Retro-Seduction Cinema | Buy at Amazon | Review
by Mike Wood
To be the master of the nude volleyball film is better than to have not earned notice at all. Doris Wishman, of course, was more than that. Though she started out doing nudie pictures, and remained an obscure toiler in the sexploitation and minor-league horror genres, in her own way she was an auteur whose style is unmistakable.
While Ed Wood struggled to make films with visions that were beyond his technical abilities, Wishman made no pretense of art, yet developed a way of framing shots and focusing on the minutae of scene props that were endearing and gave added life to otherwise badly-acted films with reed-thin plots.
HIDEOUT IN THE SUN was her first feature, and concerned a couple of bank robbers who carjack a woman while on the lam and force her to provide a place to hideout while waiting an escape boat to Cuba. As luck would have it, the woman works for and takes them to a nudist colony!
Mayhem ensues as one robber sweats out both the wait and his plan of double-cross, while the other bides time falling in love with the kidnap victim and posing as her husband as they sit by the pool and volleyball net to watch the frolicking and flopping. Eventually, all pay for their sins, but love endures, even if it might have to wait out a 15-25 year sentence. Wishman's genius was in having none; she cranked out films according to the marketplace of the times, and by the end of her career that meant pseudo-porn and her final film, DILDO HEAVEN.
And yet her films remain endearing and somehow strong because of her own peculiar sense of timing and blocking out scenes. Had she known what she was doing, she would have been even more unrepentant back in the day than she already was. Her films have lasting value as the work of a woman who made films her way, with a vision even, in a genre she herself was into only for the money, and who delved into violence and sadism when it meant a bigger payday. That vision comes through on this debut, with its sheepishness, odd joy and creepiness.
