My Brother's Wife (1966) Sexploitation Transitional Noir

"Doris' b&w nudies are like tawdry pulp novels in which all life on the planet behaves like characters trapped in an especially odd soap opera."
                                                    (Lisa Petrucci)


Directed by Doris Wishman.
Written by Doris Wishman who was credited as Dawn Whitman. Cinematography was by Tony Spalla  and C. Davis Smith. A Jer Picture production.

Starring June Roberts (below) I've seen her only in Flesh and Lace, Rent-a-Girl but besides this film she was in  21 other titles, as housewife Mary, Bob Oran as Bob her husband, Sam Stewart as Frankie, Bob's brother, with Darlene Bennett as Zena, Joni Roberts as Lil, Dawn Bennett as Della (uncredited), and Louis Silverman as Pool player (uncredited).

"FILM NOIR HAD AN INEVITABLE TRAJECTORY…
THE ECCENTRIC & OFTEN GUTSY STYLE OF FILM NOIR HAD NO WHERE ELSE TO GO… BUT TO REACH FOR EVEN MORE OFF-BEAT, DEVIANT– ENDLESSLY RISKY & TABOO ORIENTED SET OF NARRATIVES FOUND IN THE SUBVERSIVE AND EXPLOITATIVE CULT FILMS OF THE MID TO LATE 50s through the 60s and into the early 70s!" The Last Drive In (The Last Drive In)

New York City from Central Park

New York City in the swinging sixties.

Mary a twenty-two year old bride is stuck in a marriage with a dumpy, bald, and much older hubby Bob. Bob is basically a slug and a schlub.

Mary (June Roberts)

Bob (Bob Oran)

She has nice clothes and a nice apartment filled with some pricey knick knacks but Bob is seriously like a deer in the headlights in deciphering Mary's signals in the lovemaking department. When Mary puts on a see through nightie displaying her charms to Bob, she asks him...

"I'm beautiful! I really am! Don't you want me?"

Mary: I'm beautiful! I really am! Don't you want me?

To which clueless Bob answers....

Bob: Mary, are you sick?

"Are you sick?"

She obviously wants to get laid while Bob wants to catch ZZZZzzzzs. Into this dysfunctional un-bliss slithers Frankie.

Frankie (Sam Stuart)

 Frankie is Bob's sleazy grease ball brother. He's been out of town on business. Frankie shows up at Bob's apartment, He knocks on the door. Mary answers. Frankie gets a boner, Mary starts dripping.

They like what they see, but Bob arrives and things cool down. Bob is surprised and quite happy to see Frankie.

Bob invites him to stay in the spare bedroom. They have dinner, drinks and shoot the breeze.

Later that night, Mary brings Frankie an extra blanket and helps him un pack. She is surprised when she sees a gun in the bottom of his suitcase.

Frankie tells her he does a lot of late night driving and needs it for protection. After Frankie gets settled in he splits and goes and visits his old gal pal with benefits Zena. Zena is a party girl. She has a swingers party going on when Frankie knocks on her door.

Zeena (Darlene Bennett)

A swinger at Zena's party

Mid 60's Interior Design  geometric wallpaper, chi-chi chinese furniture and star wall clock

At first, Zena is pissed off to see her sleaze ball ex boyfriend at the door, but after Frankie gives her a hangdog look, gives her a wink and waggles his eyebrows, he melts her heart. They skink to a chaise lounge and start groping.

The next day after Bob goes to work Frankie starts cooking in the kitchen with Mary. They begin to have an affair. Now Frankie is getting his noodle wet with both women.

Interior design french provincial furniture and torchiere floor lamp

Zena splits for The City Of Angels after a confrontation with an old lesbian lover and sends Frankie a letter asking him to head West and join her there. Frankie, who now wants to follow Zena, asks Mary if she has any money. He deceives her telling her that they can use Mary and Bob's $2,000 savings account to runway from New York with.

Things go Noirsville when Mary discovers Zena's letter to Frankie.

Noirsville

 

dead on the shag rug

Doris Wishman's film is like a sleazy noir-ish pulp paperback novel come to life. Set in a strange nether world between the end of the Beat Generation and the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Besides glimpses of mid 60's Manhattan we get a bonus of actual mid sixties interior design.

These are not studio sets but obviously real apartments.  Spage Age curves with garish geometric wallpaper, paisley and floral fabrics and ethnic motifs. Walls are hung with star clocks, we see danish modern kitchenettes, opening onto shag rug living rooms filled with chaise lounges, floor TV's, smoke stands, chi-chi chinese and French provincial furniture lit by torchiere floor lamps.

Porcelain figurines of Buddha, Shiva, with other ethnic knick knacks and geometric doodads on open shelf room dividers.

The men are wearing narrow lapel suits and ties with black lace shoes, the women are in sheath dresses and are still wearing garter belts with stockings. A lot of sequences are shot with a handheld camera in quite a noirish style. The tale begins with a showdown between Bob and Frankie in a pool hall and then goes into an extended flashback.

Mary's Noir-ish Striptease

Director Doris Wishman was born in the Bronx, NYC. She directed and produced roughly thirty feature films during a career spanning four decades. She began her film career as a hobby after the death of her husband in 1958. She had only been married a few months.

Doris Wishman

Wishman was known for her cutaway style. While filming a scene she would splice in cutaways to various inanimate objects, its been suggested by Moya Luckett that that cutaway style was a way to  possibly disrupt male gaze and incorporate a feminine gaze. Wishman was honored at the New York Underground Film Festival in 1998.

June Roberts with her distinct flipped bob with Bettie Page bangs hairstyle was a busy sexploitation actress right up until Sexploitation was obliterated by full blown hardcore. June left the business, her last film was Kitten in a Cage (1968) in a supporting role as a topless gogo girl/stripper below.

June Roberts in Kitten in the Cage

Screencaps are from a Something Weird download. Cheap but interesting 6/10.