ReFocus: The Films of Doris Wishman 66810_Kozma810_Kozma & Freibert.inddFreibert.indd i 006/04/216/04/21 3:063:06 ppmm R eFocus: The American Directors Series Series Editors: Robert Singer, Frances Smith, and Gary D. Rhodes Editorial board: Kelly Basilio, Donna Campbell, Claire Perkins, Christopher Sharrett, and Yannis Tzioumakis ReFocus is a series of contemporary methodological and theoretical approaches to the interdisciplinary analyses and interpretations of neglected American directors, from the once- famous to the ignored, in direct relationship to American culture—its myths, values, and historical precepts. Titles in the series include: ReFocus: The Films of Preston Sturges Edited by Jeff Jaeckle and Sarah Kozloff ReFocus: The Films of Delmer Daves Edited by Matthew Carter and Andrew Nelson ReFocus: The Films of Amy Heckerling Edited by Frances Smith and Timothy Shary ReFocus: The Films of Budd Boetticher Edited by Gary D. Rhodes and Robert Singer ReFocus: The Films of Kelly Reichardt E. Dawn Hall ReFocus: The Films of William Castle Edited by Murray Leeder ReFocus: The Films of Barbara Kopple Edited by Jeff Jaeckle and Susan Ryan ReFocus: The Films of Elaine May Edited by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Dean Brandum ReFocus: The Films of Spike Jonze Edited by Kim Wilkins and Wyatt Moss-Wellington ReFocus: The Films of Paul Schrader Edited by Michelle E. Moore and Brian Brems ReFocus: The Films of Doris Wishman Edited by Alicia Kozma and Finley Freibert edinburghuniversitypress.com/series/refoc 66810_Kozma810_Kozma & Freibert.inddFreibert.indd iiii 006/04/216/04/21 3:063:06 ppmm ReFocus: The Films of Doris Wishman Edited by Alicia Kozma and Finley Freibert 66810_Kozma810_Kozma & Freibert.inddFreibert.indd iiiiii 006/04/216/04/21 3:063:06 ppmm Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com © editorial matter and organization Ali cia Kozma and Finley Freibert, 2021 © the chapters their several authors, 2021 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun—Holyrood Road 12 (2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in 11/13 Ehrhardt MT by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd, and and printed and bound in Great Britain A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 4744 8234 9 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 4744 8236 3 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 8237 0 (epub) The right of the contributors to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498). 66810_Kozma810_Kozma & Freibert.inddFreibert.indd iivv 006/04/216/04/21 3:063:06 ppmm Contents List of Figures vii Notes on Contributors viii Acknowledgments xi Foreword xii Joan Hawkins Introduction: Making Films in Hell 1 Alicia Kozma and Finley Freibert Part I Gender and Genre 1 The Body as Apparatus: Doris Wishman’s Double Agent 73 15 Elena Gorfinkel 2 The Girls in the Mirror: Women’s Horror Filmmaking and Doris Wishman’s Each Time I Kill 32 Alexandra Heller-Nicholas 3 Trans/sexual Negativity and the Ethics of (S)exploitation in Let Me Die a Woman 47 Harper Shalloe Part II Cultural History and Adult Film Studies 4 Hardcore Wishman 67 Whitney Strub 5 Bad Bis Go to Hell: Bisexuality as Transgressive and Lucrative in Doris Wishman’s Roughies 78 Finley Freibert 6 “It’s strange, but it’s wonderful”: Doris Wishman’s Nude on the Moon 101 Karen Joan Kohoutek 66810_Kozma810_Kozma & Freibert.inddFreibert.indd v 006/04/216/04/21 3:063:06 ppmm vi CONTENTS Part III Comparative Approaches to Authorship 7 Depicting Female Bodies: Doris Wishman, Carolee Schneemann, and Legacies of Subversion 121 Hannah Greenberg 8 Revolutionization of the Erotic Screen: The Films of Doris Wishman and Wakamatsu Koji 144 Molly Kim 9 “You can’t say you’re not getting a horror film here!”: Authorship, Genre, and the Accidental Avant-Garde in Doris Wishman’s A Night to Dismember 159 Jamie Hook 10 My Teenage Cinematic Love Affair with Doris Wishman 178 Rebekah McKendry Index 186 66810_Kozma810_Kozma & Freibert.inddFreibert.indd vvii 006/04/216/04/21 3:063:06 ppmm Figures 5.1 Examples of 1960s print commodities that marketed sexual identities and practices 82 6.1 Moon residents at the real-life Coral Castle 103 6.2 Establishing shot of the bleak lunar surface 107 6.3 Astronauts surrounded by palm trees 108 6.4 Cathy seen as the Moon Queen 112 7.1 The San Remo apartment building stands out as a symbol of the female body on the horizon in Bad Girls Go to Hell 128 7.2 Chesty Morgan caressing, shaking, and animating her enormous breasts during the credit sequence of Deadly Weapons 133 8.1 Crystal’s breasts displayed non-erotically and seen from both female and male gaze 149 8.2 Sex among rebels 155 9.1 An out-of-place optical or “a Doris Wishman touch”? 163 9.2 Grisly, yet artificial, gore effects 167 9.3 Vicki looks at a photograph of Frankie 170 66810_Kozma810_Kozma & Freibert.inddFreibert.indd vviiii 006/04/216/04/21 3:063:06 ppmm Notes on Contributors Finley Freibert is currently a part-time Senior Lecturer in Comparative Humanities at the University of Louisville and an adjunct Lecturer at the Kentucky College of Art and Design. In 2019, he completed a Ph.D. in Visual Studies from the University of California, Irvine. Finley researches and teaches at the intersection of media industry studies, gender and sexuality studies, and bisexual cultural history. His published work has included peer-reviewed research articles in venues including Film Criticism, invited scholarly articles for Flow and the quarterly journal of the non-profit Bob Mizer Foundation, and in popular LGBTQ+ press outlets The Advocate and Washington Blade. Elena Gorfi nkel is senior lecturer in Film Studies at King’s College London and the author of Lewd Looks: American Sexploitation Cinema in the 1960s (2017). She is co-editor of Global Cinema Networks (2018) and Taking Place: Location and the Moving Image (2011), and edited an issue of Feminist Media Histories on “Sex and the Materiality of Adult Media” (2019). Her scholarly essays have appeared in Screen, Journal of Cinema and Media Studies (Cinema Journal), Camera Obscura, Framework, Discourse, World Picture, and in several edited collections. She is the recipient of a 2018 Art Writers Grant from Creative Capital/The Andy Warhol Foundation for her current book project “Aesthetic Strike: Cinemas of Exhaustion.” She is also at work on a short monograph on Barbara Loden’s Wanda. Gorfinkel regularly writes criti- cism in Sight & Sound, Art Monthly, Cinema Scope, and Another Gaze, among other venues. Hannah Greenberg has degrees in Film Studies from Mount Holyoke College (BA) and Columbia University (MA). She currently works as the Director of Development & Membership at Anthology Film Archives in 66810_Kozma810_Kozma & Freibert.inddFreibert.indd vviiiiii 006/04/216/04/21 3:063:06 ppmm NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS ix New York City. Greenberg has also guest programmed multiple film series at Anthology, including “Women of the West” in 2018 and “A Real Young Girl: Coming of Age” in 2019. She has been interviewed about her curatorial work in the New York Times and the Brooklyn Rail. Alexandra Heller-Nicholas is an award-winning Australian film critic who has written books on Suspiria (2015), Ms. 45 (2017), and The Hitcher (2018), as well as Rape-Revenge Films (2011), Found Footage Horror Films (2014), and her 2019 Bram Stoker Award nominated Masks in Horror Cinema: Eyes Without Faces. She has co-edited collections including Cattet & Forzani (2018), ReFocus: The Films of Elaine May (2019), and Wonderland, the catalogue for the 2018 Australian Cen- tre for the Moving Image exhibition on Alice in film. Alexandra is a programmer at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas; a board member of the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies; and a member of the Alliance of Women Film Journalists. She holds a Ph.D. in Screen Studies from the University of Melbourne and is an Adjunct Professor at Deakin University. Jamie Hook is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he also received his MA in 2012. His research focuses on media adaptation practices across film, literature, and theater during the sexual revolution and explores their role in reorganiz- ing taste cultures and negotiating social stigmas. His work has been published in the Routledge journal Porn Studies and the Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture book series. He is scheduled to complete his Ph.D. in the fall of 2020. Molly Kim is a film scholar specializing in the history of 1970s–80s Korean cinema, Japanese erotic cinema, film censorship, and genre. Her doctoral research focused on the representation of women and sex labor in 1970s Korean hostess films. She currently teaches at the University of Suwon, Korea. Her research has been published the International Journal of Korean History and the anthologies Prostitution and Sex Work in Global Visual Media: New Takes on Fallen Women and Women Make Horror: Feminism, Filmmaking, Genre. Karen Joan Kohoutek is an independent scholar and poet who has published about weird fiction and cult films in various journals, literary websites, and anthologies. Subjects of recent and upcoming publications include Mystery Science Theater 3000’s versions of the Gamera films, folk magic in the novels of Ishmael Reed, August Strindberg as a weird writer, and the relationship between Marvel’s Black Panther and the Black Panther Party.