:
Gigi Darlene .... Meg Kelton/Ellen Green
Darlene Bennett .... Della/Gracie
Harold Key
George La Rocque
Sandee Norman
Barnard L. Sackett .... Tom
Marlene Starr
Sam Stewart
Alan Feinstein

In the 60's and early 70's, Doris Wishman was making low budget exploitation movies in New York City that had lot's of skin. Two gritty black and white films of hers, Bad Girls Go to Hell and Another Day, Another Man, are on this release by perennial B (and Z) movie distributors, Something Weird Video.

The first film on the dvd, Bad Girls Go to Hell, stars the lovely and talented Gigi Darlene, who, according to www.imdb. com, "Abruptly disappeared from NYC's low-budget film scene circa 1967. The credits of Michael & Roberta Findlay's "Curse Of Her Flesh" (1968) include the line "Whatever happened to Gigi Darlene?""

Darlene's character, Meg, is a housewife who is assaulted and raped by by a janitor with bad teeth in the stairwell of the building she lives in with her husband, who has gone off to work. After the assault, Meg makes her way back to her apartment. After cleaning herself up, a note is slipped under her door demanding that she meet the janitor in his room. For some inexplicable reason, she goes there. Of course he attacks her again but during the struggle, she konks him on the head with a glass ashtray and kills him. The next inexplicable move by Meg, is to pack a bag and leave her apartment in Boston and jump a bus for New York City.

Meg arrives in New York with no plan and no money. While sitting on a park bench she meets a seemingly nice man who takes her to his apartment and lets her sleep on his couch (This apartment looks surprisingly like the one she came from in Boston.) After an undetermined amount of time passes, Meg is wearing an apron and cooking the guy dinner. He comments on how he will really miss her if she leaves, so it looks like she has been there for awhile. One day she makes a slight pass at him and he gets a little upset. She also suggests they have a drink sometime and he starts yelling at her and tells her if she wants a drink she can go to a bar and get one. Sometime later (presumably the next day), she finds a bottle of Cutty Sark scotch under the sink and pours a drink for the two of them He comes home just after that, sees the whiskey and throws her down, and drinks the glass she filled and then starts in on the bottle. He becomes more menacing by the drink and after a couple minutes gets up and whips his belt off. He comes at Meg with it and whips her repeatedly over her clothes while she is crying on the couch. He finally passes out and Meg packs her bag and leaves, but not before planting a kiss on his shoulder.

One the street again, Meg then gets picked up by a girl in a black leather jacket and is taken to her "cousins"house. The cousins name is Della (Darlene Bennet) and she decides to let Meg stay with her. When Della is not at work or out shopping, she and Meg hang out in their underwear and dance.

Then one day Meg sees a newspaper headline that says how a housewife in Boston killed a janitor and had fled the city. That night, Della climbs into bed with Meg and presumably they have fool around. The next day Meg leaves despite the girls saying that they love each other. Meg has her head down and we gather that she is leaving to protect the women she now loves from getting into trouble for harboring a fugitive. Della gives Meg some cash as she sadly walks out the door.

Della then finds a job helping an elderly woman take care of herself in her apartment. This seems to be going fine until the womans son comes to town for a visit. It turns out that he is a detective in Boston and has been working on the murder case. He, of course, recognizes Meg as the murder suspect and at this point I will not spoil the surprise ending!

The next film, Another Day/Another Man stars mostly the same group of people and looks like it was filmed on mostly the same sets. It also has a very similar look to it, which is kind of a cool, gritty, black and white, 60's New York thing. There are lots of exterior shots and the feeling in both films is very urban (60's movie urban, not realistic, inner city urban).

This story is about a woman, Dawn Swanoson (Darlene Bennett) whos husband becomes bedridden after an accident at work and she becomes a prostitute at night to help make ends meet. She tells her husband that she is working for a lawfirm, helping type documents in the evening. Dawn has a friend, Meg (Gigi Darlene) who also works as a prostitute and they like to hang out and dance in their underwear. Of course things start to go bad for Dawn, and her husband eventually gets better, so the end of the film is not great surprise but still, I won't ruin it.

Both films are on a single dvd released that was released in 2000 by Something Weird Video. The transfers are quite good considering what they must have had to start with, but the sound level is a bit inconsistent. Both films also had almost all of the dialogue dubbed, and not a very good job of it. The editing is also a little strange, and as I pointed out you sometimes cannot tell if hours or weeks have passed by.

Something Weird adds a fair amount of extras in trailers for these two and other similar movies. There are also ads from the time period and one ad, for two companion books on male and female sexuality, is pretty funny. There is also an easter egg that can be found by viewing the entire contents of the disc by using the "Let's Go to the Drive-In" feature and at the end of the presentation, you are treated to a bonus trailer of Doris Wishman's THE AMAZING TRANSPLANT, which Something Weird released to DVD last year as well.

This movie is not for everyone by a longshot, but it is interesting in its campy sexiness from the mid 60's. I bought this dvd and will definitely watch it now and again.

| Top | Main | Movie Reviews | Print Reviews | Genres | Studios | Icons of Horror | Scream Queens | News |