User reviews

An ex-girlfriend of mine used to drive around with a bumper sticker that said: "Good girls go to heaven… Bad girls go everywhere!" I always found that hilarious and the title of this little 60's exploitation film instantly reminded me of it. "Bad Girls Go To Hell" is another glamorous and ultimately sophisticated accomplishment of the great writer/director Doris Wishman; the woman who pretty much single-handedly popularized the so-called "roughie" exploitation movies during the sixties. The films of Mrs. Wishman may perhaps not be very good (in fact, she was quite often referred to as the female Ed Wood) but she definitely had … well … balls! This film is boring, poorly acted, ineptly directed and desperately stuffed with padding footage to reach a half-decent running time, but still I can't bring myself to harshly criticize it. The year was 1965 and here she was – Doris Wishman - showing girls' bare bottoms, attempted rape and even quick nipple flashes. The plot of this film sounds acceptable enough, but in fact it's really silly and laughable. When the Meg Kelton is taking the trash out in her see-through nightgown on a Saturday morning, her sleazy janitor attempts to sexually assault her. You can tell this man is really sinister because he has a Slavic accent, ha! When Meg goes to his apartment later on - I haven't got the slightest idea why she does that, though – he tries to rape her again and she kills him with a glass bowl. The poor girl panics, obviously, and impulsively decides to leave her house and husband and flee to New "Hell" York. Once there, Meg's life only gets worse and worse. She successively ends up with a friendly man who turns into an abusive monster when he drinks, a lesbian stripper, a married couple of whom the husband is yet another rapist pig and an elderly lady with a creepy police officer for a son. Poor, poor Meg! If she wasn't such a bad actress, I might have felt really sorry for her. And then Gigi Darlene, the girl who plays Meg, is still the most talented one in the whole cast by far. "Bad Girls to Hell" has a stupid ending, but then again, it was still okay in the sixties, I guess. If you're familiar with this type of cheap and raunchy Z-grade cinema, you know what else to expect, right? We're talking dialogs clearing added during the post-production phase, inexplicably large amounts of filming people's feet, monotonous go-go- dancing music, etc, etc

During the mid-60s, there was a slew of these tacky drive-in movies. Most of them were barely indistinguishable from one another. They all had exceptionally pretty, but sleazy female characters, who were always running around nude, or nearly-nude. Most of these flicks also featured plenty of violence (especially of women getting beaten and raped), and excessively bawdy lesbian sex scenes, no-doubt thrown in to titillate male viewers.

This film has quite a bizarre plot premise. When a young wife is raped by the janitor in her apartment building, she flees the scene, after killing him in self defense. As the story unravels, the viewer sees the wife waking-up screaming, relieved that what happened to her seemed to be only a dream. Or was it? The viewer can never quite be sure, because of the convoluted way that the story progresses.

This movie, like others of it's ilk, is little more than soft-core porn. But it, and other films like it, were on the cutting-edge of sensationalistic sex and violence, during the swinging 60s. These films were quite shocking, back when they were made. Now, films like these seem ludicrously melodramatic. If you are nostalgic about seeing seedy 60s B movies, then you may find this film mildly entertaining.

"Meg Kelton" (Gigi Darlene) is a housewife in Boston who wakes up a little frisky one morning but cannot seem to get her husband to stay with her rather than going to work. So after he leaves she commences to clean the apartment and upon taking the trash out gets viciously raped by the janitor. Afterwards, she gets back to her apartment and while still in a state of disbelief sees a note put under her apartment door ordering her to come to the rapist's apartment. Fearful that he might tell her husband she does as she is told but when she gets there the janitor attempts to rape her again. She then kills the janitor but in a state of panic decides she has to leave town before the police catch up to her. So she heads to New York where she thinks she can blend in and leave all of her problems behind. Unfortunately, she has no idea what awaits her there. Now rather than reveal any more of this movie I will just say that this is an exploitation film from the mid-60's which suffers from its low budget, bad script and less than adequate acting. Not only that, but what was even worse was the constant music which played from start to finish. Even so, the aforementioned Gigi Darlene was quite attractive and the ending contained a nice double-twist which certainly helped this film to a certain degree. Be that as it may, I rate it as just slightly below average.

Sometimes bawdy, sometimes gaudy, definitely mid-60's urban in feeling and then there's gorgeous GiGi Darlene! Perhaps one of the early (only?) B-movies to attempt the "Dream Sequence" thing, where the audience finds out that Meg's shlepping from one serial rapist and sexual deviant to another while on the lam is nothing more than a dream. A dirty, sexually overturned bad-girl dream. Or is it? The acting as well as the sound is laughable at times, being over-emphasized or just plain cheap- but then again that is part of the innocence and charm that now you'd find in this film. Listen closely while she's on the run.. you'll hear the ONE horn from some distant '57 Plymouth over, and over, and over again. (simulating what I guess was supposed to be NYC traffic!) Hylarious!

Meg, apparently frustrated by her hunk-a-luscious husband going to a "meeting" on a Saturday, decides to don her skimpiest sheer house dress & pom-pom slippers and clean the apartment. Little does she know, the janitor(I've decided he's a Russian Immigrant) scopes her out in the hallway , and realizes that he, too has pent up lust and .. well - you'll see.

For the time, the sets,backdrops, and locations are all really cool to see - and you'd have to be half dead not to STILL look at GiGi Darlene and swoon. Even by today's standards, she's a babe! But aside from that this movie has it all.. Alcoholism, Fetishism, lesbianism ( I'm an acrobatic dancer!) and some of the corniest scenes you'll ever witness. Gee, it's GOOD!

A sexploitation flick that's risen to cult status based on its lurid title alone, Bad Girls Go To Hell is a time-capsule of sixties' sleaze. Don't expect Doris Wishman to inject any feminist subtext into this misogynist genre. This was Wishman's first roughie, a sub genre focusing on titillating the audience with male violence perpetrated against women. Sadly, this trend of equating sex with violence continues to be prevalent in pornography today. Wishman, like fellow exploitation director Russ Meyer, shows considerable skill as an editor. However, Bad Girls Go To Hell is a technical mess. The threadbare plot focuses on a housewife who flees the police after murdering her rapist. Why she doesn't claim self-defense for the quite justified killing is never explained. The housewife, played by Gigi Darlene, is quite a beautiful woman. She carries herself with grace and poise, seemingly unaffected by Wishman's leering camera. There are numerous salacious shots focusing on Darlene's buxom form, but most of the nudity appears in the first ten minutes. After that, the film relies more on her meager acting talents. The movie ends with an "it was all just a dream" coda, explaining away some of the more bizarre and unrealistic moments. The strongest moments of this film, a lesbian subplot, appears to have been cut to ribbons by outraged censors.

Watching Doris Wishman movies is like driving past a car wreck; you know you're gonna see something awful if you look, but you just can't help yourself! The Something Weird DVD edition of "Bad Girls Go To Hell" that I just watched is paired with another Wishman epic, "Another Day, Another Man," and it makes for one perfect(ly awful) double feature. In "Bad Girls...," a young woman kills her janitor, comes to NYC and is attacked/seduced by practically every person she bumps into. A nice twist ending DOES mitigate some of the weirdness that precedes it. In "Another Day...," a woman with the hugest bouffant hairdo you've ever seen becomes a call girl to pay for her hubby's doctor bills. But these capsule descriptions can't possibly describe the level of sleazy teasing that these films are all about. While neither features ANY frontal nudity at all--odd, given the fact that Wishman's "Nude on the Moon," made five years EARLIER, was replete with nudity--the level of leering is not to be believed. Now I know what a raincoat-wearing old man in a 42 St. theatre in the mid-60s must have felt like. Trust me, you will need a HOT shower after watching these sleazy flicks. Lingering shots of a tossed-off brassiere lying on the floor are Wishman's idea of titillation. And her direction really does make Ed Wood look like Orson Welles. She seems incapable of shooting anything without including meaningless shots of inanimate objects. And there is no synchronized dialogue to speak of. As the "Psychotronic Video Guide" so rightly puts it, "it's a rare occurrence when a few words happen to match the lips." So why have I given these flicks two stars? Because you stare at your TV screen in utter disbelief, occasionally cracking up, and by the end realize that you HAVE, somehow, been entertained. And since neither film is much longer than an hour, the experience flies by pretty quickly. Thank God.

My first Doris Wishman film, which a friend told me was supposedly one of her best (if so, then I'd hate to see her worst)! This thing concerns a young woman who first gets attacked by her janitor and so flees away into the big city where she incomprehensibly manages to become involved with all sorts of sick and abusive strangers along her path, yet naively and inexplicably keeps moving in with them! Kind of perversely funny watching her shack up with each guy only to soon be carrying her same suitcase away with her in the middle of the night again and again.

* out of ****

Prolific grindhouse auteur Doris Wishman ( Indecent Desires, Keyholes are for Peeping) probably covered the budget of this crass film at the opening day matinee on 42nd St. With a looped soundtrack from end to end she banks the film's draw on her leads (Gigi Darlene) butt as leitmotif, insuring a racy trailer and hot lobby cards to draw the porno connisor.

Darlene plays a horny housewife whose carnal demands make hubby late for work. A nightmare then takes her on a picaresque journey of erotic fantasy before she comes to and faces a violent deja vue in reality.

Laughable from the outset Bad Girls is clumsy (aren't they all) soft porn circa 65 with Gigi making ludicrous choices in order to keep the titillation flowing. Relaxed censorship eventually brought an end to this type of sloppy porn but not Ms. Wishman's career who at age 90 churned out the immemorable Dildo Heaven. You had to hand to Dorie, she went down swinging.

Filming in glorious and gritty black and white, Ms Wishman offers us the beautiful and talented Gigi Darlene as an everywoman in 1960's urban America suffering the birth-pangs of the sexual revolution. Take a peek at this, if you ever get the opportunity, to see an example of the art that influenced pulp film-makers of the 1960's and 1970's, John Waters, and many musicians and artists active in the Punk scene.

I knew going into this film that it wasn't going to be some grand masterpiece or anything like that but even for a B-movie it doesn't really seem to be all that great.

There are a myriad of issues with the sound, especially, which leaves me feeling like all of the sound effects and some of the dialogue was on a sound board or something. I understand that this was a low-budget film but I feel like there could have been a little more effort in the making of this film.

I guess I could say it's funny that a lot of the film is spent in a limited number of locations that reminds me of video games from the late-90s and early 00's where there's a hub world and different levels you spend a short amount of time at before you got to the next one via the same hub world. The first hub world in this film is Central Park and the 2nd one is the same NYC street.

This film kind of reminds me of Forbidden Daughters in that the plot is just a backdrop to push along the next scene where you can look at attractive women be attractive- but in this film's case it's not very appealing. Maybe it was OK in the 60s but there's nothing I found very appealing about the assault scenes- of which there are many.

I really don't see the appeal of this film. I went in thinking it was going to be so bad it's good but instead I got whatever this was. At least it was short.

Bad Girls Go to Hell (1965)

** (out of 4)

Doris Wishman directed this sexploitation cult classic, which is one of the better known films out there. A married but bored housewife gets raped by the apartment janitor and eventually kills him. She flees from the scene hoping to start a new life in NYC but everyone she meets either physically or sexually abuses her. Like many other sexploitation flicks, this one here was shot in grainy B&W without sound, which was later dubbed in. The best thing about this film is the pretty good, if rough, editing, which cuts to various scenes very well. This film was still early in the sex genre so there isn't too much nudity but Wishman plays with the viewer with her fast cuts and quit edits. There's not much that really goes on but I was still caught up in the film.

Iconoclast indie film-maker Doris Wishman's darkly decadent B/W roughie 'Bad Girls Go To Hell' (1966) is a devilishly indecent descent into a luridly carousing cornucopia of steamy celluloid excess!!!! Slake your illicit hungers upon the sultry smorgasbord of the sinfully fornicating flesh so morbidly coveted by the joyfully hellbound, heroically humping hedonists herein! Prepare to wantonly experience an exquisite catharsis of sublime saturnalia beyond even your wildest screams!!!!!! 'Sometimes it's good to be bad, but Bad Girls are ALWAYS better than good!