1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
That was no lady...., October 25, 2008
This review is from: Satan Was a Lady (DVD)
This is the first Doris Wishman film I've viewed, and I now understand why so many feel this represents Wishman at her low point. Satan Was A Lady appears to be an attempt to revive a kind of retro-noir ambience that apparently characterized her earlier films. The 60's music, the funky strip bar setting, the "big hair" coiffure of the title character ("Cleo" played by Honey Lauren) all reek of past decades. One scene even deploys a rotary telephone! The plot centers on Lauren's burning desire to escape her dreary life as a stripper and dominatrix. Whipping guys for money and robbing drunks for more is not going to get her the fur coat displayed in the store window that she passes every day. And her live-in boyfriend, the strip bar's musician-singer (Glyn Styler), gambles away money, doesn't pay the rent or move his career beyond producing intriguing but depressing songs with titles like "You Killed My Love" and "Come Cry With Me". Why any dive would employ someone who spreads gloom in a place that is already littered with lonely, desperate men is beyond me. Anyway, Cleo's ambition sets in motion a series of calamities. She blackmails one of her whipping clients, John King (Edge), seduces his son, and commits other destructive and self-destructive acts.
In true noir fashion, this movie has no character that exhibits any redeeming qualities (except perhaps King's receptionist). Styler has an interesting voice but his teeth look like they're rotting and he sings with a grimace that gives him the look of being continuously constipated. There's a lecherous bar owner, a frustrated lesbian bartender, bar clients who are hopeless losers, disinterested strippers and businessman King, who beats out even Styler for "ugliest mug".
However, what ultimately torpedoes this film is that it makes noir boring. The acting is atrocious (Lauren is the best of a bad lot), the settings are cheap and claustrophobic, the dialog is warmed-over dreck, and even the strip acts are listless. Perhaps the message is that nobody in the nudie bar business has any chance of enjoying life. But watching that is no fun for us, either. The scenes grow progressively more dark-lit as the story grows grimmer. Lauren doesn't hit a heart-felt note until near the end of the film when she finally expresses an ounce of regret for all the things she's done.
If you want despicable behavior laced with nudity, you can probably find more entertaining fare out there somewhere.
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