Barry McKenzie Speaks! Barry Crocker interview 2003

Barry McKenzie speaks! BARRY CROCKER interviewed

[Phone interview mid-2003, previously unpublished]

Andrew: What would you prefer, Mister Crocker or Barry?

Barry! Oh shit no, Mister Crocker sounds like my father – and he’s dead! Scary.

So do you know the reason why the second film has been not on video before?

Well basically it was shot on widescreen. And video doesn’t do letterboxing very good, but DVD does, you see. So they’ve been waiting – well, I think they LOST it, they forgot they had it! And then the company in Melbourne dug it out, and we’re away. And it’s got some marvellous other footage on it too, because it’s got all the early interviews from that time with Humphries and myself. I did a narration on one of the tracks and Humphries has done one on another track. So I think all the bits and pieces are just as much fun as the actual movie!

Fantastic! So have you had to do a few interviews this time round?

A couple so far, but I think it’s going to build more when it actually hits the stores and everything. Because I’m pushing my ‘Banjo’ at the time, so I’ve got lots of things… my book is coming out in October. So lots of things, I’m talking about everything.

So your book, your autobiography?

Yeah, coming out on Pan MacMillan in October. So it’s all go.

Did you think back in the Seventies that the films would last as long as they have?

I didn’t really think about it. I was glad to have made them, because making films, you know there’s some sort of celluloid footprint left in the annals of Australian cinema. There’s a bit like that. But I had no idea they’d still be – as I say in my book, there’s something magic about this, the Barry McKenzie thing. Because of all the thousands of movies that have been made since that one – that was the first Australian picture to make a million dollars in Australia, and the first Australian picture in 35 years to make a profit! But t the time, I didn’t think of this, but there’s something magic, some magic ingredient, because here we are, thirty years later, people are still talking about us, still want to talk about it. They had a big full page in the Telegraph here today, about how the thirty year anniversary was celebrated in England. And you think of all the other movies, far superior to Barry McKenzie, but we clicked somewhere. Each generation finds it, and continues the legend, I suppose. So there’s something about it that works. Don’t ask me what it is, because if I knew I’d do it again!

It must have been the time, it must have been that magical period…

Oh yeah, it certainly was. But the factors are still going today, so that some of the magic is… I guess it’s part of the Gough Whitlam thing too, you know. The change in Australia where we kind of found our voice a bit. So I suppose that all goes together.

And it’s quite possibly the first movie that actually pokes fun at the national identity.

In a sense yeah, it holds the mirror up, you know. We got a lot of flack at the time. But as both Humphries and me said, “It’s a comedy. It’s supposed to be funny, we’re not being serious.” It’s like saying all Englishmen were Alf Garnett, you know. But it was terrific and I still enjoy it just as much. The fact young kids come up to me today and call me Bazza – it’s good!

How did you get cast for the role?

Oh, I think Humphries – in his drinking days – saw me doing comedy on Sydney television, 1966. And in 1967 we had a lunch, and he suggested that he’d like me to play that part of the character he’d drawn in the last couple of years with Nicholas Garland in London for ‘Private Eye’. And so I said yeah, but then of course nothing happened for six years. Humphries had to clean himself up and get sober, and then Bruce Beresford came on board and Philip Adams and it all came to fruition. But it wasn’t easy, because there were no Australian films being made - it just wasn’t on. The ones that were made were soon relegated to the dusty shelves of the archives, you know. So we made a lot of noise with Bazza. And it went on.

Had you seen the comic strip at the time?

No! No, it was all new to me, because it was banned in Australia.

Oh really?

Oh yeah, it was ‘too rude’, the comic strip was banned here. So it was only in London. Of course, not only the Australians loved it, but all the English people did. That’s why the film was even more successful in England than Australia. They’d all been following Bazza for two years in the comic strip!

So I suppose ex-patriate Australians would have…

But not only that, all the English loved him too. Because he was a stereotype and they could send him up and criticise him and all that.

But it pokes more fun, I think, at the English. And then in the sequel – oh God – at just about everyone else.

Oh yeah, the Communists and all that…

It’s just an absolute free for all.

I don’t know how much you remember about the second one, it’s politically incorrect, but it’s so innocent that…

Yeah, well, referring to Chinese people as the Pekineses…

Yeah – we attacked the frogs – the French – the English and the Communists, right-wing poofters… ALL of them, we had a go at everyone. But as I said, it’s so innocent really. And we hired it out – there’s a guy, hired it out from a similar magazine to ‘Private Eye’ in Sydney here. He hired it, we hired the Chauvel Theatre for one evening. And absolutely packed out. It was all to do with his magazine – packed out, we had all celebrities and things come along there. I hadn’t heard laughs like that – people were just roaring! And I thought, “Shit, it’s got legs this old bugger.” Then the Melbourne company found it, and it’s coming out this month.

Really, just about every line in that film’s a gem.

Yeah!

And it’s really hard for a sequel to come close to the original, but…

What happened in Australia at the time was, because we’d been such a success, everyone started investing in Australian films. And of course, all the press and everything got on to these new productions, which were very classy. Like Picnic At Hanging Rock, etcetara. And so they said, “Wow, we’ve had enough of all that Alvin Purple and Bazza, let’s get on to some real serious filmmaking now.” And so we were neglected a bit. We could have had it come out six months after the first one, it would have been – but coming out a year later was just that little bridge too late, you know? But anyway, I think it’s going to have another successful run this time round.

In the early Seventies, there was very much that cultural cringe.

Oh yeah.

I guess you would have experienced that first hand.

Yep. I was one of those Pommies over there in the sixties, that would travel around with his duffel coat and desert boots and did all that. Hung around Earls Court and you know, I was there, I used to sing in the Overseas Visitors Club and I stayed in, my digs were in a place called Kangaroo House, you know.

Oh really?

Yeah! It’s wonderful isn’t it, but it’s true.

So you spent a few years preparing for the role!

Yeah! I mean, I was there in the Sixties. And I arrived in ’64, I was there for a year, and did all that stuff, with the Beatles… so I was ready for it. But I did have the desert boots, and I did have the duffel coat. With the wooden toggles and all that.

How did the Poms treat you, as a bit of a curiosity?

Well, I think… yes, I think they just, they didn’t take any notice of you at all really! It was only after ‘Bazza’ came out that there was a bit of interest in Australians in a sense. The only Australian they’d been interested in was Donald Bradman or someone like that! There weren’t any – I think people might have known that Dick Bentley was an Australian, but they looked on him as an Englishman. There wasn’t a great deal of impact from Australians. I mean, there were a lot of Australians there, but they became English.

The Seekers and people like that?

Well, no. The Seekers were all right, they were Australian – they came later.

But they appeared very English themselves.

Yes, they were in the mould of the English. But no, later on we stirred up a whole possum’s nest, you see. But initially – listen, when we made the first picture, we wanted Australian extras. So we got all the Australian actors in, and they all had English accents! Totally hopeless for us! You couldn’t say [thick Ozzie accent] “shove a prawn on the barbie,” because the bloke’d say [posh Pommie accent] “oh, would you shove a prawn on the barbie?” I’d say, “No, no, do it Australian, can you do it Australian?” “Oh yes, I come from Sydney.” They’d all had to learn how to be English, you see, so they were hopeless. So we just had to go out and get real Australian backpackers or whatever they were then, and they came in and [REALLY thick Aussie accent] “spoke like Ozztraylians.” And one of those guys was John Clarke! Who came along for the free beer. And we thought he was very funny, naturally. He wasn’t in show business then. And both Humphries and myself encouraged him to go on with it, to write some more lines and be funny. You probably wouldn’t notice him in the first picture, because he had a Bazza hat on, and a big big Viva Zapata moustache! But he had several lines in that crowd, and he sounded Australian. And so that was where that went.

Not bad for a Kiwi!

Yeah! And he went back and created Fred Dagg. And the rest as they say is history!

I guess Beresford was very shrewd, I think, in putting that film together. Because, apart from filling it with such amazing comedic talent like Spike Milligan and Peter Cook, it really looks like he wrung some amazing production values out of what I guess would have been a very small budget.

Yep. Oh it was minute – it wouldn’t even buy the lunches today on a picture. Two hundred and forty thousand dollars! But look at the people we had working on it – we had Don McAlpine as cinematographer. Academy Award winner now, made about fifty big pictures. Gail Tattersall was the assistant cameraman, there was Jane Scott, who produced Shine, she was associate producer, there was John Scott, who’s been editor on big blockbusters… and so the line goes down. There was Richard Brendan, who became a producer. All these incredible technical people as well, all starting off. So we all grew together. And a lot of good things came out of those two pictures.

Just having someone like Peter Cook in there – well, I suppose he WAS ‘Private Eye’!

And Humphries got him in there. But he was drinking badly in those days, and we could only use him in the mornings. Because the delirium tremors would set in after lunch. And it was a bit sad. I was a big fan of Peter’s. And I never really got to know him, or speak to him, because I think it was quite an ask for him just to get through the lines, which would seem to be difficult for him. I know that Barry was talking to him a lot. I think that probably – I mentioned this in my book – where I thought they were just being pals, I got a feeling that Barry might have been trying to talk him into joining Alcoholics Anonymous. Because Barry had been down that road and survived. But I think – well, Peter never did, and by the time he was 58 he was dead.

Well, it’s quite a shock that he lasted as long as he did.

Yeah. But it was a sad thing. And I never really got to know him, like I got to know Spike. Spike was a huge hero of mine, but we could talk. I could talk with Spike and hang out with him. And we became good mates. So that was a bit sad as far as Peter went. But they were all good people. Dick Bentley was lovely, made great mates with Dick, and he was in the second film as well. It was a lovely time, you know.

As you said before, the second film didn’t do as well as the first.

No, it didn’t. It did well enough, but it wasn’t the big success, or didn’t make as much noise, as the first one did. Because that was quite shocking – to everyone really! The first film, the critics hated it. There wasn’t one good review. They said it’s an 8mm mismash, it’s the unfunniest picture ever made, the worst film ever to have graced the screens of Australian cinema… oh, they spewed. And the public said, up you, and were lining up around the block. It played like - which is so much better than today’s films – I mean, we played like seven and eight months in Sydney and Melbourne, and came back for re-runs of it. I mean, it was enormous! Now, I want to see a film, if I don’t go in the first two weeks, its gone before I know it. So what the critics hated, the public loved.

And Phillip Adams managed to piece the budget together, didn’t he?

Yeah, he got it all together. He had a few mates in the Australian Film Institute. That was the first film they financed, you see. And they didn’t know what they were financing, really. I think when Barry Humphries got on the plane, one of the executives came up to him and said, “Now I hope there’s no language in it, or any colloquialisms.” And Barry just looked at him like, “What?! Yeah, of course, no mate, trust us!” It’s all in my book, when they came over to check on us. Because someone said, “I don’t think they’re making the film you think they’re making!” And they came over, and Phillip Adams kept them out of our way. And they never saw anything. They were there for about ten days I think, and did a lot of shopping at Harrod’s, got drunk a lot, and came home and said yes. And I think they were more shocked than anyone else when the film was a success. Because everyone said, “What a marvelous thought! How did you crack onto that! We would never have thought…” Cos all the people they tried to get investment from, all read it – I got a lovely letter from Reg Golsworthy, who said it was impossible and this film would never make it, and it was hopeless, don’t even try. And also the other lovely line that Phillip Adams told me when he took it around to Roadshow – “Would you distribute it?” And they said, they had a look at it, and they said, “Do you know our advice to you?” And he said, “What?” And they said, “Burn it!” And so none of the majors would touch it. It was only through Phillip noticing one of the independents in Melbourne had been running Ryan’s Daughter for about six months to three people a session or something, because they couldn’t get product. He went in there and did a deal, and of course, as they said, the rest is history, once again.

Wow. I suppose that would have been just before Alvin Purple hit it really big.

Oh yeah, we were before Alvin. Alvin came after us. I think they saw that, they were already in the throes of writing it when they heard about how ours was going to be. So Alvin made a lot of noise too, you see. But I think that didn’t help the second picture for Bazza, too, because a coupe of Alvins came out, they made them very quickly and got them out, did well with them. You can make all sorts of reasons, but the second picture – Australian movies today would like to do as well as that one did! But however, it wasn’t as big as the first one. So most people sort of forgot it. And then the fact that it was never seen on the video format. And there you have it.

I thought a very strange appearance in the second film was Fiona Richmond.

Yeah.

Did you know who Fiona Richmond was at the time?

Oh, of course. She was the girlfriend of Paul Raymond, I think he’s the wealthiest man in England still, you know. Owned half of Soho. I’d worked for him, in cabaret in the sixties. So we all knew each other and everything. I’ve got a lovely picture of me and Fiona Richmond, sitting on her car. She had a yellow E-type Jag. And the number plate was ‘FU2’ (laughs). And about two years ago – there was a little piece in the paper, which I kept – that the licence plate had been sold for three hundred thousand pounds. She’s no longer with Paul Raymond. But oh yeah, she was in it. And Little Nell of course was in it – Little Nell, whose father was Alexander the journalist, what’s his first name – can’t think of it. Anyway. There’s all sorts of people in it, if you look. And Clive James of course!

I know! He’s great in it too.

I didn’t know who the hell he was at the time. He just had a notebook and he was writing everything all the time. And of course what he was writing was his hit books! I just thought he was another yobbo, one of Humphries’s yobbo mates! Always unshaven, always smelly and drinking beer all the time. I didn’t really take much notice of him at all.

Now he’s the quintessential Australian ex-pat abroad.

That’s it, yeah.

Any fond memories of the shoot on the second one?

Oh, the whole lot! We went to Paris for two weeks, and how can you not enjoy being in Paris? I think I put on about seven or eight pounds, I remember, at the time.

It must have been just a non-stop party.

It was! I mean, apart from the shooting, we’d shoot in the day. Humphries was in a good mood and we’d go out to naughty nightclubs at night, and we’d eat in great restaurants and have a marvellous time! And then shooting around Paris – it was a ball. I had a lovely time. And lots of fun things happened. Which I’m not going to tell you, because they’re all in my book! BUY THE BOOK! Yes, tell them all, buy the book for more stories!

And how was Gough talked into making an appearance?!

Well, Gough – I’d met him in 1971, before he came into power. And his wife Margaret was a huge fan of my television show, which was called ‘Sound of Music’ in those days. It was a music show. So that’s how I met him, and then of course he was a mate of Phillip Adams and Humphries, and I think that between the three of us, we all said, “It would be lovely to have you in the picture.” And of course, he knew the stuff of legends! And I think that scene where we all come out to meet him has been shown almost as much as the one where he says, “Long may the Queen” or – you know, that speech. So you now – he was the first Australian Prime Minister to appear in a feature film.

And the fact that he was the Prime Minister at the time... even more unreal!

Yes, oh yeah. And of course that’s when she became Dame. “Arise, DAME Edna!” (laughs)

I never thought about that! Oh my God!

So that was when he was made a Dame…when SHE was made a Dame, I should say.

By Australian royalty!

Yeah!

How did you prepare for the role of Bazza? Other than spending a lot of time in Earls Court?

Well, it was just innate in me. I came from working class people, and I knew Bazzas all my life. Working where I worked, apart from eventually getting into acting and singing and all that, I had worked on the wharf, and I shovelled cement...and I knew that guy. I just sort of, in my head I just became seventeen again, I just became him. It wasn’t a big task for me really. I didn't ‘angst’ over anything, I just put my mind back into those days, and became part of those guys.

Because he was a true innocent.

Oh sure. And a nice bloke really. Always stood up for his mates, and even tried to take his little sheila back, off the ‘naughty’ stage. All that stuff.

So I guess that’s how you could get away with saying the politically incorrect things that you did.

Oh sure. I think that was done with such... Bob Ellis who was at that screening, said, “It’s politically incorrect and absolutely marvellous, because it’s done with such an innocent tongue in cheek. He defies anyone to be offended by it.

I’m sure there was a long period, over the last thirty years, that you probably couldn't get away with -

Oh sure! I think of late it’s been a bit stupid, you know. But I think now people are beginning to wake up to it. This is why I think the timing could be right for this, you know. There might be an outcry – mind you, I hope there is! Cos then it makes press, and makes people go out and see what the noise is about.

And it slaps people around the face a bit, and makes them realise that you can actually have humour that isn’t so sanitised.

Yeah, certainly.

Doris Wishman tribute 2002

Good Girls Go To Dildo Heaven: an all-nude tribute to DORIS WISHMAN

[Originally published online in Senses Of Cinema, Melbourne December 2002]

Last Wednesday night I finally started filming my first feature, Lesbo-A-Go-Go. The idea floated to the surface five years ago while my friend Gregor and I tore through a six-pack watching Doris Wishman's 1966 anti-classic Another Day Another Man. The moment the strip club theme tune hit the screen, I was hooked. An hour later, the script was practically written. Our tribute to the genius of Doris became the story of a young innocent girl trapped in a downward spiral of drug addiction, degradation, delirium and ultimately damnation. Predatory lesbians, good girls going bad. And most of all: sex without sex. A fake '60s sexploitation film where porn is in the mind's eye.

It took five years to start pre-production. Then, just as the cameras were about to roll, I heard the devastating news: Doris had died in August.

"To Doris"

The first night of filming went exactly the way I planned it: we recreated a '60s lesbian club called “The Furry Oyster”. There were go-go girls, an all-girl band (well, almost) on stage, and an audience full of girls in short skirts and tall boots swinging their hips in the name of Exploitation. True to the spirit of Doris we shot hand-held in black and white with no sound (we shot only the back of the actors' heads so we didn't have to synch the lips in post), and believe me the budget was as non-existent as you could get. I suspect this: Doris was standing in the corner, all five feet of her, with a crooked smile across her features, watching the insane adventure unfold.

Doris directing, early 1960s

Why a tribute to Doris? She is, to paraphrase a famous quote about someone else (was it John Waters? Russ Meyer?), a gutter-level Fellini, a nutcase, an original, and, in every sense of the word, a true American auteur. She maintained total artistic control over a project from the script to the final edit, and was at her most creative piecing together each mini-masterpiece of sleazy wonder out of rag-ends of celluloid and the dubious performances of half-baked hams. The sharp-eyed filmmaker knew exactly what she wanted, then hammered out exactly what she could afford. The result is a priceless catalogue of over 25 films imbued with something that is so rare these days: character. I never met Doris, but I feel like I've been swimming around in her head for years.

Wishman's films clump together into three categories: the nudist camp films, the “roughies”, and what I call the “loopies” – gimmick exploitation movies with a hook so twisted you can hang a shop window full of roast duck off them. The nudist camp films came about almost by accident, as Doris trained as an actress in New York in the '50s (alongside Shelley Winters, who she always maintained was nowhere near as good an actress as Wishman was) before going to work for master producer and distributor Joseph Levine, the man who introduced Steve Reeves as Hercules and the Italian toga muscle epics to America. Doris then married and moved to Florida, but she was tragically widowed after only five months and needed a distraction. It proved to be making nudie films, now “Garden Of Eden”, the first film to revel in topless nudity (albeit shot in a naturist camp in a sterile travelogue fashion) to be considered legal by the courts. Wishman's first was Hideout In The Sun (1960), and was quickly followed by Blaze Starr Goes Nudist (1962), Gentlemen Prefer Nature Girls (1962), and her first gimmick film, Nude On The Moon (1962). Filmed in under a week in Florida's Coral Castle, the plot has two astronauts landing on a remarkably lush lunar surface to find a civilization of naked women. All have headbands with spring antennae, which allow them to communicate telepathically – that also saves time having to synch lips with recorded voice-overs! All the stock nudist camp clichés are here – volleyball, sunbathing, standing in front of strategically-placed shrubs – but are wonderfully turned on their heads by the film's ludicrous premise.

Another Day, Another Man (1966)

Doris returned to New York in 1965 to start making much grubbier, mostly black and white melodramas for the grind house circuit. Known as “roughies”, these sordid, sleazy tableaux display little flesh on the screen (for legal reasons in those pre-hardcore days) but the scripts suggest much more nastiness: lesbianism, drug addiction, sexual blackmail and murder are alluded to, and Wishman's specialty is to let the depravity sink in on a subconscious level. Best films from this period are the back-to-back classics Bad Girls Go To Hell (1965) and Another Day, Another Man (1966), but there are more to recommend – A Taste Of Her Flesh (1967), Too Much Too Often! (1968), Indecent Desires (1967), the list continues.

The Amazing Transplant (1970)

By 1970, Wishman's brand of sexploitation soap operas had a quaint anachronistic feel now hardcore pornography was breathing down the backs of grind house patrons across the country. It was time for a change of tact. Despite a brief stab at soft-core sex comedy, the plain unwatchable Keyholes Are For Peeping, Or Is There Life After Marriage? (1972) starring faded '50s Jerry Lewis imitator Sammy Petrillo, and a hardcore feature with Annie Sprinkle that Wishman denied ever making, (1976's Come With Me My Love aka The Haunted Pussy, Wishman billed as “Luigi Manicottale”), Wishman's final decade of her career is remembered as her “gimmick” phase, with a series of films that don't exactly qualify as sex films, or for that matter fall into any recognizable category other than “Doris Wishman” movies. 1970 saw The Amazing Transplant, the story of a man whose friend's penis is grafted onto him only to find himself unable to stop raping women in gold earrings. Let Me Die A Woman (1978), an obscenely exploitative shockumentary on transsexuals (“Twelve months ago...I was a man!”), features the ugliest trans-gender cases Wishman could find, and the greasy surgeon narrator at one point starts tapping a patient's groin in shocking close-up – with a biro! All framed, of course, with Wishman's spotless intentions and tongue-in-cheek sensibilities, which turns the grotesque proceedings into a carnival of the perverse.

The freak show angle is hard to shake when Wishman's bad taste masterpieces Deadly Weapons (released 1973) and Double Agent 73 (released 1974) loom into view like a pair of Arctic icebergs. The two films were conceived with their central gimmick first, and the scripts as almost an afterthought. The gimmick, of course, was the Meyer-esque cartoon-like figure of Polish burlesque dancer “Chesty Morgan” (real name Lillian Wilczkowsky), a stripper with a reportedly whopping 73-inch bust. In the two Chesty films she is a wonder to behold under her plastic-looking ash wig, her “acting” consisting of a heavy-lidded pout or wide toothy come-on smile, depending on the mood of each scene. Which invariably calls for Chesty to whip out her moneymakers and massage them, air them out (her bra support straps are larger than most corsets), or frame them for the camera in gratuitous close-up. To be fair, Ms Wilczkowsky was never destined for acting greatness, but the story goes Doris was so frustrated with Chesty's lumpen delivery on-camera and prima-donna antics off-camera that she scrapped plans for a third Chesty adventure, tentatively titled Crystal.

Deadly Weapons is the story of an exotic dancer whose husband is killed by gangsters. One by one she tracks the mob down and smothers them between her frightening cleavage. For the Wishman student the film delivers on every promise – awkward zooms, ragged montage, pointless cutaways, a self-written manual of camera angles designed to cause delirium rather than exposition, and a library of stock music stolen from '70s German car commercials. Wishman's immediate follow-up, Double Agent 73, is equally as loopy, and reworks Chesty's “character” as a spy with some unusual equipment. As I said before, the film neither makes the grade as a sex movie OR as a low-rent Bond adventure. Instead it exists in that strange gray area of exploitation cinema that belongs uniquely to Doris.

The film opens with a government spy (“Agent 99” – I'm sure the joke's not lost on Doris) breaking into the house of crime boss Ivan Toplar (or “Mr T”) looking for a microfilm, proof of his involvement in a large heroin ring. He is discovered by one of Mr T's henchman, a wiry brute with what looks like an enormous purple scab on his face – 99 sends a patchy message to HQ about a scar before Scab-Face runs him over in his car.

Cut to Chesty as Jane Monet, Agent 73, sunning her top-heavy torso beside a pool at a (Florida?) resort when she gets the call from HQ. Find Toplar, the Chief insists, and find the man with the scar. Cut to a hospital bed, where Chesty lies recovering from an operation – we are told in flashback, with Six Million Dollar Man sound effects – to implant a spy camera in her left breast. A nurse walks in to check on the dressing: “My, you've put makeup on. You look real pretty”. Chesty suspects the nurse when she tries to offer her a mickey finn disguised as medication; pretending to be asleep, she sneaks out in her hospital gown, breasts swinging past her navel, while the nurse is on the phone to Scab-Face and strangles her with the phone cord. Chesty then takes a photo for evidence – she lifts up her left breast, and “flash”!

Chesty then hunts down Toplar's associates and dispatches them in disturbingly inventive ways. One turns up at Chesty's apartment while she is enjoying a topless drink – she knocks him off his feet, crams ice cubes down his throat, then finished off her cocktail. Another, so drunk he thinks Chesty is his Russian girlfriend, chows down on one of Chesty's mammaries only to find them coated with poison. Meanwhile Chesty's girlfriend comes to stay at her apartment, and is mistakenly dispatched in the shower by Toplar's assassin; Doris the mischievous auteur manages to recreate the shower scene from Psycho on $1.98 and a jar of cranberry sauce. Scab-Face is straight on the phone with the failed assassin: “Mr T is awful mad... And you'd better not muff it next time or it's curtains for you!”

On her usual feature film budget of around the $50,000 mark (not cheap by porno standards but a skidrow sum anywhere else) Doris comes into her own as an innovative filmmaker, and the moments in Double Agent 73 when her wild “no-budget” inventiveness kick in are pure Wishman gold. To simulate a nightclub Doris stands Chesty and her co-star in front of an enormous sheet of tinfoil and starts shaking the backdrop like a maniac to get that “drunk on a spaceship” feel. Then there's a scene where Chesty is interrupted by a mobster clicking away in his office. The subsequent fight must have been damaged at the film lab; what follows is slowed down to a frame-by-frame crawl, accompanied by a similar slowed-down drone on the soundtrack, of the same two shots in a bizarre loop. Chesty then reaches her car and the mobster follows her, at which point the film is wound up to double speed. The effect, to say the least, is surreal.

A Night To Dismember (1979)

Wishman's career in the '70s was shaky at best, but took a nosedive after the abject failure of her 1979 gore film A Night To Dismember. Lost by the lab, she pieced the film together over three years and released the resulting mess direct to video in 1983. She then disappeared for 20 years while she licked her wounds and pined over a sour deal that saw her entire film catalogue sell for a pittance. Wishman fans finally tracked her down in Florida and encouraged her to start making movies again on the much less expensive Betacam. The result was Satan Was A Lady, released in 2001 to enthusiastic reviews by long-time admirers like drive-in guru Joe Bob Briggs. Wishman was back, and had two more projects in post-production: Dildo Heaven, a soft-core comedy (and rumoured to be a musical!), and Each Time I Kill with B-52s singer Fred Schneider and cameos from John Waters and Linnea Quigley. Then came the sad news: Doris had succumbed to lymphoma on August 10th 2002.

Satan Was A Lady (2001)

Our Lesbo-A-Go-Go feature should be finished early 2003. If you ever get to see it, you'll notice two captions at the finish. One, superimposed on a gutter-level shot of a dying drug-addled hell bound Sugar, will read “The End”. The second will say, simply, “For Doris”. Wherever she is (hopefully Dildo Heaven, for her sake) I hope there's a video machine – sorry, Doris, the budget won't allow us to blow it up to 16 or 35.

POSTSCRIPT: Within a week of "Good Girls..." appearing on Senses Of Cinema's website, I received the following email: “I found your page while searching for Satan Was A Lady (Wishman's last movie) stuff... as the uncredited executive producer and wife to producer Beau Gillespie, I can't seem to shake the compulsive need to see if anyone says anything about the film. I greatly enjoyed your article 'Good Girls Go To Dildo Heaven' (I think Doris would've loved that!) and your film sounds awesome. Cheers and good luck with your project and store, Pelusa Gorsd.”