The Amazing Transplant

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.

Of all the excessively nonsensical, rancid and imbecilic Sexploitation movies ever made during the decade of the 1970's (and genre buffs know there are a LOT of them), Doris Wishman's "The Amazing Transplant" definitely takes the cake when talking in terms of pure senselessness and sheer incoherence. This doesn't even qualify as a movie; this is just some crazy lady (Wishman was the only female smut-director at that time) showcasing her most lurid and morally incorrect sexual fantasies. The premise appealed to me, since it sounded like a deviant and exploitative variation on the "Mad Love" and "Hands of Orlac" concept. In those classic films the hands of an executed killer become transplanted onto a pianist who lost his in an accident, but the hands gradually turn their new owner into an unstoppable killing machine. "The Amazing Transplant" basically features the exact same plot, but of course we're dealing with a raping penis here instead of a murdering pair of hands. It's a curious and interesting concept for a sleazy and gritty 70's exploitation flick, but the sad truth is that Wishman wasn't the least bit interested in telling a story, as the (not so) amazing penis transplant only gets mentioned ten minutes prior to the ending. The rest of film merely exists of sleazy and soft-core padding with atrocious acting performances, painful dialogs and unattractive women. In the opening sequences, Arthur Barlen strangles his fiancée – and what a fight she puts up – and flees. His uncle, who's also a police detective, goes after him using Arthur's address book as the only lead. Whilst the sleazy fat copper checks out the young girls' legs and breasts, they explain through flashbacks how Arthur changed from a quiet and introvert boy into a perverted and mad-raving sex machine. At those points, we're not supposed to know anything about the penis transplant, but obviously the title and every possible synopsis description on the internet already revealed everything. The film only lasts a mere 70 minutes, yet it's insufferably boring and contains over 75% of redundant footage. There's an inexplicably large amount of images showing people's legs and feet as they simply stroll over sidewalks. Larry Hunter's character of Bill Barlen the detective is unintentionally hilarious. He displays the weirdest facial expressions when astonished, makes offensive remarks towards lesbians and simply walks away when women clearly need emotional support. This was my fourth movie directed by Doris "Sultana-of-Sleaze" Wishman (after "Deadly Weapons", "Double Agent 73" and "Let Me Die a Woman") and she never ceases to "amaze" me. Not necessarily in a positive way, but you have to admit she dared to exploit pretty much every controversial topic.

This ridiculous, trashy thriller was helmed by the notorious Doris Wishman - here directing under a male pseudonym, Louis Silverman. A quarter of the shots are out-of-focus; the acting is wooden; she lensed it in such a way that most of the actors speak off-camera, so voices could be dubbed in post; when we do see lips moving, the dialogue is often out of synch. There are visual non-sequiturs and jump shots galore. At one point a woman falls dead when a strangler just barely touches her throat. The movie, in other words, is comically inept. There are half-a-dozen pretty nude bodies on display, but otherwise this is a real snoozer, from the Ed Wood school of directing. The ugly guy who is playing the detective investigator looks like a Muppet. Oddest feature for me is an poorly-chosen female chorus on the soundtrack, atop one of the rape scenes, that reminded me of Mia Farrow's title theme in Rosemary's Baby, also a little bit of one of the Country Joe McDonald pieces over a consensual love scene in Jens Jorgen Thorsen's Quiet Days in Clichy. The Amazing Transplant is strictly for connoisseurs of barrel-bottom cinematic trash - and even they may find this dull.

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.

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).