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Indecent Desires
[Something Weird]
1968; b&w
Directed by Doris Wishman
Starring: Sharon Kent, Michael Lawrence & Jackie Richards
My Brother's Wife
[Something Weird]
1966; b&w
Directed by Doris Wishman
Starring: June Roberts, Sam Stewart & Darlene Bennett
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Kicking off this double feature is Indecent Desires; 71 minutes of pure Wishman weirdness - and you know that ain't a complaint. First we meet Zeb, an awkward loner type whose interests include walking aimlessly around his neighborhood, trash picking, looking for spare change in phone booths and not cleaning up his one room bachelor pad. On one of these excursions ol' Zeb scores a trash treasure that very well may change his life - or at least the next couple days. Actually he makes two scores; first he stumbles across, and pockets, a ring. This may seem somewhat insignificant at first, but with our lady Doris nothing is insignificant. Any given item's significance may not be apparent to the naked eye, or ever fully explained throughout the course of the film, but we trust that the unflinching eye of Ms. Wishman's (or as she's billed in the credits for this flick, Mr. Silverman's) camera lens has a plan. Anywhoo, his interest in the ring is quickly eclipsed by the discovery of a small blond haired doll lying discarded in the bottom of a trashcan. He runs home with his new girlfriend and sets up a shrine of sorts, in the form of a folding card table with a blanket over it, so he can gaze upon her loveliness. Which he does. Shortly after finding her, in another one of his ambling journeys to nowhere, Zeb passes two comely young lasses in the street and is immediately overcome by visions of his beloved doll superimposed over the blonde he sees before him. Ann is the lady's name and some sort of secretarial work—and when she's not doing that, lounging around the house in black lace babydoll & panty ensembles—is her game. She's totally wrapped up in a conversation about nothing imparticular with her dark haired co-worker friend and doesn't notice Zeb, but he notices her all right and spontaneously decides to add stalking to his list of activities, following her to where she works and, later, figuring out where she lives and lurking around there as well. It doesn't take Ann long to realize something strange is afoot in her life. For one thing, she feels hands on her boobs when she's standing by herself at the water cooler. Soon being felt up is the least of her problems though, as whatever other worldly being is invading her personal space has turned from horny to angry - evidenced by the seemingly unexplainable burn mark that appears on her face one night while she's enjoying a quiet evening of reading in her lingerie. Naturally she comes to the conclusion that she's losing her mind but of course we the viewer know that there is a somewhat sane reason to this rhyme and all roads lead to our old friend Zeb. He's unwittingly made some sort of psychedelic, psychic voodoo hoodoo connection between himself, the doll and Ann. Oh, and the ring; the ring is a must have part of the equation. (See, I told you it would come into play.) Poor helpless Ann can't see what we see though, and slips further and further into a demented world of ghostly appendages alternately trying to get to third base and physically abuse her until she finally meets a shocking, and somewhat confusing, demise. Filmed in the extra atmospheric black & white format, this Wishman classic features a ton of kooky music and is a bit light on the dialogue - kooky or otherwise - but is indeed a wild, crazy, scantily clad ride.
Our next offering, My Brother's Wife, is a little more along the line of what we've all come to expect from Wishman's movies—sex and violence. (And big hair, thick liquid eyeliner and see-through lingerie but I don't know if anyone really appreciates the fashion angle except for me.) It's also one of those movies that starts at the end, so the story gets revealed in flashback form. As the title would imply, the plot revolves around a husband, a wife and a brother of the aforementioned husband. The husband's name is Bob; he's livin' a somewhat simple life with his young trophy wife Mary (apparently in the apartment later rented by Ann, the secretary from Indecent Desires, as it has much of the same furnishings) when all of a sudden his brother Frankie shows up. Under normal circumstance this wouldn't present that much of a problem but this home isn't all that happy after all and it only takes about a second before Frankie starts coveting his bro's young bride. Mary's already totally bored with wedded bliss, and plenty horny too, so the coveting is definitely mutual. Soon they've moved from thinking to action, adding adultery to their growing list of sins. What Mary doesn't know though, is that Frankie has also re-ignited an old flame upon his return to whatever town this takes place in. The old flame, a foxy brunette named Zena, has her own family problems (in the form of a female cousin with a taste for incest) and needs to relocate pronto. So she hits Frankie up with an ultimatum: get me some bread or you're not getting any head. (She didn't actually say, I'm paraphrasing; for review, and rhyming, purposes.) Being the lech that he is, Frankie turns right around and asks Mary to steal some dough from Bob so the two of them can run away together, even though he fully plans to use the money to skip town with Zena. She agrees, thus setting off a chain of events that leads to all the closeted relationships being outed, and bringing us right back to where we started - with the two brothers duking it out in a poolhall. As my mother the nursery school teacher would say: see, cheaters never win.
—Bunny
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