Bad Girls Go To Hell (1965) 65m
....or, if they can't get that far, New York. Shoestring-budget film making by NY auteur Doris Wishman, the only woman to really leave her mark in the exploitation industry, is recommended to those who are hell-bent on sampling everything from the sleaze/trash end of the cinema spectrum. Everyone else would be advised to spend time elsewhere. Minimal plot concerns good housewife (Gigi Darlene) who inadvertently kills her sex-crazed janitor by knocking a plate over his head (breaking the plate would have probably sent the film over budget) and then goes on the lam to New York where she encounters several locals interested only in abusing her. Film has several Wishman trademarks: a photo montage of opening titles, hand-held camerawork, bad dubbing (even the characters in SPEED RACER emote more believably than this), women dressing/undressing with their backs to the camera, women dancing in their underwear, and, of course, several closeups of feet.
Story bears analysis only as part of a phenomenon and not as any intrinsic artwork. In the Wishman universe, women are helpless and men are bestial, but at least the consistency of her product develops its own reality. Watch three of her films in a row and you'll find that the snazzy music, absence of sets/props, and confined apartment interiors become almost normal. This works in favor of BAD GIRLS GO TO HELL, because the mindlessness of the story, which episodically relates the protagonist's bad experiences one after another, is in keeping with the idea of a World of Punishment: the innocent accidentally transgresses and must suffer by being inexplicably mistreated by everyone she meets. It finally gets to the stage when the sight of her appearing with her suitcases in hand is laughable. There's more: you'll be bewildered when Detective 'Tom' enters a room via the wardrobe - did Wishman really expect us to believe it was a front door? And you won't forget Darlene's 'acrobatic dance'. At least these absurd touches prevent us from being offended by the film's sex and violence. None of it is believable: characters don't behave or react the way we would expect in real life, but they do behave exactly the way we would expect them to in an exploitation movie. *Everything* Wishman does is in service to the genre. Her dialogue (she uses pseudonyms on the credits) is not bad enough to be entertaining, but easy, predictable and banal. You'll have heard every line of dialogue in a hundred other movies. Still, while cheapies like this are easy to knock, they do occupy a valid place in cinema history. For example, this is one of the few films of the time where audiences could see a married couple showering together! And you have to give Wishman her due for entering a male-only genre and making a success of it. I don't know if that's any excuse for her making such brain-numbing efforts as NUDE ON THE MOON, however.
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