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

A Night to Dismember (1983)

From http://images.yuku.com/image/jpg/
26f76e8ac4804dfab0e1093c42fe01c4_r.jpg

Director: Doris Wishman

Screenplay: Judith 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

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #137

Synopsis: Locked away from killing two neighbourhood boys, Vicki Kent (porn actress Samantha Fox, not the British Page 3 pin-up) is released in 1986 from a mental institution back to her family. Her sister Mary (Diane Cummins) is not too pleased with this development, devising with their brother to put Vicki back in the institution. Things are never simple though. People are dying in horrifying ways. The family's already cursed by a series of strange, alarmingly prolific deaths. There's a detective, presiding over the film as the narrator, sniffing around their home. And there's voices coming from the hat box.

How does a film as illogical as A Night to Dismember exist, a genre film author Stephen Thrower in Nightmare U.S.A describe as being made in Purgatory rather than the New York state it was in? Well, when a disgruntled film lab technician burns the building down, destroying a large chunk of your newest project, you either give up or do what Doris Wishman did and try to scramble together a new version. Having marketed a trailer beforehand, which involves an entirely different story involving demonic/psychic possession, the Queen of Sexploitation felt she had to still provide a finished product. One built from surviving fragments, clips from the trailers, outtakes and even clips from her previous films to put together what is a remix film of a work that never actually existed. For the most part A Night of Dismember is a pretty gruesome horror film inspired by slasher films. Even if the effects are obvious Wiseman, no stranger to extremity having made roughies (a sexploitation subgenre with an emphasis on violence) and porn, does make a film of the era. (Fake) head placed in a fireplace. Head squashed under a car wheel. Decapitation. A heart being punched out of someone's chest. Axes. Material which is blood soaked. However the look of the film, due to its materials, evokes how Herschell Gordon Lewis' films in the sixties which were paradoxically nasty but have the same quaintness of middle America. As parts of the film use old footage, there's a piece of that kitsch here that permeates the entire work.

From https://thecultcorner.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/kent-newspaper.jpg

Montage theory suggest that when individual shots are placed together they create an emotional or intellectual reaction in a viewer. How the shots are put together can drastically change this. Then you factor in how avant-garde filmmakers like Bruce Conner used pre-existing footage to create films like A Movie (1958) which create reactions in viewers trying to put this material together, collages of material that should not connect together but provide an effect nonetheless even if it's an intellectual consideration. You may find it utterly absurd to bring this idea to an infamous film from the same director of the Chesty Morgan films, but A Night to Dismember is a really peculiar case of what happens when a director attempts to make a film from existing materials rather than create new footage. One with a plot put together in continuity editing, from meagre pieces as a result of a rare circumstance of failure.

From http://dailygrindhouse.com/wp-content/
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Noticeably, this film is not meant to be like a Bruce Conner film, meant to be a horror film following a single plot continuity. A string of murders that may be the guilt of a psychologically damaged young woman named Vicki, being driven insane by her siblings out of spite or misdeeds by someone else. The circumstances are in truth a working director attempting to make a product from off-cuts, like Owen Land's Film in Which There Appear Edge Lettering, Sprocket Holes, Dirt Particles, Etc. (1966) for a drive-in theatre audience. When this happens in b-movie or genre cinema, it can lead to some bizarre emotional effects on the viewer. None intended, but the result of trying to scramble together a full feature length film from barely a lot. Think Coffin Joe's Hallucinations of a Deranged Mind (1978), an apt title for this type of film, a collage of deleted and previously censored scenes from other films strung together by a loose "plot". A Night to Dismember is already from a director notorious for low budget films like Bad Girls Go To Hell (1965), with post synch dialogue, shots of feet and decor to hide the dubbing in actors mouths, and having to work around quick schedules. A film which is build from fragments in an attempt to make a story in itself a literal hallucination of a deranged mind.

From http://horrornews.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/
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The plot is effected by being so compromised that attempting to fully understand the plot is something you have to eventually jettison. A pretension person like me would argue it has real dream logic by pure accident but it's not that far from some of the bizarre dreams I've actually had in my life. Some dreams do follow a real continuity when you have them in your sleep, even if they are compacted with figures and time blurred. There are also dreams which are frantic, ones you (or at least I) have woken up from confused which remind me of A Night to Dismember, a blast of pure cut-ups of scenes and events that hurdle onwards. Sometimes, following a slither of cohesive logic, they can be understood, others no so much. With A Night to Dismember, a viewer is experiencing film that had to compensate with so much narration. A lot of this narration is actually unnecessary, forcing a viewer to also have to separate between that which isn't of use and that which is with little time before the next sequence takes place. You only have seconds to decipher and understand each piece of it as it goes, frantically going along until many will slip behind and experience the film by the end in a maddening blur. This is a film where the detective narrator was helped in his case by every family member having a diary, detailed diaries that can explicitly talk of voices coming from a hat box or dialogue like "Suddenly Vicki felt like someone was making love to her in bright flashing colors". That's the kind of absurdity brought here, non-sequiturs made more pronounced by plot threads which feel less like they should be there but to make up the feature length.

From https://thecultcorner.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/2.png

The plot then is revealed to be a mess. When a plot does not follow a cohesive narrative, and the audience member can perceive that they haven't stepped on a film that is deliberately manipulating this structure, confusion shall arise. Aspects of the plot itself which make sense don't follow conventions either. Vicki's mental stability is capable of devouring your own sanity as a viewer. When there are voices indeed coming from the hat box, not done as a joke or with the mysterious voices not coming from a conventional place of horror like the closet. Or the screen turns red and psychedelic with mysterious hands caressing her, a lot of the sounds of distress inexplicably sounding like orgasms due to a poor choice of sound design. Some of this material is actually successful, the weirdness original and hitting successes at points, a sequence where Vicki witnesses a corpse walk out of a lake, her brother in a disguise to drive her insane, the most successful. Then there are plot points which make no sense or are superfluous, emphasised by narration which explains actions that are taking place onscreen as they are happening. Spilling into each other with an abruptness not from  a pace, carefully laid out plot but using odds and sods in the surviving material. The whole Kent brothers prologue is pointless and ridiculous - people killing people with axes only to fall on their own weapon and die; wives wandering the gardens in a nightgown so small their chests are barely kept in; and all other sorts of madness. The viewers' mind will try to connect the dots. The pleasure and pain, depending on the viewer's reaction, is from this denial of the connections, the desire to rationalise the scenes together becomes overwhelmed and breaking down.

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/zb8hyku64gg/hqdefault.jpg

Then there's the music and sound which is as much a violent influence on a viewer's emotions. Like other Doris Wishman films it was post synched with likely only one male voice playing all the males and a female one for the women in this particularly example. The head beings squashed by a car is clearly being sound tracked by someone making a squishing sound with their mouth. Animal mimicry is even involved. The soundtrack is even more disorientating. A collage of swinging jazz, game show music and library compositions. More unpredictable than the switches in this music is that it gets layered on top of one another. Combined with the hectic cutting of some scenes, the narrative being a constant or the limited dialogue track, and the result's a hellish sound and visual landscape you less to try to process but get sucked into and spat out of at the end. Eventually when the resolution is found, when the killer's revealed but almost everyone still dies, or gets involved in running through the same stairway like a Möbius strip nightmare, you have no idea what's exactly happened unless you rewatch and try to take in the information in carefully.

Personal Opinion:

Not for the faint of heart. You have to be prepared for this type of film, which defines every "bad" technique possible. Wonky dubbing, random music blurts, unpredictable scene changes, nonsensical plotting. For those who can appreciate this type of cinema as unintentionally surreal, imaging an alternative world where this was deliberately made this way is the way forward. One of those irrational one-offs you don't forget, swirling in my mind as a gaudy haze dream. It's certainly the most extreme of all of Doris Wishman's films by all accounts, very bad circumstances leading her to improvise a film that's arguably more rewarding in this state than was planned.

Abstract Spectrum: Mindbender/Psychotronic/Weird

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

From https://thecultcorner.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/murica.png

Bad Girls Go To Hell (1965)

From http://images.moviepostershop.com/bad-girls-go-to-hell-movie-poster-1965-1020199011.jpg

Dir. Doris Wishman

I've seen a few grindhouse films, but this one enforces the fact that concepts of political correctness, good taste and conventional strands of filmmaking are jettisoned in their desire to exploit. The fact that these original films have not really been made available over here in the UK - not the irony or throwback of Grindhouse (2007) which plays within modern day attitudes and aesthetics, or those easy to market to this mindset - made viewing this one, despite being very chaste, very shocking in its content. Once I explain the plot, it's up to you whether you'll see the film. A young wife goes out of her flat to dispose of the garbage, only to be raped by the predatory janitor in the corridor stairway and blackmailed by him for more sexual favours. This doesn't last long as she kills him with an ashtray to the head, fleeing to New York to avoid murder charges under a false name, going door to door for places to live. Unfortunately every male she encounters is a sexual predator. Belts hit flesh, and in a film meant to titillate as well as be nasty, the result lingers on these tribulations like a voyeur. This is my first encounter with a "roughie", softcore American b-films with an added domination theme over women, literally, being roughed up. Immediately, this is not something you get around our British waters on DVD, and is something that, unless you've already dived into the muddy waters of exploitation cinema, is still surprising to see even if you've seen some of the most violent and nasty films of now. And what adds to this surprise is how such a film is: a) very chaste baring this lurid content, with no actual nudity baring tease and occasionally female buttocks, and b) is one of the most well know, by title at least, films of a female director.

From http://366weirdmovies.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/bad_girls_go_to_hell.jpg

A cheapie production, nice looking, from the mid-sixties, but the name Doris Wishman holds a lot of significance in the area of American exploitation cinema. The Queen of American Sexploitation in fact, worshipped by John Waters, one of the few women in this morally dubious field to have a large, prolific career, and someone, despite the expectations of the content, was adding her own idiosyncrasies to films like this because she was self taught, produced many of her own films, and likely had the personality to get these films made. (I have only seen this and the infamous A Night to Dismember (1983), but the later showed how determined she was as a person, making a film regardless when most of the original footage shot was destroyed by a disgruntled lab technician even if it meant creating a strange, collaged and post-synched oddity). Bad Girls Go To Hell is the sort of film that would make feminists uncomfortable, and for a male like me who likes exploitation cinema but is concerned with progressive attitudes to feel a moral quandary, regardless of what one thinks of the technical quality of the film. Yet the fact that Wishman, a woman, made this film inherently complicates the issue of what gender is,  what "Political correctness" in films is to actual, real life attitudes one may have. It puts a spanner in the arguments, and surprisingly, causes one to ask more serious questions about gender and sexual politics than a morose, serious drama on the subject. Not bad considering, were it not for my concerns in these areas, the film is in the end complete and utter camp, juggling an unbelievably nihilistic view of life, even if it's meant to titillate, with a naive kitsch.

From http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lgw2toQABV1qc42blo1_500.jpg

Only over sixty minutes long, shot in stark black and white, its set around cramped rooms and brief glimpses of the streets of New York, against shop windows, taxis, from the ground looking at peoples' feet. Scored to soft jazz, rooms decorated in chique objects and furniture, the layering of a silly, fun film. Were it not for the fact I've only seen my first of the "roughies" in this, that silliness would've been more pronounced from the beginning. As an exploitation film, its narratively simple, fragments tentatively put together actually, the morals against scuzzy thrills, cutting to the chase with its content rather than tease it out. For its low budget, its well made and has a tone to it more realistic than other films in that it feels lived it, and shot in real buildings and exteriors. Editing occasionally becomes very jagged for moments of chaos and nastiness. The dialogue is also post-synched, an eeriness matched by the charmingly wooden acting of some of the cast. The cast itself is far removed for the Barbie dolls and Ken dolls of softcore, women who look like women, real figure, people who'd meet on the street, even compared to now, and men who look grizzled and drink whiskey all night.

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif8W-1sR3Q76w2xepK2Dlm0rDYmStUMzRFLyXvrfjgfuSZm1BstiEk-k6c0FOM-VT4q4vqTqw2Pf1I_crGyOWbEyuPhmhlelRO8a3ObZpHIoNVMXA3KdC3-ha7AaPzJ9F7aDVwGoe5PwES/s1600/Bad+girls+5.png

If there is a defence for the morality of the film, it's the fact that the men, including married ones, are not seen in a good light for the most part at all, lust filled potential rapists with no redeeming value to them whatsoever. There is a stereotypical predatory lesbian character, but the resolution of that segment has the problem being the protagonist not being able to want to continue the relationship and leaving despite the comfortable living in the room, where love and doing handstands in her underwear claiming she's an acrobat would be how she'd spend her time with the older, body stocking wearing haired woman. If it wasn't for the scenes of undressing that are tantalising, the scuzzy thrills aren't actually sexual, the roughie aspects just sordid.  Everything surrounding this content, while not of good taste, is pretty inexplicit and tame compared to the films of now. It's just the roughie content is probably a greater taboo now because of how the complicate history of gender politics have developed over the many decades. The film eventually takes on an (intentional/unintentional?) meaning in that our protagonist, completely innocent, murdering the janitor by accident in self defence, is stuck in a continuing nightmare where no one is on her side. A cyclical one where it continues with no escape. It's an odd mix, this nihilistic tone with very lurid, jarring content that would've been innocuous and naive to anyone else but me who've viewed more of these films and been desensitized. As a film being viewed from a view of abstract cinema, it certainly qualifies. The contrasting tonal differences between it all, mixing the camp with material that would be scorned over, although the contrast is as much the result of me, as a person, being wrapped up in cotton wool from these sleazy genre movies. Distant acting, drifting along the scenes aimlessly as hot jazz plays over the images. A goofiness that is met with a very negative view of humanity that somehow exists in a low budget film like this. It perfectly sums up what an American grindhouse film is as I watch more of them from this era.

From http://cinenthusiast.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/bad-girls-go-to-hell.png

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/Non): Low

The shock of seeing a film with material that is more controversial now adds a personal effect on it, an oddity, in complete honesty, from a very different time because of how it's made and acts. It's shocking in ideas, but there's not a single bared breast in the film, adding a peculiar paradoxical air to it. The obvious kitsch, the suave furniture choices particularly, adds to this. It's from an era a company, Something Weird, entirely devoted themselves to, the transition between the fifties b-movies to the trangressions of the seventies, trashy cinema on scratched celluloid that yet feels innocent at the same time.

Personal Rating

Is there virtue in the film or something to defend? Possibly if one avoids lapsing into hypocrisy. To know the difference between a lurid film and misogyny taking place in real life. Baring in mind the campiness of the whole work.  And that a woman who controlled most of her career, in an area few women were involved with, made this film. The result makes it much more complicated morally, fascinating as a cult film. The film as entertainment? Rough, no clear direction in the way it's going, utterly compelling as scrappy exploitation. The Queen of American Sexploitation making an enticing offer to view her other films after this one, and somehow managing to bring out real questions about my social politics rather than an apparently serious work. That's a great way to get further interest in Doris Wishman if any.