Continuing my way through the filmography of Doris Wishman, and AGFA's very nicely put together 'Twilight Years' box set. I decided to revisit 'The Amazing Transplant' tonight. A 71 minute short film as I would affectionately 'rib' it.

The plot opens by introducing us to a young man named Arthur who's visiting a girl he's been 'friendly' with, but has recently gone cold on, and is looking to come clean on his mysterious and sudden dissapearence. However shortly after arriving, something overcomes Arthur and he ends up murdering the young lady, before fleeing the house.

A manhunt ensues and a friend/relative (I dont remember which) of Arthurs family who also happens to be a bit of a sleuth, decides to try and find the lad before he gets himself into more trouble than he can handle.

And what follows is a movie thats basically a 'Rinse/Repeat' job of the detective visiting various women Arthur had been known to be 'Friendly' with, it would then turn out that the women and Arthur had had a sexual experience, whether consensual or otherwise, with the tiniest of breadcrumbs being dropped to the audience as to what is ACTUALLY going on…This happens for about 55-60 minutes of the total runtime.

This all builds up to a 10-15 minute 'finale' in which a revelation about Arthur comes to light that put my jaw on the floor, left me with more questions than answers and left me both speechless and reeling with laughter right up till curtain call.

Being honest? This is a 25 minute short film thats been dragged out to 71 minutes via softcore and rape sequences. From a scripting perspective, its a time killer, and not a good one. a handful of half decent lines, and consistent(-ly dull) pacing does not a great movie make. But that last 10-15 minutes is such a tonal whiplash experience, that I almost admire the BALLS of this film for shaking it up as much as they ultimately do. That closing few minutes alone really raised my opinions of this production. And while I wont say its by any means good. It did enhance my opinion of the movie from 'skippable' to 'Definitely worth seeing at least once'.

The plotting, characters and tone of the production are very soft touch, very minimalist, and makes about 90% of the runtime feel ultimately kind of superfluous. Unlike some of Wishmans other productions where the 'hook' is front loaded and pays off across the runtime. This film leaves the 'hook' till the last possible moment for shock factor. And I think a lot of peoples results may vary on this one because of that.

The directions a bit messy, when its good, its great! Wishman really seems to like to get up close and personal with her cast during sex scenes, and the intimacy of her work as a director I feel really pays off in bringing those moments to life. Unfortunatley; due to budget constraints. This production does have a bit of the 'sweaty 70s' vibes to it, Ray Dennis Stecklers work suffers from the same issue, everything looks a bit dirty, sweaty and ill. theres just a sense of everything needing a good scrub. Part of it is just a byproduct of the era. But some of it is the directional and cinematic choices that amplify that seedy low rent vibe. It makes the film feel a bit cheaper than it probably was (which is saying something…)

On the whole, i'd give the direction a pass, despite the technical faults (soft images, rough and ready sequence building and serious continuity errors throughout that make the vision feel very rushed) The Cine suffers a simialar fate, compositions seem rushed, are sometimes overly soft, cutaway shots dont match their wider counterparts and the whole thing feels like it was just shot in several redressed versions of Wishamans apartment, and int he surrounding areas. the sequences dont really hang together well. I can see an attempt at a vision. But I feel like its heavily limited by a lack of skilled crewmenship and budget.

Performance wise, most of the cast feel like their asleep at the wheel. Broadly speaking, everyone feels like their speaking their lines for the first time (and given the budget, it wouldnt surprise me if that were the case due to the cost of film stock) Everyone looks tired, noones putting the energy in, apart from Al Spencer (who plays Arthur) who does have a very stilted, but VERY energetic turn here, in many ways its a shame he gets locked into non speaking repetative physical work in this film, as when he does get lines, he really delivers them with gusto and makes sure to throw his body fully into it.

And, just for the record, the soundtrack was largely late 60's poppy soft rocky slightly porny sounding instrumentals…its notable by the fact I have nothing to say about it, its there because silence would have been unbearable.

All in all, had it not been for the closing 10-15 minutes, I think i'd have given this film half the score i've ended up giving it. The ending alone doubles its rating. This really should have been a short. Its a fun enough time capsule. definitely one to catch at least once. But I'd struggle to justify watching this one for any other reason than 'im going through a load of Doris Wishman films'.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-amazing-transplant/1/