It is with a saddened heart that I write this. This past weekend marked the final broadcast of the 35-year run for the Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel created movie review program. The heads of Buena Vista Television must wear mouse-ears while eating the fries of its subsidiary golden-arched fast-food chain while listening to Hannah Montana when making such decisions.

This slice of Americana and its trademarked ‘Thumbs Up Thumbs Down’ rating system has found its way off the weekly TV GUIDE listings.

As far back as my memory allows, I remember watching Siskel and Ebert review movies. I usually found them after my Saturday morning cartoons and before I went out to play. As I got older and the cartoons were less interesting, SISKEL AND EBERT or AT THE MOVIES (as it is now commonly called) continually kept a captive hold of me.

Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel offered something that was not around back then, real movie reviews. The New York papers had a small box of thumb nail movie reviews in their flimsy entertainment sections that told me nothing.

Sometimes the TV news offered a generic 30 second movie review on the morning show – which I never made a point to watch – wherein some strange-looking hairy-mustached man was talking about a film.

I savored AT THE MOVIES for the film clips. It was more exciting than looking in the Daily News for the movie ads. It fired my imagination and gave me an excuse to bolt out of the door unattended to any movie theater in Brooklyn.

As my penchant for films increased, Siskel and Ebert molded my mind into thinking of film as more than simply a reason to sit in a dark theater and eat popcorn and drink soda. I like to believe that they incubated the cinematic snobbery that I possess today.

A highlight was watching them trade jabs at one another, and at times, I thought one would get up and smack the other over a difference of opinion. Did these two loathe one another? It was great to hear them as they appeared uncensored on THE HOWARD STERN SHOW or when they appeared on some lame late night talk show.

Tragedy struck as Gene Siskel passed away in 1999 due to complications from surgery for cancer. Ebert voiced his opinion about his loving friend and cohort and the question of their love or hate was immediately laid to rest.

To fill in and never to replace, Richard Roeper took the seat next to Ebert.

Roeper had a successful show run. Once again, tragedy returned to the balcony and Roger Ebert, due to thyroid cancer, no longer made appearances on his show.

Richard Roeper hosted the show with various critics, film directors, and celebrity guest hosts including Kevin Smith, A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips. Then the greatest tragedy occurred. The same mouse-ears-wearing think tank revamped the show with two Bens. Ben Mankiewicz of TCM and Ben Lyons from E!

Two words sum this up: Travesty! Horror!

In all fairness to Ben Mankiewicz, it was not his fault. He was stuck with what amounted to a buffoon sidekick. The only saving grace are the clips of Mankiewicz responding to obviously something akin to throw-up from Lyons’ mouth and Lyons reacting with a quick taken aback head jerk and stunned, wide-eyed look of stupidity. If I were Mankiewicz, I would have taken that living breathing Barney Fife and given him a Scorsese type beating.

Roger Ebert defends Ben Lyons and claims that it is not his fault for his lackluster show performance. Excuse me, Mr. Ebert, but yes, it is. He smeared your child with abject heinous deplorable stupidity and you should not take the polite high road and excuse him. If one is presented with a job that requires skills that are out of his range, then do not accept it.

Especially since Lyons’ father is a film reviewer. Especially since this is television. To rectify the casting debacle, Lyons should have been required to hide behind the seat and occasionally mumble something, and for every utterance of stupidity, Mankiewicz should have kicked the seat and thrown popcorn and soda at the crouched, cowering, gentle Ben.

Once the year sentence was done, a pair of film critics were brought to the balcony. Michael Phillips of Chicago and fellow Brooklynite A.O. Scott did the show justice. In recent weeks, they showed clips of Siskel and Ebert reviewing movies, bantering and bickering, and going off in tirades.

And this past weekend, August 2010, after 35 years, Phillips and Scott were the pallbearers for the show that suffered death at the hands of a mouse.

Frank Frazetta has died.

Most film aficionados won’t recognize the name. Only occasionally was he directly involved in film production. Frank Frazetta was an artist and illustrator, but his influence on the mediums of film and television cannot be overestimated, perhaps because his powerful vision crossed over so many genres and avenues of expression, while he, himself, remained essentially unseen by most of the public.

Born and raised in New York, Frazetta was a startling child prodigy, and the death of his professor halted plans for him to be schooled in Europe as one of the great fine-artists of the time. Looking to earn a living at the age of 16, he started drawing for major comic books (already an extremely significant accomplishment for a teenager) – but with an aptitude that essentially eclipsed the medium. Then he was offered the assignment to create the satirist/comic poster for the comedy WHAT’S NEW PUSSYCAT in 1966, earning in a day what he did otherwise in a year. And while the strains of that famous film’s pleasantly optimistic pop-song theme played endlessly on car and transistor radios all over the country to some modest acclaim, and the focus was on the film’s stars and music, people passed by and smiled at the movie poster created by a man who would, within a decade, be regarded already then as one of the finest illustrators the world had ever seen.

It was, however, his assignments to paint the paperback covers for Conan the Barbarian and the fantasies of Edgar Rice Boroughs, and for which he established a powerfully sweeping, intensely rugged yet colorful signature style, that struck right into the core consciousness of the vast majority of genre fans of that time. Many of these people so influenced by Frazetta would become extremely powerful in some areas of Hollywood – and thus the obvious string of dominoes was firmly set to proceed.

His designs and ideas – entirely original to his imagination – were often lifted willy-nilly by producers who so regarded him as a national treasure that they seemed to think his work was, like a national park, admission-free.

The singular motion picture in which he is listed as a co-producer and into which he had direct directorial input, FIRE AND ICE, was a poorly-distributed and undeserved flop, though reasonably produced and directed by experienced pro Ralph Bakshi, yet another lifetime fan. The film is almost entirely rotoscoped – meaning staged with live actors and the animation traced, image by image, over the frames of live action film. It’s the one film that truly brings Frazetta’s style as fully to life as the hand-drawn medium could capture on a budget, and is generally entirely successful as an animated action film and shows the promise of what could have been had more been made.

Off and on he continued to contribute to films while establishing himself further as a fine artist of very significant renown. The book cover paintings, while commissioned by the publishers, were photographed and returned to Frazetta, who retained ownership of the originals. Recently, the only “Conan the Barbarian” painting sold by Frazetta and his estate to date went for $1 million to a private collector.

Animation producer, production designer, poster creator, cover painter, significant fine artist and one of the most powerful influences the world has ever seen on all the imagination-centric visual genres and mediums, has passed away at the age of 82.

On a purely personal note, Frazetta, along with Ray Harryhausen, for me like millions of others, had by far the biggest artistic influence on my childhood, and my sense of loss at his passing in my experienced middle-age is surprisingly striking. My own feelings, probably like those other millions, no doubt, are somewhat randomly collected into a scattershot internal scrapbook of feelings and images that whisk me back in time:

So many paperbacks I never read because there was never enough time in the day to study Frazetta’s cover art as the impact of that work always seemed to demand…. I never got to the written words inside.

A rare lone lion in a world of tomcats. Endlessly imitated, never equaled. A painter who could draw and vise versa with equal style, power and originality. And in those action scenes for which he is most famous, always the apex of the action, somehow always the very highest peak of dramatic tension and never a millisecond less one way or the other. The moment of life and death action caught at the very definition of the struggle.

Brilliant. Original. Powerful. Exciting. Fun. Grand. Intimate. Imaginative…. the language hasn’t enough words to do him justice.

He’ll be teaching drawing and painting in Heaven, and still his students won’t come up to his shoe tops.

Rest In Peace.

* Editor’s Note: My old friend Al Kilgore, who created the Bullwinkle comic strip for Jay Ward, was a close friend of Frazetta’s for a time during their careers, and when he’d visit the artist at his home, the floor would be littered with drawings and paintings. “Al, would you just take an armful of these out of here! Just help me get rid of this stuff!”, Frazetta would plead with him, but Al never did. As the decades passed, and Frazetta’s stock rose, Al came to look back on that decision with a certain regret…

What a month. We’re waving at a whole host of audio-visual luminaries after a period of relative quiet. It’s as if the heavens have been saving up for a group reaping, but to what purpose… Guess we’ll have to wait to find out.

Among those who have left us in recent weeks are:

MICHAEL JACKSON – (June 25th, aged 50) What can one say that hasn’t already been said, and with vastly different shadings of empathy or condemnation. There’s a really great read coming from the right biographer, because absolutely everyone seems willing and eager to talk. I spent some bedazzled time with Ludmila Tcherina in the mid-90s, who was certain that either Jackson or John Landis had stolen visual artifacts for THRILLER from her remarkable (and sorely missing on DVD) THE LOVERS OF TERUEL. I asked Landis, who had never seen her film. I’ve never been able to find out if Jackson had. My favorite of his videos was SMOOTH CRIMINAL. I’ve watched it enough that if it were a 78, 45, or 33 rpm platter, it would be worn to a frazzle. And as to the pedophile charges, after all the footage I’ve seen this past week, I wonder if Jackson himself, whatever the truth of the charges, ever really believed he’d done anything bad.

GALE STORM – (June 27th, aged 87). She was a wonderfully sexy, innocent, effervescent presence in the 50s on MY LITTLE MARGIE on TV (available on DVD) and later on the Gale Storm Show, even featuring Robby the Robot in a guest appearance. She sang some wonderful songs, did TV, then dropped into obscurity, but I wish she’d been dredged up by the likes of Tarantino, or even a lesser talent who loved finding actresses in retirement and providing them with a vehicle.

Gale Storm gets an assist from Lee Bonnell with her earring at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

KARL MALDEN – (July 1st, aged 97) 97 years of age, ladies and gentlemen. I met Malden on the set of THE CINCINNATI KID, which filmed in New Orleans while I was eating po-boys and going to college at Tulane University. That was quite a coup for a college newspaper Entertainment Editor – meeting him, Edward G. Robinson, Terry Southern, Ann Margaret, and Steve McQueen, all in the space of a few days. Oddly enough, I never got to talk with Norman Jewison, but the others, to greater or lesser degrees, were hospitable and accessible. When I sat down to interview Malden, and started up my reel-to-reel tape recorder, he looked at it admiringly, then patted me on the knee and said “You must be a wealthy college student.” His almost naïve, good-natured attitude was my predominant memory of the interview. Whether working with Kazan, Argento, Brando, or on TV, he was a solid, predictable, reliable actor.

On the CINCINNATI KID shoot - FIR editor, Karl Malden, and Miss Tulane, in the French Quarter, New Orleans.

ALLEN KLEIN – (July 4th, aged 77) The obits are mentioning his relationship with the Beatles and The Rolling Stones, but for me, it was his withholding from release of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s EL TOPO and THE HOLY MOUNTAIN for over 35 years for which he’ll always be remembered. Only a few years ago he finally relented and allowed them back into distribution, and on the commentary tracks, Jodorowsky (for whom I wrote a script a decade ago which, like most of his projects, has yet to get off the ground) claimed Klein was a different man after all these years and that their reunion was painless. The obits mention Alzheimers. I wonder if Jodorowsky was being euphemistic, or if he really didn’t notice, and just took Klein’s personality change as eccentric, like his own has always been.

DAVID CARRADINE – (June 3rd, aged 72) I never met him, but always heard him described as cold and condescending to interviewers. Considering the conditions of his demise, perhaps he and those interviewers just never had the right subject matter to discuss. I loved him in Q, and KILL BILL. He was a good actor, and his gifts were under-used by filmmakers.

ED MACMAHON – (June 23rd, aged 86) On a DVD collection of Johnny Carson highlights, the infamous drunken-Ed harangue about going to the zoo is excerpted, and it’s wonderful TV. He was the penultimate embodiment of the straight guy TV co-host.

FARRAH FAWCETT – (June 25th, aged 62) Never got into her myself, but her poster made her iconic, her cancer battle – particularly in that she was so beautiful and it had to be anal cancer – gave her a new, hard-to-define status, for which she’ll be remembered.

JANE RANDOLPH – (May 4th, aged 93) Ms. Randolph’s death closes the book on the Val Lewton team’s first RKO triumph – CAT PEOPLE. She joins Lewton, Jacques Tourneur, DeWitt Bodeen, Simone Simon, Kent Smith, Tom Conway, Elizabeth Russell, Mark Robson, Roy Webb, and Nick Musuraca in the great beyond. In interviews, she felt that Simone never liked her, but Simone never told me anything to support that. However, Simone was pretty focused on herself, and possessive of the men around her, and it might have come across as cold and off-putting.

If you are reading this editorial, then you are experiencing FIR’s new format!!!

Designed by FIR contributor and filmmaker Oren Shai, the re-invented site has been several months in development, and for quite a while has been hidden at a secret cyber-location in order for the staff to peruse it and make their comments.

Everything about the new FIR site strikes us as an improvement over the old one, but we want to hear from you about it, and actually that’s one of the virtues of it now – it’s more interactive. In addition, the FIR “Archives,” – fifty years’ worth of incredible career articles and landmark columns – are starting to go up, at the rate of one major article every week. Our debut archive article is about the voluptuous, ill-fated Jayne Mansfield. To learn more about Ms. Mansfield’s films, you can reference Oren’s review of the classy, boxed-set of her films, which was released last year.

The website’s own accumulated archives – all the reviews, editorials, and columns since 1997 – have been rescued from the dungeons of cyberspace as well, and they are now viewable and easy to navigate on the new site.

FIR now has an RSS Feed as well.

Back in the day, FIR was known for, in addition to its career articles and its filmusic column, its entertainment industry obituaries, something I haven’t kept up with, though I think it’s important to acknowledge the passing of people of interest and importance in the entertainment field, and for our revamped site’s debut editorial, I’d like to remember a few people who were special to us:

ROBIN LITTLE (obit by Ken Geist) – I want to recall my friend and colleague who for many years, in the ‘80s and 90s, arranged the National Board’s annual awards ceremony at such venues as the Player’s Club, the lobby and auditorium of the Equitable Building, and the Library of the Performing Arts.
Robin passed away last August in sorry circumstances, but I want to celebrate the vibrant, sunny woman who managed to arrange and book our attendance at studio screenings; host our filmmaker guests, as well as edit the bi-monthly magazine, “Films in Review” to which I was a regular contributor.
I don’t recall a single argument with Robin although some of my reviews and profiles could well have provoked reprimand or her red pencil at the very least. I recall an extended riff of mine on early Almadovar as a rude, homo boy which might have been toned down.

In the days when we had discussions after screenings, I cast myself in the role of a tummler who always had the last, and, at that, a miserably discouraging word. The only crack I recall having uttered was in the Paramount screening room, where I said that, “Mel Gibson’s PAYBACK could give S&M a seriously bad name.” I always expected Robin to say “now, now, you go too far,” but she’d just say, “You’re impossible, but oddly funny. Right on!”

The only differences we had were over her cuisine. Robin would have these frequent, bibulous dinner parties at her smart East 72nd St. apartment co-hosted by her dear friend, Louise Tanner, a delightful character who had actually produced children by her former husband, the Tanner fellow who wrote camp creations under the name of Patrick Dennis.
Robin, bless her, liked to cook with vinegar, mustard, and mayonnaise, the three condiments which most disagree with me.
Each time I would play with my food, without actually eating it, and Robin would say, “Rats, you loathe vinegar, mustard, and mayo, my staples, I’ll have to remember that for next time.”
Well, of course, she never did, but once she announced very proudly, “I’ve made you a special portion with nothing on it. Now you have no cause for complaint. Eat up. How is it?
“Bland I’m afraid, but I have richly earned it.”

Robin Little was my darling friend and an enormous asset to the National Board of Review for many years. God bless her.

...with Swirlee

KELLY GLEASON – November 22nd, 2007, 41, of Pancreatic cancer. Kelly was a student of mine at The School of Visual Arts. She had a radiant, quirky look, like a beautiful smurf. I was one of her teachers at The School of Visual Arts, and still have a VHS copy of her Thesis film – MURDER MAKES ME HOT. She was a gifted make-up artist, and later taught at the school, as well as excelling professionally, joining and becoming president of Local 798. She lived on the fifth floor of the upper west side building where I still reside, and I would see her fairly often, either entering or exiting the building. We worked together only once, on SWIRLEE, a project she confessed she would have done for free (and as its producer, I’m sorry I didn’t know it – I still would have paid her, but possibly a little less…), about a man made out of ice cream, starring (and directed by) James Lorinz, with David Caruso, and Tony Darrow in fine support. She created an extraordinary ice-cream head, which bled chocolate syrup when pierced, and art director Denise LaBelle made the accompanying pants, which had criss-crossed stripes on it as if it were an ice-cream cone transformed into cloth. We had a lot of fun on that one.

MICHAEL DEBAKEY – 7/11 – 99…I’m guessing, of old age. DeBakey performed the first coronary bi-pass in 1964. A Tulane Graduate, he worked his medical miracles on Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, JFK, King Hussein, and my grandmother. In fact my grandmother was one of his early triumphs. I was at Tulane at the time. One of her brothers had been DeBakey’s college roommate, and my family used that connection to get her on the list. She lived into her 90s.

BO DIDDLEY – 6/2 – 79, of heart failure. Speaking of Tulane, when I first got there, in ’62, I read in the local newspaper that Bo Diddley was playing in some small bar on the outskirts of town. I couldn’t really understand that – for a moment I considered that perhaps it was a much-used moniker, and that this wasn’t the real Bo. In any case, being crazy about his music, I hopped a few buses and made my way across town to the advertised establishment. As I entered, sure enough I spotted him walking across the floor. I walked over and introduced myself, reaching out to shake his hand, but he cut me off, saying, “Wait a minute, let me get behind the bar.” Once on the other side, he explained that in the deep South (of the early 60s), a white man and a black man couldn’t converse on the same side of the bar. It was my first experience with segregation, but far from my last. And concerning Bo, there’s a film he was in – LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL – which still hasn’t shown up on DVD, hint hint…

My memories of Dan Curtis began like everyone else on this board with ‘Dark Shadows’. The first time I ever remember seeing his name was at the end crawl of each episode “A Dan Curtis Production”

This was back in 1966, and I was a freshman in high school. By the time HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS hit the big screen I was already in College. My best friend and I went to the drive -in (where most horror films wound up in those days) to see how all those weeks of viewing a plot revealed in 20 minute segments would translate to a 90 minute movie. We were not disappointed, even though Jonathan Frid had just appeared on the Dick Cavett show complaining about the violence. Frid did say he thought “It was a pretty decent horror film.”

By now we all knew it was a Dan Curtis Production. Throughout the seventies Dan Curtis was the “Man” when it came to Gothic horror and vampires on television.

When I finally moved to Los Angeles in 1976 I would connect with Dan Curtis in a much more personal way then I would have ever imagined as a fan of ‘Dark Shadows’ in my youth.

By 1977 I had become a theatrical agent with an office in Century City. Among my clients was Barbara Steele. We have been friends ever since then. In 1980, James Poe, the screenwriter and Barbara’s last husband, died leaving her at very loose ends. A mutual friend, British ICM agent Maggie Abbott, suggested that a producer over at Paramount named Dan Curtis was looking for someone to look at WWII stock footage for a mammoth series called “The Winds of War”. Barbara has been part of Dan Curtis Productions’ team ever since.

Thanks to her I saw a post ‘Dark Shadows’ Dan Curtis. The two WWII mini-series became his crowning achievement as a producer/director. It won Emmys for both Barbara and Dan and went on to be the highest rated show of its kind as well as the longest. I vividly recall sitting in a small screening room with Barbara and Dan watching the rushes of John Gielgud on his way to the gas chambers in “War and Remembrance.” When the lights went up Dan stood up and raised his fist heavenward: “Steven Spielberg eat your heart out!!” Dan loved every frame of that show. I will never forget him saying in that very screening room before we left “You know, when I die, even if this show wins a truckload of Emmys, they will end up saying Dan Curtis, creator of daytime television’s ‘Dark Shadows,’ died today…..” then he laughed out loud at the thought of it. Dan was never far off the mark!

I always admired Dan even though at times he could be tough as nails when needed. Dan Curtis had a big heart and he loved Show-business with every bit of it!

During this time it was best to leave ‘Dark Shadows’ out of the conversation with Dan. He had certainly moved on to bigger and better things. It was easier to get him to talk about filming TURN OF THE SCREW in London then to wax nostalgic about ‘Dark Shadows’ in those days.

The fact that ‘Dark Shadows’ has had this never-ending fan life has always been an enigma to Dan. This is probably why he never felt the need to attend the convention aspect of it to any degree. When he was younger, doing ‘DS’ live in New York, I am sure he was full of passion and fire pushing the envelope with daytime television as he was now for ‘Winds’ and ‘Remembrance’ taking the mini series to the limit of its possibilities.

In 1994 Barbara and I traveled to New York to co-produce a ‘Dark Shadows’ anniversary video. Before leaving we met with Dan in his offices to plan what our approach would be, interviewing fans at the hotel in costume, as well as a trip out to the late Grayson Hall’s last home where her husband Sam still lived. Even though he was pre-occupied with his current projects he still kept his hand in the franchise that would remain his lasting legacy.

A few years later Dan would host a full scale tribute at the directors guild for ‘Dark Shadows’ with all the surviving cast members save for Frid. For one magic evening he basked in the afterglow of Collinwood. This is the way I will always wish to remember him, smiling and laughing with old friends who were his family….his ‘Dark Shadows’ family.

The ‘Dark Shadows’ DVD collection, as well as WINDS OF WAR and WAR AND REMEMBRANCE, are available from MPI Video.

Jerrald Goldsmith, 1929-2004

Elmer Bernstein, 1922-2004

GOLDSMITH & BERNSTEIN – no, not a firm of cheap lawyers or jewellers (though they probably are somewhere), or even two characters in the latest TV buddy-cop show. Nor are they a couple of Washington Post reporters on the case of a beleaguered and (allegedly) corrupt President. The two to whom I refer of course are Jerry Goldsmith and Elmer Bernstein, the prolific and inarguable filmusic giants who have composed the themes and scores to some of the most memorable movies and TV series of the last 50 years, and it is a great sadness to me that they are no longer with us.

You can easily do an internet search for biographies and filmographies for both of these great composers, so I will not bother to provide either here. I’ll just write about the music, which is, after all, the enormous legacy they have left us.

The sheer diversity of Goldsmith’s work defies belief. Compare and contrast for example his compositions for the movies OUR MAN FLINT, FIRST BLOOD, LOGAN’S RUN, and PLANET OF THE APES, and his themes from TV’s THE MAN FROM UNCLE, THE WALTONS, THE TWILIGHT ZONE, BARNABY JONES and numerous others in both categories. You couldn’t pin down or pigeonhole Jerry. You can usually spot a John Barry, Bernard Herrmann or Miklos Rosza score from almost any decade a mile off. Not so Goldsmith. Some would say this displayed a lack of personal style or technique. I disagree. The man wrote for his subject and was adept at changing his style accordingly. To him, and paraphrasing the Bard, the film was the thing, whether it be the silliness of GREMLINS, the wondrous, awesome spaciousness and grandeur of his STAR TREK scores, the fairy tale magic of THE SECRET OF NIMH and LEGEND (European release – how they could replace a Goldsmith score with one by Tangerine Dream is beyond me) or the brooding terror of THE OMEN and ALIEN, he would come up with the goods.

He was a ‘jobbing’ composer. He worked with a sort of ‘You tell me what you want and I’ll do it’ attitude, which probably came from his early work on TV and radio, a realm that probably gave him strict criteria to which to adhere. Audiences also weren’t so sophisticated back then. If they needed to be scared then there was traditional scary music you had to play. The same applied to action or comedy cues. There was normally no room for any airy-fairy experimental stuff: you either came up with what was required or you were out of a job. But, not only did he come up with the goods, but also he did it with panache and flair and, ever the experimentalist, he even created new expectations of what filmusic should sound like. He re-educated the audience.

Much of the above also applies to Elmer Bernstein, who was of the same school, and who too had an extensive grounding in television and radio. Again, if you look through a Bernstein filmography, you’ll see an amazing diversity of film genres and consequently different musical styles, from the brash jazz of THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM to the light musical comedy of his only Oscar winning score THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE; the majesty of THE TEN COMMANDMENTS; the British Victorian whimsy of the children’s ghost story THE AMAZING MR. BLUNDEN; the goofiness of the AIRPLANE movies; the black comedy horror of AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON; the poor Irish working class world of MY LEFT FOOT, and of course, the themes that will forever be his anthems, THE GREAT ESCAPE and, in particular, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN.

This column cannot sum up the debt we owe to these two brilliant composers, and none could. They have inspired, and been emulated by, many and their passing is a great loss to the filmusic world. It’s a much-used cliché, but an apt one – The world may be a poorer place without them, but it will always be a richer one because of them.

Please do check those filmographies. You’ll be amazed. And please, please, please – keep listening to their fabulous music.

Bob McMurdo with Kurt Vonnegut

Bruce McMurdo (June 4th, age 71)
Father of FIR Screening Committee member Bob McMurdo. Bob has been with FIR’s committee since FIR’s current editor took over, and before that was with the screening committee for The Perfect Vision magazine, on which FIR’s current editor was then-Managing Editor.

William Marshall (June 11th, age 78)
Despite the Shakespearian voice and all the aspirations that go with it, and all the upscale work he’d done (The Green Pastures on the stage, for eg), the man will be remembers for BLACULA and its sequel, SCREAM, BLACULA, SCREAM! Once, twenty or more years ago, I was driving along the East Side Drive on the way to Westchester, and a friend and I caught sight of Marshall in a sweat suit running on a river path. Though we were in a car on a crowded highway, not gesticulating or gawking, and were a good hundred feet from him, he spotted both of us instantly, and didn’t register any emotion. Just watched us watching him as we drove by.

Gregory Peck (June 12th, age 87)
Your editor received a DW Griffith Award the year Peck was the lifetime achievement recipient. My award was very much do to the campaigning of Robin Little, who I later painfully replaced as editor of FIR.

Hume Cronyn (June 15th, age 92)
He made his film debut in Hitchcock’s SHADOW OF A DOUBT (’43), and died of prostate cancer which, at his age, doctors usually leave along, figuring you’ll probably die of something else first. For my only story about Mr. Cronyn, check out Glenn Andreiev’s review of BRUTE FORCE.

Alex Gordon (June 24th, age 80)
Older brother of Richard, and sort of an American counterpart, producing B genre flicks in Hollywood throughout the 50’s and 60’s. He formed the British Gene Autry Fan Club in the late 1930’s, co-authored a few of Ed Wood’s films: BRIDE OF THE MONSTER and JAILBAIT, and later managed Gene Autry’s music and film properties.

Screenwriter David Newman with FIR Editor at the Dusty Awards

David Newman (June 26th, age 66)
The screenplay for BONNIE AND CLYDE, co-authored with Robert Benton, was a watermark in American film history. I liked his script for Joseph Mankiewicz’s THERE WAS A CROOKED MAN…, and I liked the first SUPERMAN, too. I loved BAD COMPANY, but I’ll have to catch up with it to find out how much was the screenplay, and how much was Robert Benton’s direction. I don’t know what I think about Michael Jackson’s MOONWALKER…

Katherine Hepburn (June 29th, age 96)
My brother, Lewis, when compiling favorite words from personalities worldwide for his book ‘The Logophile’s Orgy’, met with resistance from Ms. Hepburn. She wouldn’t give him her favorite word, but she did take the time to write him from her home in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, to explain why. He wrote back. She wrote back. With all that writing, she might as well just have given him the word, but as I understand it, that was Kate.

Buddy Hackett (June 30th, age 78)
The obits I read neglected to mention George Pal’s THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM. Hackett is fun in that one as a cowardly knight’s ward, and Pal told me he enjoyed working with the comedian. Everyone seems to have enjoyed working on that film, even Laurence Harvey, who was quick to publicly deride projects he despised.

Buddy Ebsen (July 7th, age 96)I can only conclude it was that damned WIZARD OF OZ makeup that accounted for his premature departure. How I regret the loss of the upcoming series where Barnaby Jones roots out the criminal element from nursing homes around the country. (“Bad news, Barnaby. This is the fifth denture theft in a week. Took ‘em right out of the glass…!”) The complete Davey Crockett series is available from Disney Home Entertainment, where Ebsen played the backwoodsman’s sidekick.

N!xau (July 2nd, age 59)
Became an arthouse celeb after appearing in the seventy million dollar grossing 1980 satire THE GODS MYST BE CRAZY, and made several other films, but was always a South African Kalahari Bushman at heart. He retuned to his primitive home, abandoned his fame and relative fortune (an expensive watch given to him was found in the bush where he’d dispensed with it), and was discovered dead several days after he’d journeyed out to get wood.

Serge Silberman (July 22nd, age 86)
He was the European Sam Spiegel, a great producer who not only had taste but could get things made. Just think of his work with Bunuel (DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID, THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE, and THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE are on DVD from Criterion, as is Jean Pierre Melville’s BOB LE FLAMBEUR. Elsewhere you can find Kurosawa’s RAN, and Anchor Bay has released Jean-Jacques Beineix’s DIVA)

John Schlesinger (July 24th, age 77)
During an interview to promote MARATHON MAN, to test his integrity, I asked what he would have done if the studio had told him to use John Wayne in the lead. He flipped out, not at me, just at the thought. During that same interview, he asked me if I thought he were barrel-chested, as someone had recently remarked. I didn’t quite know what to say, since it was clear he didn’t think so, but the guy’s chest looked like a Popeye caricature.

Bob Hope (July 27th, age 100)
Again I defer to my brother, Lewis, a noted humorist (author of the book ‘How To Raise Your IQ By Eating Gifted Children’) who, as Phyllis Diller’s guest, had dinner one night with Hope and his wife, circa ’96, and found the entertainer to be lucid but practically deaf.

Idi Amin (July 28th, age 80)
Three years ago I asked Barbet Schroeder if he still received Christmas cards from the exiled dictator, and he said no. Of course I neglected to ask if he’d ever received any cards from him. But it was at a Lincoln Center party, and it was asked in jest. Schroeder delicately documented the reign of this mass torturer in GENERAL IDI AMIN DADA (available from Criterion on DVD), but the indelicate truth is all too visible, and Schroeder’s stories surrounding its creation are pretty harrowing. Later, when Idi fled the country, and soldiers entered his palace, they reportedly found a complete collection of Tom and Jerry cartoons in his bedroom closet. A worrisome argument for proponents of violent cartoons having negative effects on children.

Sam Phillips (July 30th, age 80)
A debt of thanks to Bruce Sinofsky for Producing and Directing ‘GOOD ROCKIN’ TONIGHT: The Legacy of Sun Records’, for the American Masters series in 2001 (on DVD from Image Entertainment). Phillips is captured in all his eccentric glory, and there are undoubtedly thousands of feet of outtakes in which to revel.

Albert Nozaki, 91 (11/16/03) Born in Tokyo, his family moved to the US when he was 3. A BA and Masters in Architecture took him to Paramount as a draftsman in the set design department in 1934, where his career was interrupted by the attack on Pearl Harbor, after which he and his wife were deposited in the Manzanar internment camp. He returned to Paramount after the war, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1954. Although he art directed many important films including THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, THE BIG CLOCK, and HOUDINI, it isn’t surprising that he considered his supreme achievement 1953’s THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, for which his miniature of downtown Los Angeles was remarkably detailed, and the sinister Martian War Machines were among the most memorable and original Art Department Effects ever created (he also storyboarded the entire movie himself.) In 1963, Nozaki was stricken with retinitis pigmentosa leading within a decade to blindness. Nonetheless Paramount appointed him Supervising Art Director for Features, a job he held until his retirement in ’69. He is survived by wife Lorna, a daughter and a brother.

Jeanne Crain, 79 (12/14/03), of a heart attack.

Alan Bates, 69 (12/27/03), in London, of pancreatic cancer. Charming and gifted, boyish in his earliest films, crafty as he aged. So many of his films are memorable, including THE ENTERTAINER (MGM), THE FIXER (Academy Award nomination – ’68), WOMEN IN LOVE (’69 – the classic nude wrestling scene with Oliver Reed – MGM), NOTHING BUT THE BEST, ZORBA THE GREEK (Fox Home Entertainment), GEORGY GIRL, BUTLY (Kino), GOSFORD PARK (’01 – Universal), THE MOTHMAN PROPHCIES (’02 – Columbia Tri-Star). Bates was knighted in ’03.

Ingrid Thulin, 77 (1/7/04) Of cancer. Swedish actress who excelled with Ingmar Bergman: WILD STRAWBERRIES (’57 – Criterion), THE MAGICIAN, WINTER LIGHT (’62 – Criterion), THE SILENCE (’63 – Criterion), HOUR OF THE WOLF (’68 – MGM), CRIES AND WHISPERS (’72 – Criterion). BB (Before Bergman) FOREIGN INTRIGUE (’56) with Robert Mitchum. Others of interest: Vincente Minnelli’s monumentally misguided THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE (’62), RETURN FROM THE ASHES (’65) with Maximilian Schell, NIGHT GAMES (’66), Visconti’s THE DAMNED (’69 – Warner Bros), George P. Cosmatos’ THE CASSANDRA CROSSING (’76), and Tinto Brass’ SALON KITTY (’77 – Blue Underground).

Ray Stark, 90 (1/17/04). Stage and film producer, whose FUNNY GIRL project bridged both mediums. Son-in-law of Fanny Brice. Helped get Cliff Robertson black-listed in Hollywood after the actor exposed Columbia exec Ed Begelman as a forger, leading to Begelman’s suicide.

Dan H B Haggerty, 78. (1/27/04) Professional wrestler, later actor in numerous feature films and TV series, and BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY.

Bernard McEveety, 79 (2/2/04) Veteran TV director, who did great work on the ‘Gunsmoke’ and ‘Rockford Files’ series. Also a few bizarre feature films: RIDE BEYOND VENGEANCE and THE BROTHERHOOD OF SATAN.

Carole Eastman, 69 (2/13/04) in L.A. Wrote the script for Monte Hellman’s THE SHOOTING (’66 – VCI Entertainment) under the name Adrien Joyce. She was instrumental in the brief youth intrusion into Hollywood from ’68-’72, detailed with salacious delight in the book ‘Easy Riders, Raging Bulls’ by Peter Biskind.

John Randolph, 88 (2/24/04) One of the founding members of the Actors Studio, later blacklisted, and later still a Tony and Drama Desk Award winner (1987, for Broadway Bound). Randolph refused to name names before the HUAC, and after a period of cinematic inactivity was brought back into the industry via John Frankenheimer’s SECONDS (’66 – Paramount). Also in THE BORGIA STICK (’67), EARTHQUAKE, SERPICO (Paramount), PRIZZI’S HONOR (Anchor Bay), and YOU’VE GOT MAIL.

Ralph Winters, 94. (2/26/04) Academy Award winning editor for KING SOLOMON’S MINES (’50) for which he seamlessly blended African footage of wild animal charges with in-studio matched shots using harmless barnyard animals, and William Wyler’s BEN-HUR (MGM Home Entertainment) (’59). Other notable films: JAILHOUSE ROCK, THE GREAT RACE, the original version of THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR (MGM Home Entertainment). When I interviewed him in ’96, he was chafing at the bit to get out of retirement and back into editing. He successfully did so a year later, at age 87. I’d like to think the exposure in The Perfect Vision magazine helped. In 2001 he completed his autobiography: ‘Some Cutting Remarks’.

Francis Dee, 96. (3/6/04) Norwalk, Connecticut, of a stroke. Married Joel McCrea in ’33. Notable films: IF I WERE KING, I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (’43), THE PRIVATE AFFAIRS OF BEL AMI (’47). Married to McCrea until his death in ’90. Three sons, including Jody McCrea.

Russ Reiley, 44 (3/8/04), of kidney failure due to diabetes. A member of the Performance Art Group ‘The Poster Boys’, Reiley was a seminal figure in off-mainstream comedy. The group, including Paul Parducci and Jim Giordano, stopped performing in ’94. Reiley was also a gifted illustrator, and at one time created cartoons for Bazooka Bubble Gum.

Spalding Gray, 62 (1/10-3/8/04) Gifted monologist, who appeared in THE KILLING FIELDS and later successfully recounted his on-location stories in Jonathan Demme’s film SWIMMING TO CAMBODIA.

Paul Winfield, 62 (3/17), actor/dog breeder, of a heart attack.

Ludmila Tcherina, 79 (3/21/04) of undisclosed causes. The extraordinarily beautiful ballerina and choreographer appeared in THE RED SHOES (Criterion), THE TALES OF HOFFMANN (slated for Criterion, but having element difficulties), HONEYMOON, SINS OF ROME (coming out from VCI), and the surreal ballet drama THE LOVERS OF TERUEL, magnificently scored by Mikis Theodrakis, which she produced, starred in, and owned. Several years ago I flew to Paris to interview Ms. Tcherina in her flamboyant apartment looking out on the Eiffel Tower, and in preparation she had spread out a table full of TERUEL stills, hoping I could find an American company to preserve the film. I was unlucky in my endeavors. She looked as lovely then as she had twenty-five years earlier.

Peter Ustinov, 82 (3/28), in Switzerland. Renaissance man, born of many nationalities, including Russian and Ethopian, knighted in ’90, the Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF from ’68 until his death, Ustinov twice won the Academy Award for Supporting Actor, for SPARTACUS (Criterion) and TOPKAPI (MGM), but gave fine performances a many other films, including BILLY BUDD, THE SUNDOWNERS, THE COMEDIANS, LOLA MONTES and LE PLAISIR. He played Hercule Poirot a few times, was replaced by Peter Sellers in THE PINK PANTHER (MGM Home Entertainment), and essayed the role of Nero in QUO VADIS.

Alistair Cooke, 95 (3/30/04), in New York City.

Hubert Selby Jr., 75 (4/26/04), in Los Angeles, of chronic pulmonary disease. When I visited the extravagant Brooklyn location of LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN, Selby was proudly hanging around. He appeared in the film in a cameo. He also was involved in the film production of his book, REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, and had a cameo.

Tony Randall, 84 (5/17/04) – Randall thrice emceed the NBR Awards ceremony, and I particularly remember the one I was producing at the Players’ Club when, after Paul Newman used the sound system hookup to the club’s telephone to reach an ailing John Huston, Randall reclaimed the stage but the phone started ringing during his next intro. He picked it up; it was the wife of one of the members, telling him to remind her husband to bring home the groceries. Randall relayed this to the audience, who were in utter hysterics. Newman, who I was escorting out, doubled over in laughter. Another time, when I’d been enlisted by a local PR company to organize the first Academy Award campaign for a porno film, Randall RSVP’d to the screening notice I’d sent out to all NYC members. He arrived that evening with his coat pulled up over his head.

Dutch director Rudolph Van Den Berg’s father (5/20/04).

Francis Brunn, 81 (5/28/04) one of the half dozen best jugglers of the last century. In Frankfurt. Bernard Burke, FIR editor’s grandfather, was Brunn’s booking agent and, long after vaudeville had faded, continued to get the act onto the Ed Sullivan show, and twice into the White House during the Eisenhower administration.

Meredith Blume (picture) Publicist at Dreamworks. Of Cancer. A sweet, personable woman who we all loved.

Ronald Reagan, 93 (6/5/04), of old age, despite the Alzheimer’s.

Ray Charles, 73 (6/10/04) Gifted Jazz/Blues/Rock icon, who provided an illuminating commentary track on one of his concert DVDs, RAY CHARLES LIVE AT THE MONTEREUX JAZZ FESTIVAL (Pioneer).

Max Rosenberg, 89 (6/14/04) Cantankerous producer/distributor, co-founder of Amicus Films. For many years Max held the rights to a film I co-produced, THE COMEBACK TRAIL, and did nothing with it. Not that it was a good film, but still…

Marlon Brando, 80 yrs, 380 lbs (7/1/04) As coincidence would have it, I was reading his so-called autobiography and had gotten about 3/4 of the way through when I heard that we’d lost him. In my careers I’ve met countless celebrities; Brando was one I never wanted to meet. Spectacularly talented, he was utterly out of synch with his fellow man, and cantankerous to boot. I guess one could call it Manifest Personality. But in behind-the-scenes footage I’ve seen (which has never surfaced publicly, and some of it is in my collection) from films as diverse as REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE and A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG (Universal), when everyone on set was intent, he was laughing, when everyone was in on a joke, he was confused. His life, as we somewhat know it, and as he tells it, is forlorn yet undeniably full. He rejected his profession as mere work, never art, and his causes, which he did take seriously, rejected him over time as a knee-jerk liberal, etc. Me, I’m possibly out of synch, too. Because the period most people deride as his least important – the ‘60’s into the pre-GODFATHER ‘70’s – contain his warmest and most watchable films for my taste. I know STREETCAR & WATERFRONT& GODFATHER are great achievements, but if I were stranded on an island (far from Tahiti), I’d much prefer MORITURI (Fox Home Entertainment), NIGHT OF THE FOLLOWING DAY (Universal), ONE EYED JACKS, MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY, and THE NIGHTCOMERS. And some of his utter throwaways are, in retrospect, bewilderingly autobiographical (THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU [New Line Home Video], with his self-deluded villain/innocent portrayal, its tragic cat-girl creation who ends up hung from the ceiling like his daughter Cheyenne, his doppleganger Val Kilmer doing an impression of the younger Brando that mercilessly holds his fat years up to ridicule). Brando felt BURN contained his best performance. I can’t agree. But it’s hardly surprising coming from him. Other important performances from the actor, which are probably available on tape and will sooner or later surface on DVD – his powerful court testimony at his son’s murder trial, wherein some of his Tahitian friends disowned him; appearances on Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett, Connie Chung, Tom Snyder, and Larry King; and his late ‘90s teaching tapes, conducted partially in drag,(and opposite a combative audience). His book, like Chaplin’s, contains the truth, half the truth, and nothing but the truth. To get the rest of the truth, you have to check out Anna Kashfi’s book, Carlo Fiore’s, and the upcoming ‘Brando in Twilight’. (With Chaplin, incidentally, it’s useful to read Lita Gray’s, Jerry Epstein’s, and Georgia Hale’s).

Jack Smight (78, 9/1)
I’ve got soft spots for NO WAY TO TREAT A LADY and HARPER, and sore spots for THE ILLUSTRATED MAN and DAMNATION ALLEY.

George Plimpton (76, 9/25)
I’ve been waiting, patiently, for his revealing documentary on John Wayne, filmed on the set of RIO LOBO, in which the author had a death scene, to be released – first on laser disc, now on DVD. After Wayne’s lung was removed, and the actor continued on with his career, he only made four or five worthy films, and this was one of them.
Donald O’Connor (78, 9/ 27) A warm presence in film, whether up against Gene Kelly, a mule, or the (living) ghost of Buster Keaton.

John Ritter (54, 9/11)
I confess to not having caught him on TV, but I certainly liked what he was trying to do by broaden his scope with films such as SLING BLADE.

Edward Teller (95, 9/9)
One of the models for DOCTOR STRANGELOVE, Teller’s hawkish aura lurked deep beneath our country’s promoted image of global benevolence over the last sixty years. In an interview for the Lewis Burke Frumkes Show, asked why half the great scientific minds of the 20th century (his included) evolved from one region of Hungary during a narrow time frame, he responded that perhaps he and his peers were really Martians, and proceeded to elaborate on the theory. A rare public display of humor…or was it?

Johnny Cash (71, 9/11)
I ran into him once, about fifteen years ago, in a camera store on 57th and Avenue of the Americas in NYC. He was dressed in black, looking very cool. I said hello and chose not to be the three millionth person to complement him on his music, but rather told him how much I liked his performance in A GUNFIGHT opposite Kirk Douglas, in which he was every bit as good as the seasoned vet. His thanks seemed genuine, and he told me he had just shot an episode of ‘Columbo’ in which he played a country western singer who killed his wife. I later caught up with it, and he was terrific in that, a well. Too bad he didn’t make more film appearances.

Elia Kazan (94, 9/ 28)
He didn’t show up to receive his NBR award several years ago, which was just fine with me. One of my close friends was Arnaud D’Usseau, who was named by Kazan during the Blacklist era. Arnaud admitted to me that he never would have met his lovely wife Marie-Christine and enjoyed his years of marriage if he hadn’t been booted out of the country; still, he never forgave Kazan for ratting him out. The NBR, of course, is founded on a firm stance concerning freedom of expression, but I don’t think the organization’s forefathers would have condoned Kazan’s behavior before the HUAC. Nonetheless, his output on film is eminently worthy of recognition, among them ON THE WATERFRONT, A FACE IN THE CROWD, and A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE.

Leni Riefenstahl (101, 9/8)
What can one say. She did manage to get a film released, finally, after the world seemed determined never to let it happened, but it took her till her centennial year to do it. I wrote her once, about ten years ago, inquiring about some of her techniques for shooting TRIUMPH OF THE WILL, but her reply was, not surprisingly, only about whether I could help her find out who was distributing her films in the US so that she could claim royalties. Tough lady. Recently, on being pressed for a reaction about her involvement with Hitler’s government, she said, “I apologize for being born…but not for my movies.”

Jack Elam (almost 85, 10/20)
He’d become associated with Westerns, particularly ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (Paramount Home Entertainment), but I still remember him fondly from KISS ME DEADLY (MGM Home Entertainment) in 1955, as a cock-eyed goon who runs afoul of Mike Hammer.

Art Carney (85, 11/9)
He always looked older than he was, kind of like Walter Brennan, in an industry that puts youth above most else. I loved his later, post-Honeymooners work, though often he was far better than the whole (eg. THE LATE SHOW).
Michael Kamen (55, 11/18) God, I met him only a few years ago, and was windswept by his energy. Very strange indeed to hear he’d left us. A vital force in music.

David Hemmings (62, 12/ )
Could it have been that long ago we saw him cavorting with Jane Birkin in fast motion in Michaelangelo Antonioni’s BLOW-UP (’66)? I’m afraid so. Next thing we knew he’d finessed a skittish David Bowie and a reclusive Marlene Dietrich into JUST A GIGOLO (’79), which he directed. Enjoyed him in Dario Argento’s DEEP RED (’75). Watched him gain an enormous amount of weight and sully his good looks as the last two decades went by. Listened as his voice descended octave by octave. And now, after a flurry of films in the new century – including LAST ORDERS, THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORINARY GENTLEMEN, GLADIATOR, and GANGS OF NEW YORK – it’s good bye.

The “Queen of Sexploitation” is dead. Long live the Queen.

On Saturday, August 10, Doris Wishman died, possibly bringing an end to one of the most unusual careers in movie history. The word “possibly” is added because Doris often proclaimed that after her death she “would continue making films in Hell.” If anyone had the drive to make this prediction a reality, it would be Doris. In the 1960s, a time when exploitation was a bawdy boys club where a woman’s only role was to be a nudie cutie, Doris Wishman decided to become a filmmaker. She went on to become the most prolific woman filmmaker of the modern era.

Doris Wishman could best be described as an Outsider Filmmaker for she was not unlike the unschooled painters and sculptors known as Outsider Artists. When her husband, an advertising executive, died, Doris looked for work that would consume her time. Although her experience was limited to a few college acting classes and a stint as a film booker in a relative’s movie distribution company, Doris chose independent filmmaking. Completely self-taught, Doris evolved a unique and eccentric style. Almost all of her movies were shot silent with dialogue and effects dubbed in afterwards. Doris attempted to conceal this by oftencutting to a shot of the listener whenever someone spoke. She also indulged a lifelong passion for seemingly illogical cutaway shots. Enormous close-ups of furniture, carpeting, paintings, sky, birds, soap dishes, and especially feet, punctuate nearly every scene. The result is a movie composed almost entirely of reaction shots and cutaways. It is strange but fascinating to watch a film that intentionally leaves out what would be the central focus of most movies. This tendency reached an absurd apogee in Wishman’s 1989 slasher flick A Night to Dismember. After the edited negative disappeared, Doris recreated the film entirely from outtakes and unused scenes.

While using footage from one movie in another is an old exploitation filmmaking trick, Doris took this technique to new heights. She constantly mixed and matched footage from all of her films. A particularly attractive shot of a woman swimming naked underwater appears in three different films. In her penultimate film, Dildo Heaven (2002), Wishman freely combined footage from the 60s, 70s, and present, as well as mixing film and video, without feeling any need to explain.

Doris’ films were further distinguished by her surreal imagination. In the nudist camp classic Nude on the Moon (1962), Wishman’s vision of a lunar landscape, looking suspiciously like Florida, populated by sexy showgirls with pipe-cleaner antennae, has a delightfully fizzy beauty. The film is possibly one of the only watchable nudist camp movies ever made. In Another Night, Another Man (1966), the unlucky heroine has a voodoo-like connection to a Barbie doll. The Amazing Transplant (1970) is an astounding twist on the Peter Lorre classic Mad Love (1935). Instead of having the transplanted hands of a killer drive a man to murder, we get the story of a guy who receives a transplant of his recently deceased best friend’s extremely large penis and finds himself driven to duplicate his friend’s very active sex life with tragic results.

Doris Wishman’s career can be broken down into several definite stages. Her first works were all nudist camp films including Blaze Starr Goes Nudist (1960), starring the legendary stripper. These were followed by a series of black and white “roughies” with lots of nudity and violence. In Bad Girls Go to Hell (1965), a film from this period that many consider her finest work, Doris conjures up a nightmarish journey into degradation where our innocent heroine discovers that every man (and woman) is a rapist under the skin. In the 70s, Doris added color and her plots became more fanciful. It was during this time that Doris made her most successful films Deadly Weapons (1973) and Double Agent 73 (1974), both starring the prodigiously endowed Chesty Morgan whose lack of emotion is only matched by her enormous all-natural 73-inch chest. The explosion of hardcore pornography devastated the market for Doris’ softcore features. Her 1980s attempt to get in on the slasher movie craze with her film A Night to Dismember ended disastrously. In the late 80s, Doris gave up filmmaking, returned to Florida, and got a job in a lingerie store. Everything changed when her films began to be released on videotape. With her work being rediscovered, Doris burst back into action with several straight-to-video features. Her final movie, Each Time I Kill, is expected to be released later this year.

Doris’ life and work were filled with contradictions, particularly about sex. Ironically, the woman who was known as the “Queen of Sexploitation” was profoundly uncomfortable about the subject, a feeling that reverberates memorably through her films. Rather than erotic, many of Wishman’s films could actually be described as anti-sexual. In Deadly Weapons, Chesty Morgan plays a secret agent who is forced to have a camera surgically implanted in one of her colossal breasts. Every time that Chesty needs to photograph a top secret document, she takes off her blouse and squeezes her breast until it goes “click.” She is also racing against the clock because there is a bomb implanted in her other breast. On the surface, this is a standard exploitation excuse for the heroine to get naked, not unlike the magic glasses in Russ Meyer’s The Immoral Mr. Teas. However, in this case, watching Chesty, a woman who is literally defined by her breasts, have those very body parts turned into tools of self-destruction is an unsettling and disturbing experience. Of course, it also doesn’t help that Chesty is filmed in a very unattractive manner; although this is probably explained by Doris’ well-known hatred for her pulchritudinous star.

The most extreme example of Doris’ anti-erotic filmmaking is her amazing semi-documentary about transsexualism Let Me Die a Woman (1978). This almost indescribable combination of heartfelt interviews, ridiculous scientific experts, and bizarre dramatizations, mixed with mind-blowingly explicit surgical and gynecological footage goes far beyond shock value. After watching it, you won’t want to have sex for a month. It’s a reaction that might have pleased Doris. A possibly apocryphal story tells that during the 1970s heyday of porn, Doris directed several hardcore films (something she denied to her dying day) but insisted on leaving the room when the sex scenes were filmed.

The films of Doris Wishman have always offered an easy target for the Golden Turkey crowd to ridicule. Even Doris often treated her own work with disdain. Indeed, they fail almost every traditional criteria for good filmmaking. However, if viewers drop their ironic distance, stop “looking down” at these films and instead enter Wishman’s universe, they will be transported to a strange and captivating world.

It is a place that offers an intriguing and entertaining look at our society\rquote s
sexual anxieties as seen through the eyes of one woman. Doris Wishman wrote, directed, produced, cast, and edited about 30 movies (the exact number is difficult to pin down because she often used pseudonyms) and they were all done her way. With budgets that almost never exceeded $70,000, Doris kept complete control over her films. Nothing would budge Doris from her vision, not even money. Late in her career, Wishman became friendly with Fred Schneider of the rock band, The B-52s. A devoted fan of Doris’ films (the recent B-52s greatest hits collection was entitled Nude on the Moon), Schneider offered to ask his some of his famous musician friends to record songs for her new film. This would have instantly raised the profile of Doris’ film and possibly even guaranteed it a commercial release. She rejected his generous offer. Why? Doris didn’t like rock and roll.

Many of the enigmas that were Doris Wishman will be revealed with the publication of Michael Bowen’s eagerly-awaited biography, “It’s Better Than Sex.” The title comes from one of Doris’ favorite comments about filmmaking. Doris Wishman’s exact age is unknown but is believed to have been in her mid-eighties at the time of her death.

Despite her detractors, the cult of Doris Wishman continues to grow. 35mm prints of her most famous films have appeared on the revival circuit, and many of her movies have recently been released on DVD. Ironically, at a time when the exploitation genre has pretty much died, Doris’ films are more popular than ever. So, next time you’re looking for something different, try a Doris Wishman movie. I can’t guarantee you’ll like it (or be held responsible for any effects these films have on your sex life) but I am certain that it will be unlike anything you’ve ever seen.

–Dylan Skolnick

Each Time I Kill (2002)
Dildo Heaven (2001)
Satan Was a Lady (2001)
Night to Dismember, A (1983)
Let Me Die a Woman (1978)
Come with Me, My Love (1976) (as Luigi Manicottale)
… aka Come with Me, My Ghost (1976) (USA)
… aka Haunted Pussy, The (1976) (USA)
Satan Was a Lady (1975) (as Kenyon Wintel)
Double Agent 73 (1974)
Deadly Weapons (1973)
Immoral Three, The (1972)
… aka Hotter Than Hell (1972)
Keyholes Are for Peeping (1972)
Amazing Transplant, The (1970) (as Louis Silverman)
Love Toy (1968) (as Louis Silverman)
Too Much Too Often! (1968) (as Louis Silverman)
… aka Too Much, Too Soon (1968)
Indecent Desires (1967) (as Louis Silverman)
Taste of Her Flesh, A (1967) (as Louis Silverman)
… aka Taste of Flesh, A (1967)
Another Day, Another Man (1966)
My Brother’s Wife (1966)
Bad Girls Go to Hell (1965)
Sex Perils of Paulette, The (1965)
… aka Paulette (1965)
Behind the Nudist Curtain (1964)
Playgirls International (1963)
Gentlemen Prefer Nature Girls (1962)
Nude on the Moon (1962) (as Anthony Brooks)
… aka Girls on the Moon (1962)
… aka Moondolls, The (1962)
… aka Nature Girls on the Moon (1962)
… aka Nudes on the Moon (1962)
Prince and the Nature Girl, The (1962)
Diary of a Nudist (1961)
… aka Nature Camp Confidential (1961)
… aka Nature Camp Diary (1961)
… aka Nudist Camp (1961)
… aka Nudist Confidential (1961)
Blaze Starr Goes Wild (1960)
… aka Back to Nature (1960)
… aka Blaze Starr Goes Back to Nature (1960)
… aka Blaze Starr Goes Nudist (1960)
… aka Blaze Starr the Original (1960)
… aka Busting Out (1960)
… aka Nature Girl (1960)
Hideout in the Sun (1960) (as Lazarus Volkl)

Many of these titles are available on DVD from Image Entertainment as part of the ‘SomethingWeird’ collection.