The Amazing Transplant

A classic Wishman theme: male sexual insecurity plus female sexual desire (represented here by golden earrings) equals lots of violence. But somehow it's less intense than her earlier roughies, perhaps because of the larger cast or more frequent scene changes (invariably proceeded by "walking on the sidewalk" filler).

This is classic Doris Wishman - shots of dead air, horrible dubbing, impossibly bad acting, New York City streetscapes, and scene direction so terrible that'll it make you gasp. (Also expect a ton of her signature feet shots and eccentric art direction; this time around it involves a puzzling equestrian theme). Anyway, if you know Doris and like her take on gonzo sleaze, "The Amazing Transplant" is gonna be a fun time. Similar to "Bad Girls Go to Hell" "Deadly Weapons" and "Double Agent 73," this movie is, in its awfulness, pretty consistently funny. My only real complaint with "Transplant," as an unintentional comedy, is that the sex scenes are way too long. (Picture a 5-min scene between two ugly people, most of which comprises shots of the guy's bare arse. Yeah...). That said, expect to fast forward through some parts. It is worth it, though, because almost every scene is laughable in some way. (The scene with the killer's mom, whose dress sports multiple mustard stains, had us laughing heartily). If you are new to Doris Wishman, and feel up to the task of viewing some of the poorest film-making imaginable, I'd start with "Bad Girls Go to Hell," because it showcases all the signatures of the Wishman style, minus half the sleaziness of "Transplant." If you had a good time with "Bad Girls," and weren't offended or anything, queue up "The Amazing Transplant." This is unintentional surrealism at its sleazy finest. Further proof that Wishman was, alongside Coleman Francis, America's most inept film director.

No, PERCY (1971) wasn't the first penis transplant movie. The sultana of sleaze, Doris Wishman (one of the only women directing exploitation movies at the time), directed and wrote this oddball softcore horror drama first. Arthur (Juan Fernandez) can't get it up, so he seeks the aid of a doctor who transplants his recently deceased friend's member onto him. Soon the operation goes sour and he finds himself in hiding after he kills his girlfriend. For some reason gold earrings set him off! In flashbacks, he seduces, rapes and/or murders other women. One is played by porn star Kim Pope. Another is a fat lesbian, and she gets sick after they do it and hovers over the toilet as Wishman's never-stable camera tilts down for a nice shot of the ladies zitty rear-end!

There's plenty here to entertain cult movie and Wishman fans (including lots of her trademark bizarre camera placements and tracking shots) and at times hints of (gasp!) substance rear their ugly head before being immediately trampled over by the next ridiculous or implausible plot move, terrible performance or laughable line of dialogue.

The version I saw was unrated, but could get a soft X rating for all of the soft core sex scenes and nudity.

Score (only if you're a sleazehound or Doris fan): 5 out of 10

Amazing Transplant, The (1971)

** (out of 4)

Just imagine THE HANDS OF ORLAC or MAD LOVE but made into a sexploitation movie by the cult item Wishman. In the film, the kind Arthur (Juan Fernandez) gets a penis transplant but it turns out this penis belongs to a serial rapist. Soon the oh-so-sweet Arthur is attacking any woman he sees wearing gold earrings. It goes without saying but this movie is going to have a very limited appeal and the ones who rent (or buy) this title are going to be fans of trash and those exact fans might find this movie rather tame. Yes, the storyline is rather outrageous but I was rather shocked to see how tame the movie really is. You'd expect something wild and crazy but for the most part it's just your typical softcore feature that doesn't even feature too much nudity or sex. Yes, it's a lot more than your typical Hollywood movie but I've seen dirtier sexploitation flicks. The film (thankfully) only runs 71-minutes but even at this short time it starts to wear out its welcome because we just see one attack after another while a detective tries to figure out what's going on. The movie features bad acting, rather sloppy direction and various other bad items that will make this appeal to fans of bad cinema. The movie is worth watching if you like trash but if you want to go extremely hardcore then you should check out Wishman's even more notorious LET ME DIE A WOMAN, which to date is perhaps the most disgusting movie I've seen.

This is a movie about a man's penis, however that penis is never shown (what would Lacan say?). It falls into the category of "roughie," which is to say that the plot makes it sound nastier than what we actually see on the screen. Essentially, Arthur, a young virginal man who envies his friend's sexual prowess arranges to have the friend's penis transplanted to his own body when the friend conveniently dies of a rare virus. Having heard that his friend was really into women with gold earrings, Arthur finds that he can no longer control himself when any woman wears gold earrings, and he assaults them, rapes them, and sometimes kills them (it's not clear why he kills some and not others, except that some of them have to survive to tell the tale or the plot doesn't work). Of course, this being a smut film, all the women Arthur encounters wearing gold earrings are of course young and pretty. The rapes are also fairly tame, even by roughie standards, which I tend to attribute to the director, Doris Wishman (an actual woman as opposed to the many pseudonymous women in the business at the time). She also uses the movie as a means of exploring the many ways women respond to rape – some of them blame themselves, some of them are angry at the world, some of them decide they actually liked it after the fact, etc. She also touches on some interesting questions of the then-illegal status of abortion, as the doctor who performs this mad operation is an illegal abortion-doctor. Of course, Doris was no feminist, and this film is today mostly a goofy example of smut from a pre-penetration era, but there isn't another like it, even in the oeuvre of Edward D Wood.