A Night to Dismember (1983)

 

Director: Doris Wishman

Screenplay: Judy J. Kushner

Cast: Samantha Fox as Vicki Kent; Diane Cummins as Mary Kent; Saul Meth as Adam Kent; Miriam Meth as Blanche Kent; William Szarka as Billy Kent; Chris Smith as Sam Kent; Dee Cummins as Vicki Todd; Larry Hunter as Larry Todd; Mary Lamay as Ann Todd

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) Re-Review / An Abstract Candidate Re-Review

 

The voice seemed to be coming from the hat box.

The narrative with the one horror film from Exploitation Queen Doris Wishman, unless you count her porn horror films, is that the original version of this film was destroyed, either by fire (as documented in Regional Horror Films, 1958-1990: A State-by-State Guide with Interviews by Brian Albright (2012)) or by a disgruntled film lab employee (as Wishman herself documented in a DVD commentary for this movie). This left the original trailer, and a version remade from what survived with additional material. This review exists now in a world where the "Lost" version was found to still exist, preserved on video tape in dire need of being archived itself, but the suggestion whilst scarce the materials are out there and where unaccounted for. This is more so as, whilst the quality is terrible as it has been leaked onto the internet, this version allows a really curious juxtaposition of the source film, and what most people know of, re-contextualising a deeply strange film with a fully fleshed out and weirder context.

And, calling this the Released Version, the re-contextualisation really emphasises how weird this film is. For the uninitiated, Wishman was already idiosyncratic as a filmmaker, one of the few female filmmakers in the golden era of exploitation cinema who specialised more in sexploitation, who here was reaching one of her last productions with a huge gap to the 2000s for her last work. She had a curious filmmaking style if you watch a film like Bad Girls Go to Hell (1965), and the Released Version immediately warns of this being unlike a conventional horror film when, with a detective narrator character added in this version, footage surviving from the Lost version is reconceptualised as major character deaths are an abrupt series of non-sequitur events. Events described, I might add, of being important, of a sister killing her younger sister, only to accidentally fall on her own axe, and the history of deaths in the Kent brothers' family, which adds no context to the main narrative.

The actual narrative, built with new footage interspliced between the original, includes a new actress playing Vicki, which will get confusing as one of the actresses now sidelined in old footage as a side character was originally called Vicki too when a protagonist. The Released Version's Vicki is released from a mental institution for killing two young boys, still very unstable as actress Samantha Fox plays her unsubtle, and with her two siblings (one the original film's Vicki renamed played by Diane Cummins) wishing to gaslight her so she goes back in the institution. The use of the Lost Version's surviving footage is weirder now, knowing the other sister was a protagonist, but also because in both versions, this was a surprisingly gory film. The Released Version takes scenes to goofy levels, such as a mannequin head a clear stand-in (i.e. not hidden) for a real one placed in the fireplace, but it comes after a pair of abrupt decapitations of a romantic couple which is merely changed in dialogue and context. This was Wishman trying to catch up with that era of the slasher film and she went for a bloody slasher-like film with aplomb, which adds to the strangeness of intent.

Out of the pair, the version we got is absurd. Even in terms of the new footage, it unintentionally comes off so, which is in mind Wishman's legacy is as much for absurdity in her work, such as her obsession with cutting to feet and the environment away from actors. Vicki in the Released Version is very much out of her mind still in a childlike way, the moment she pulls at her mother's hair in the car when she is just picked up from the institution, and family dinner is here make your own sandwiches, with only the selection of bread, cheese and bologna available, which add ridiculous quirks to the film you cannot take seriously. Some of it is due to trying to create a new narrative from the old footage, which I will get to slightly later, but other aspects of post-production do add to what is already a weird film. This is infamously where voices come out of hat boxes, but this is also in the Released Version where someone had to audibly make the slurping noises to represent a head being squashed by a car wheel, already taking a film which was incredibly bloody and over-the-top to begin with. That scene also included someone having their heart punched out, and the one ran over having their fingers chopped off afterwards with an axe, so the sound effect clearly being made with a mouth adds a cherry on top.

Then there is also the music. Here I will split between both versions, as the Lost Version is actually a grim movie in context, a production in tone helped considerably by the fact its original score is a droning electronic one that is dreary and ominous in mood. The music for the most well known version, more so now able to compare the two, is as much now an influence for how surreal A Night to Dismember is, as it can be compare to an elevator "light music" soundtrack crossed with an old detective show with a dash of a game show theme song. It adds to the delirium of what is a hodgepodge in its existence, already curious as a work with spliced in footage, with the old cast in new scenes and in re-used ones like ghosts haunting the living new actors, by adding even moments it sounds tonally off from its bloodier content.

The Released Version for me is the better of the two, because at only over an hour and a bit, it is like having your ears and eyes spiked with an audio-visual narcotic, with dream sequences about your family murdering you, or the film's narrator only being as omnipresent as he is because everyone in the cast kept highly detailed diaries. In contrast, the Lost Version feels a bleak film, one which at nearly ninety minutes drags in trying to be a narrative story, but still compelling for Wishman making a bleak mood with the film. It offers a spooky fun prologue, with a man in a cape, in the graveyard, as your host who will control the viewer and lead them on a journey, but the narrative he tells is grim. The premise is initially as ridiculous as, following two narrative arches of mother and daughter, the first is opened with the suggestion being hit by lightning in the head as the future mother Mary does causes psychic powers. But beyond this, it feels a more miserably toned work, what with Mary not liked by her family and treated miserably.

Even the gas lighting brother is arguably worse now he blames her for stealing the money from their father, which he himself does for horse race betting, and said father is a mean tyrant. Mary's psychic powers and the voices she hears allow her to kill with an unseen force with a wish however, such as a cheating boyfriend and the other woman in the double decapitation scene in its original context. This Lost Version recontextualizes so much, including the murders, reused in the Released Version, being of Mary's will to have people killed, or that when Mary dies in childbirth, the daughter we follow is Diane Cummins' original version of her character, the original Vicki. Her life is even more miserable as someone who, in her adopted family, is still tormented, even by two random boys or a house part of teasing guests, leading to a body count and an ending which just leaves her a violent maelstrom. It has its quirks, but the Lost Version becomes a mean film juxtaposed by its ominous droning score and the gore. It has silliness, but tonally this is an entirely different film, and together these films present a fascinating chapter of cinema in their existence. Doris Wishman herself would not make many films after this - her unreleased Dildo Heaven (2002), a sex comedy, was one of the last, also recontextualizing old sexploitation footage in a digital no-budget movie. Truly, she was a one-off, but A Night to Dismember, both versions, was unique and to see them together they make this an even stranger experience especially when you watch both of them in a double bill as I did.

Abstract Spectrum: Mindbender/Psychotronic/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): High