Why do I live in Austin?

Read this review, then ask yourself why you don't.

Spent most of the day dozed off dead to the world, after staying up working on the site till mid-morning. Working and checking out the new site redesign and checking for bugs, checking stories and... ya know.. getting stuff done. So when I awoke I found my father all in a tizzy about going to see Doris Wishman at the ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE tonight. In the world there must be a tiny iota, a subparticle of a poll that actually knows who she is. But for those that know... well she's a deity unto herself. I didn't worship at the Doris Wishman idol before tonight, hell, before tonight I didn't even know there was an idol to worship, but now... Now I'm a convert.

Around midafternoon I received a call from Copernicus asking if I was going tonight. He wanted to as well. Poor Copernicus ever since his negative review of ARMAGEDDON he has had calamity after calamity. First a tire blow out which he couldn't fix because the key to the hubcap wasn't in the car, thus he missed the sneak of MASK OF ZORRO. Now he's being sent out to look out the optic end of the HUBBLE. Thus is the life of a world famous skywatcher.

After eating a lite meal at Threadgills, Dad and I head off for the wonderful world of the ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE. We were about an hour ahead of time, but we wanted to relax in the Alamo lobby, visit with the owner... and perhaps meet Doris Wishman herself. The extent of my knowledge of her existence up until tonight was her name being on many exploitive movie posters I've had and currently own like: NUDE ON THE MOON, PLAYGIRLS INTERNATIONAL, KEYHOLES ARE FOR PEEPING and of course A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER!!! But my eyes had yet to partake of her filmmaking skills which earned her the credit on the Alamo Drafthouse Herald, "The Female Russ Meyer!!!"

Upon arriving at the Lobby I see the table with Doris Wishman sitting there. She looks a bit like Scorsese's mom, which for you that don't know, she's Joe Pesci's Mom in GOODFELLAS that he borrows the butcher knife from. She's a tiny lady. If she were your neighbor you would think she planted petunias all day everyday, so her 20 grandkids would have something pretty to smell on their visits sporadically through the year. But you would be wrong. She is actually the most prolific sound female filmmaker. And I had never seen one of her flicks.

There was also a cool as hell BAD GIRLS GO TO HELL silkscreened movie poster for sale for $20 autographed. So I bought one for my little sister. Dannie (sister satan as some of you know her) has been a peddler of smut since the age of 11 (she's 17 now). She tried to sell gum cards, but the boys always wanted to talk about stuff she didn't want to talk about, and they never spent money. Then one day this man in a trenchcoat approached my sister with a stack of old smut. You know, ADAM, old PLAYBOYS and MALE magazines. She turned there exploitive covers over and added up the prices. She made $50 off that dirty ol man, and she was hooked. The smut peddler. A title she wore for many years, and is still proud of. She is the corrupter of old degenerates, getting them hooked on Betty Page and vintage Stag magazines, slowly moving them up the collecting ladder till they are hooked on Bill Elder original art and Bad Girl movie paper. The problem was, she herself became a fan of the whole garters and lace love affair. Betty Page became an icon, Petty and Vargas her gods. And Bad Girl film.... that's her bread and butter. So I had to get what would surely be an idol of her's, autograph.

Doris was quite gracious, she even took the time to get Dannie's name spelled correctly. She told me of a film she was trying to get money for, called EACH TIME I KILL. Apparently it's a thriller involving younger folks and people are going wild over the script, and at one point one of the B-52's was thinking of financing it, but couldn't come up with enough money to get it done. So she is still on her search. I took a picture with her, and hopefully I'll be getting a copy of it so y'all can see what the great Doris Wishman looks like.

Then it came time for Dad and I to get in positions to get the right seats. (at the Drafthouse this is row 2, center) A flood of people came out of BAD GIRLS GO TO HELL with smiles emblazoned across their faces. "Cool, it doesn't suck," I think to myself.

As the audience files by I see many faces I know from the Austin film going scene. Cartoonists, Pawn Brokers, Collectors, Musicians, Rock Poster Artists, Babes I have fantasized about, Chefs, Projectionists, and Architects. Then we filed into the theater.

The place was filling up and I began to think that Copernicus was most likely hit by a razorsharp feather and mortally wounded, when he appeared. A bit on the stoned looking side, though it may just be a side effect of staring at star charts and light reading tables for years on end. A typical Copernicus greeting goes like this, "Hee eeehhh eehhhh eeey WHaS Up!"

We chatted and soon enough Mr Alamo and Michael (biographer of Doris Wishman) took the stage to do an introduction for DOUBLE AGENT 73. Mr Alamo told us about the upcoming showings of Sam Fuller's NAKED KISS and William Castle's THE TINGLER in PERCEPTO (If you live within a 2 day driving distance you are required to show for this. Oh, go here to find out when: www.drafthouse.com! Then Michael talked about Doris, though I have to admit, I wasn't that interested. I wanted to see Chesty Morgan and her size 73's.

Soon enough he was finished talking and the film began....

DOUBLE AGENT 73

MY GOD.... Chesty Morgan is not something to have seen on the big screen. Her chest is technically around her knees. For those into cleavage cleaving you can get some tunnel love when you get to the other side. If Chesty Morgan had existed in the days of P.T. Barnum, she would have put the Elephant Man and Tom Thumb to shame. Here is a lady that quite honestly defies description.

Let me describe the "Plot" of the film for you. Chesty brings to life a big busted secret agent out to put the smother on the mugs that run the heroin trade. But to make sure she gets the head dude, she must take pictures of each of her victims. Well, the camera is surgically implanted in her left breast. Now technically it could be one of them telescoping cameras from the day of old if you ask me, hell, an IMAX camera system could be placed in one of those. And if ya want 3-D she is 73-DDDDDDDDDD.

Chesty kills people with telephone wire, knocking them out with a single sway of her super breast, smothering, shooting, karate chopping, and by pouring a poison on her utterly amazing udders and having the guy lick it off unknowingly. She is 73 times more frightening than Major Onatop from GOLDENEYE. Her mouth has a strange canine look, her breasts look like they were meant to hide the batcave... maybe the.... AHEM, anyway this film is just rausciously awful. There is simply no other way to put it.

The nudity is scary, not arousing, the bad guys are somewhere out in left field, and the only way to watch the film is to shut your eyes and listen to the music. I found myself preying with Copernicus that the nudity was over.... we were always wrong, God had forsaken us. We were meant to see footage of feet of vericose veined breasts swaying and being knocked forward by meaty knees. The sound of the shutter of the camera everytime she lifted up her breast left me in stiches. The film is right down there with ESCAPE FROM ATHENA and THE MILPITAS MONSTER and THE METEOR MONSTER as the worst film I have ever seen. And like those amazing abherrations, I enjoyed the hell out of the film. I would just like to see some sap that said ARMAGEDDON is the worst film they have ever seen, sit through this flick. HA! Those thimble nutted losers would cry for mommy.

Copernicus was dealt a big blow of humility after this film as I reminded him of his quote from ARMAGEDDON, nothing like a good ol fashioned bout of crow eating. The sold out audience was thrilled, yelling, cheering, woofing and hollaring. I'd be proud to die in a room filled with fans like this. I mean these people are what is great about filmgoing. An audience that transcends a film. And this audience was alive, having paid $9 a head to pay homage to the female Russ Meyer.

Immediately after the film, Copernicus was raising his white flag of cowardice and was retreating from BAD GIRLS GO TO HELL. Doris Wishman took the stage for a Q & A.

After watching a movie about a giant breasted camera-implanted murderess for hire flick, the last person you visually expect to talk about the film is someone that looks like Doris Wishman. Yet there she was... glowing. You could see fire in her eyes, pride sprouting from every pour of her body, and all of a sudden a life long belief I have had was proven true.

For a long time people have asked me what the attraction to "Bad Film" is, and usually I give them the following rap:

"I love the energy in those films, it is like when a child brings home the fingerpainting he/she did at school that day. With all the energy and passion in the world they hold up the undecipherable glob of paint hewned paper and proudly exclaims, "It's you Daddy (mommy, Harry, Rumplestiltskin)!!!!" Instantly you look back at the painting, not with the eyes you walk around with, but the eyes of the child that painted it, and then you see the beauty, the love and the excitement of creation. That is what I love about bad filmmaking, it's filmmaking with everything the filmmaker had/has at his/her disposal thrown at the screen in a big splash of color, noise and love. Made by someone who can't believe they actually made a movie, and with that... comes a high that you simply can not get in a by-the-numbers studio film."

I've been saying that paragraph for a long time, but never being totally convinced about it till tonight. When I saw Doris up there like Carrie White with a rhinestone crown and a pile of flowers, I saw why she does what she does. I saw passion personified, and what someone that did it on her own feels when a gigantic room of onlookers look at her admiringly. She charmed the living shit out of that room, and there wasn't a person there that didn't somewhere inside wanted to be her. To be living in Florida at a retirement world and being able to talk about their days as a Sexploitation Filmmaker. What a thrill that must be. And she hasn't stopped, she's still making them. She hasn't quit yet. At one point she said, "When I die, I'll make films in Hell!" Now if that isn't an idea for a great movie, I don't know what is.

Now right about now you are thinking, I thought Harry said I'd understand why he lives in Austin if I read this review?

Well, all that has been written above is nothing. For what happened next... well this is why Austin is where I will and always shall live.....

As we filed out of the theater, Copernicus left, but I hooked up with the lovely Gaye, the fantastic set painter from Rodriguiz's THE FACULTY. She was suppose to move back to New York, but... turns out she fell in love with Austin, and couldn't leave. She decided that Austin simply was the place to be. And all I can say is, YES, Austin scored another cool person!!!

Another friend of her's and a fellow film person begins talking with me as we await seating to begin. Excitedly we talk "BAD FILM" A passionate gesture filled conversation spills forth as she talks about a film beyond description called CRIMES OF THE FUTURE. I haven't seen it, but now I'm dying to see it.

Now before BAD GIRLS GO TO HELL, we had FLAME TRICK SUBS and SATAN'S CHEERLEADERS performing. This is where things move from first gear to the nitro-laced gas powered super speed the night finished up with. Leave it to Copernicus to leave a great night ahead, yella bellied coward.

FLAME TRICK SUBS and SATAN'S CHEERLEADERS

As I was continuing to talk to one of the gals from Robert's set, I began to notice women in leather cheerleading outfits. Specifically there were four girls wearing white patent leather cheerleading outfits with a red racing stripe running up their side, and the numbers 666 emblazoned across their ample bosoms with fishnet stockings and Doc Marten's Shiny Boots. My interest was... peaked. Now, that you have the costume in mind, let me describe these cheerleaders for real. It is as if they stepped right off a Frank Kozik poster and into a TROMA film. First there was the jet blacked haired girl. She had long braided ponytails (the word "Reins" came to mind) and Betty Page makeup. She had tattoos down her shoulders and arms, and piercings in her lips, nose, eyebrows, ears and tongue. She had wild sex written in the irises of her eyes. Then there was the blonde. Wow. The embodiment of that high school fantasy, the aerobic dream with the thrashing midsection and the pelvic motion of a blender blade set on fine grain with tattoos and a blissful look of fresh-fucked glee to boot. These were the two up on the stage with the FLAME TRICK SUBS, one on either side. Then down on the ground floor was the purple haired close cropped hottie. Multiple piercings and a very very very adorable face that just screamed, "I'm your plaything you little boy you." Then there was the last rooter for Mephisto, the blonde/brunette one. She was on her birthday dance, and the guys in front of her were hootin and hollerin. These are SATAN'S CHEERLEADERS, each of them the twisted perfection of the purity that is the cheerleading squad, the way the cheerleading was never meant to be. No leadshield panties here, when their skirts came up, which they lifted many times, the panties that every high school drooling dweeb wished were there when the backflips and somersaults began were really there. All they needed were black lollipops to complete the picture. This will be fantasy material for many years.

Then there was the band... FLAME TRICK SUBS. Ya have to ask yourself, it these were Satan's Cheerleaders, what would they perform to? The FLAME TRICK SUBS is the answer. You've probably heard a billion Rockibilly Rock-n-Roll bands with pompadours and greased back hair, but have you heard one that performed original songs inspired from DAWN OF THE DEAD, THE CRAWLING EYE or maybe it was IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE and other id created coolness. A band that mixes the coolness of the surfer sounds from Pulp Fiction with the gleeful rockmania of Life Sucking Voodoo Women... Theirs was the music that you just get a fiery look in your eyes and you suck down the glass of moonshine, go blind and howl in glee. I get the idea that it is not right that we, the audience was sitting and separated by tables, cause if ever there was a time for insane monster mashing, this was the band playing in the foreground.

As their music pounded, the sex craving Satan Cheerleaders writhed and wanted on either side and on the floor. There was a psychotic wacko 50's flavor to the whole deal, as if on some sort of bad acid trip you remember with a smile and a haunted glee. This is the band that should play at Z's pad in Beneath the Valley of the Dolls. The lead singer warping his mouth, the light creating an evil palor to the lead guitarist, and the steam escaping from around the fedoraed drummer, not to mention the sexy cool look of the gal with the big Stray Cats style bass fiddle, thumping away in a tomboy cool look of the gal ya don't fuck with unless she plays first. She looks like the grownup girlfriend of Huck Finn, the one that was too wild for him.

As the lyrics about CREEPING DEAD FOLK, GREAT BIG FLOATING EYE and the LIFE SUCKING VOODOO WOMEN careened, the cheerleaders humped, well... in the background images of exploding heads from Dawn of the Dead, the cyclops from 7th Voyage, Russ Meyer big breasted women, XXX porn, Astroboy, Black Belt Jones, Robby the Robot, Zombies, monsters and UFOS. A pop culture moving feast of images played on as sensory overload was the mode. A charge went through the audience as if Percepto were already in place, if ever there was an opening act for a movie called BAD GIRLS GO TO HELL, this was it, even Chester Kent couldn't do better.

As they wrapped it up with a song about a fella who killed his wife for cheating on him only to rejoin her cheating ass in hell forever after the electric chair, thoughts began hitting a level of cool I can only express with a silly ass grin. Dad shared one too as did the people around me. Once again Mr ALAMO and Michael come out and do an intro for the film and Mr Alamo mentions you can see FLAME TRICK SUBS and SATAN'S CHEERLEADERS every Saturday night at a club here in Austin called THE BLACK CAT, you won't regret it.

Now after the first film, I was expecting another film of the like. And they even showed the same two trailers from before the other film.

CHATTERBOX which is the other masterpiece from 76, but this one is about a singing and talking pussy that takes the world by storm.

BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE ULTRA VIXENS which is a classic Russ Meyer trailer that... well, I am inadequate to describe, but suffice to say willing clutzy garbage men with bulging twisting Peter Lorre eyes and twitching cocks in plaid pants lusting after big breasted bimbos that can't get enough are the treat on screen during this many minute miracle.

Now I thought the movie would begin next, but instead trailers for...

SAM FULLER'S SHOCK CORRIDOR during which each of the major characters is psychoanalyzed and given diagnosis' such as EROTIC DEMENTIA is emblazoned across the screen.

then a complete treat...

SAM FULLER'S NAKED KISS trailer unwrapped. Wow. I'm impressed. This got me in the mood to see a damn good movie. I happen to think NAKED KISS is a brilliant film, and I almost felt like leaving and going home and putting it on the telly tube, but something, probably my fat ass, mad me hunker down for whatever was about to hit me.

BAD GIRLS GO TO HELL

Holy shit this is a great movie. No, I'm not kidding. The title has got absolutely nothing to do with the movie unless you stretch real hard.

This is a raw, tough, mean as hell story. While the first film I saw this evening was nothing but a circus freak with a work-out regimen that consisted of lifting her left breast, a feat few could do, this film had it all. The first film had not a single lady I was attracted to in any way. In this film they are all gorgeous, cute and lovable. And the lead lady comes straight out of a Frazetta painting panting and purring like the minx she is. She is more than that though. That describes her in the opening sequence, but once the film begins taking it's numerous unpredictable twists and turns... well she is the good girl of the film. She endures rapes and agressive lesbians. In fact in the world she occupies, everyone wants her for sexual reasons, but it isn't a cheap film. Each encounter causes emotional damage and desperation on her face. She is at her ropes end, in a sexual telling of THE LOST WEEKEND. It's directed as if the storyboards were done by Jim Steranko, off kilter angles and stark black and white. Most of the women in the film have Kamen eyes (if you got that, I love ya man) and the outfits the gals wear... well if you saw DANGER DIABOLIK, well you know of what I speak.

A fantastic film, one I would be proud to drag any of your asses to see. In fact I hate it I can't go see it again on Saturday, but I'm already committed to evening plans, but if it ends early... not likely, I'll be there. When all was said and done, I saw a film that followed a great live performance and filled me with even more energy. A transfusion had taken place, the audience was electric and we got a few thousand jolts of cool via BAD GIRLS GO TO HELL.

After the film, Doris once again took center stage as she should. I sat back and watched that gleeful gleam that a precious stone gives off, and like all precious stones she was on display. The questions came fast and furious as the energy was unmistakable. She handled each one with a sharp wit and a wizened to the point answer. When one person asked where she got her ideas for films, she replied, "When I go to bed I dream, if I'm lucky I'll remember it when I wake up." We are told she has shown these films and talked in only three other cities in the USA. New York, Boston and Los Angeles, and we were the largest audience, a packed house of screaming thrilled film fans hungering for celluloid crack, we got our spoon full for the night.

I live here for events like this, evenings of thrills and chills, where audience members like the Enygma and Guy Juke mix with frat rats and beatniks. Where the stylings of the 20's, 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's permeate the room. And a town that simply can't forget the Alamo. A music scene that complements the Films that play. Where the audience is as interesting as the characters on screen, and a setting for a geek like me to simply be. I love this town, and I love these people.

To wind this up, I'll leave you with the last question and answer for the evening. When the call for LAST QUESTION went out, a dismayed 'awwwwwwwww' rang throughout the room, and a booming voice yelled out, "SO MS WISHMAN, DO BAD GIRLS GO TO HELL?"

And Doris with those beady bright eyes looked out and with an innocent timbre and an unfaltering look she exclaimed, "No...... not really...." So take heart you lusty ladies, cunning chicks and buxom broads according to the lady that made BAD GIRLS GO TO HELL, you won't. There's something lovely in that... ....isn't there?