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Satan Was A Lady
[Boomshadow Pictures]
2001; color
Directed by Doris Wishman
Starring: Honey Lauren, Glyn Styler, Edge, Hans Lohl & Laudet Torres
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Satan Was A Lady is one of the films Doris Wishman made towards the end of her career, and the last one to see a proper release. (There are two listed after SWAL on the IMDB, Dildo Heaven and Each Time I Kill, but I've been unable to track down a copy of, or much information on, either.) The plot revolves around a very Wishman-esque female lead, Cleo, played by Honey Lauren. As is the case with most of her heroines, Cleo longs for a different life - one filled with glamour and riches and expensive furry coats - but she's saddled with a good-for-nothin' man and a go-nowhere job. Of course back in the day Cleo would have been a secretary or had some other type of menial desk job but, in keeping with the times, she's a stripper / dominatrix. At one point she also refers to herself as a whore—meaning a prostitute—so I'm still not 100 percent clear on her main occupation, but you get the idea. Similarly, her boyfriend Eddie (played to the hilt by real-life crooner Glyn Styler) has an updated occupation as well; he's a musician. And how accurate of a pairing is that! At any rate, as Cleo grows ever more weary of her situation, she gets a little more creative and decides to add blackmailer to her resume. For her mark she chooses an ex-client, a wealthy businessman who paid her to whip him bloody, and she just so happens to have photographic proof on hand for when he invariably says he won't give her a dime. But, as marks are wont to do, he relents and gives her money to keep her quiet. This seems like it would be the end of the story but Cleo makes one giant mistake, she goes home and puts said ill gotten funds under ye olde mattress. Seeing as how most musicians with stripper girlfriends spend the majority of their time either on the couch or in the bed, and Eddie is no different, it takes him no time to liberate Cleo from her wad of cash and gamble it all away. (Funny, I would have thought he'd spend it on drugs.) Once she realizes she's been ripped off by her Romeo, Cleo does what any angry, desperate female would do in the same situation, she makes the bastard pay. In this case, with his life. Unfortunately killing Eddie only solves one problem and, since she's right back at square one, she's forced to re-blackmail the guy, setting off another whole chain of events and ultimately leading to a bleak and violent end. In some ways SWAL is very different from her better known early films, but by the same token it comes off like a modern version of her black & white roughies and is pure Wishman from start to finish.
—Bunny
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