the soundtrack of FLIRTING SCHOLAR), with SCHOLAR let- terboxed at 1.80:1. BEGGARS starts off at 1.75:1, then com­ presses to the same ratio as SCHOLAR near the end of Side 1. Mei Ah has used their standard Cantonese/Digital, Mandarin/ Analog sound set-up here, but the digital tracks of BEGGARS retain that film’s original Dolby Stereo mix which features an ac­ tive surround channel which thun­ derously accentuates the battle sequences. —JC


INDECENT DESIRES


1967, Something Weird Video, HF, $23.00 ppd., 70m 54s Walking through Central


Park, a middle-aged feeb (Trom Little) finds a strange ring and a cheap blonde doll in a garbage can, takes them home to his hovel, and builds a pathetic little shrine to honor them. The next day, he happens to see Ann (Sharon Kent), a blonde secre­ tary for whom he fosters an in­ stant obsession based on her resemblance to the doll. There­ after, whenever he dons the ring and handles the doll, Ann— whether nearby, or somewhere across town—feels invisible hands exploring her body, which frightens her and prompts a breakup with her fiancé, Tom (Michael Lawrence). When Ann’s voodoo admirer spies Tom leav­ ing her apartment, he replaces his furtive caresses with cruel physical punishments, and the disembodied abuse leads Ann to suspect that she’s having a mental breakdown. Scripted by “Dawn Whit­


man” and directed by “Louis Silverstein,” this is actually middle-period Doris Wishman, capturing her work at a time before it succumbed to abra­ sive, frenzied recklessness. Those familiar with her later


16


films may be surprised by the level of technical competence approached here; the actors’ dialogue is postsynched to their lip movements (no back of the head shots here), seemingly by the actors themselves, and C. Davis Smith’s frosty, proficient, B&W photography conveys the aura of an Ingmar Bergman film tailor-made for 42nd Street. As usual with Wishman, the flavor of the muzak accompaniment changes almost from shot-to- shot, the continuity is non-exis­ tent (at one point Ann runs out of one shot and saunters into the next), and the endless high- angle shots and cutaways to shoes on broccoli-textured car­ pet indicate a fierce and incorri­ gible foot fetish. The makeup is also atrocious, with the main male character’s middle age suggested by having white toothpaste or something combed into his hair. What is most interesting


about this movie, one of Wish- man’s best, is that its dialogue sounds transcribed—almost verbatim—from the fantasies little girls devise for their Barbie dolls (Ann’s best friend is named “Babs”). Ann’s encounters with Tom are utterly sexless, even when she’s wearing a see- through nightgown; she tells Babs (Jackie Richards) about her engagement blithely, as if these things happen every day; and both women spend a lot of time in apartments no bigger than a carrying case, showing off their nude bodies and fash­ ion accessories, and kissing their reflections in mirrors. Some might interpret the go­ ings-on as a sick fantasy about the inability of women to con­ trol their own bodies, but it seems more to the point as a parable about the importance of learning to articulate one’s sexual feelings. No one in this film is comfortable doing this:


the doll fetishist—a social out­ cast—doesn’t have a single line of dialogue, Ann is incapable of explaining her torments to Tom (and indeed banishes him as though he were responsible for her sensations), and Babs be­ comes an uninhibited sexual creature only when drunk or alone. Furthermore, none of these storylines communicate with one another; they require the omniscient perspective of the viewer to tie them all together. SWV’s transfer looks and


sounds excellent, though the picture is allowed to briefly roll in two instances. (Video finger­ printing, I reckon.) The amus­ ing liner notes on the colorful clamshell box identifies the voo­ doo vagrant as “Zeb,” although the film itself never assigns him a name. —TL


LEMORA—THE LADY DRACULA


1973, Moore Video, HF/S/SS, $42.95 ppd., 84m 56s Midnight Video, HF, $24.00 ppd., 84m 44s


Moore Video and Midnight


Video, two mail-order video ser­ vices that previously cooperated on an official release of DE­RANGED, have gone their sepa­ rate ways with this macabre, ’20s era fairy tale, written and directed by Richard Blackburn (who later co-wrote EATING RAOUL with Paul Bartel). Cheryl Smith stars as Lila Lee, the abandoned daughter of fugitive gangster Alvin Lee (William Whitton), raised by a smalltown Baptist minister (Blackburn, who also narrates the film) whose church choir cultivated her renown as “The Singing Angel.” Lila’s peaceful life is complicated with the arrival of a letter from “Lemora,” who has been caring for her father

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