Apart from Russ Meyer and Ted V. Mikels, it seemed like almost every major director from the '60s exploitation era ended up dabbling in more explicit fare during the porno chic era of the 1970s. While some like Roberta Findlay and Radley Metzger delivered some of their best films in that phase, others like Ray Dennis Steckler, Joseph W. Sarno, and Herschell Gordon Lewis weren't even remotely as successful. Somewhere in the middle is Doris Wishman, who always insisted she never went hardcore despite discreetly directing two adults-only films in the mid-1970s. Her visual stamp is all over both of them from top to bottom(s) and she had some of the best New York talents of the era at her disposal, but one of the films is undeniably the superior of the two.

A strangely moody supernatural yarn spiced up with several sex scenes, Come with Me, My Love starts off with a sepia-toned opening in which an emotionless husband, Randolph (Hurst), walks in on his wife cheating on him with another man. When she removes her wedding ring and drops it to the floor, he shoots the couple and himself. Flash forward to "Kenmare City 1976," where the scene of the crime is now a very busy boarding house in which the tenants seem to spend all their spare time hooking up with each other. Enter new tenant Abby (Austin), who's a dead ringer for Randolph's murdered wife and causes him to occasionally manifest out of the wallpaper (or something) to have sex with her. He's also still incredibly jealous and prone to killing off anyone who sleeps with her, a homicidal trend that soon extends to her neighbors.

With its adorably cheap in-camera ghost effects and seemingly nonstop sex scenes, Come with Me, My Love is a primo '70s upstate sleaze with plenty of familiar faces including R. Bolla a.k.a. Cannibal Holocaust's Robert Kerman, Martin's Roger Caine, a typically scene-stealing Vanessa del Rio, Levi Richards (whose bathtub demise is an absurd highlight), and a big role for Annie Sprinkle as the friendly, frisky neighbor next door. Among the usual Wishman trademarks you get plentiful funky library music and an abundance of dubbed dialogue, both of which somehow seem more competent than usual in the context of a horror porno. Doris reportedly sat out the filming of the unsimulated sex scenes, leaving duties instead to regular cinematographer C. Davis Smith to capture all the action. Before anyone knew this really was a Wishman title, it was a familiar staple on home video including a VHS from VCX under its original title and a VHS and DVD-R from Something Weird under the unforgettable title The Haunted Pussy (sans opening title card), plus a VHS rip as part of an Alpha Blue set. The Peekara Blu-ray from 2022 easily blows away its predecessors with a gorgeous 2K scan from the camera negative; it's virtually spotless and far more sumptuous looking than you'd ever guess from prior releases. The DTS-HD MA 2.0 English mono track is also pristine, with optional English SDH subtitles.

Sharing space on the same disc is Wishman's prior XXX quickie, Satan Was a Lady, a title she liked so much she reused it for one of her later features in 2001. The negative for this one apparently no longer exists, but the nice quality print used here is mostly in good shape and much better than the earlier fuzzy VHS from Blue Video. This one's essentially a more explicit riff on Doris' twisty roughie films as poor Claudia (Anthony) is backstabbed by just about everyone around her including sister Terry (Sprinkle), who's having a torrid fling with Claudia's fiance, Victor (Richards)-- who in turn is sleeping with C.J. Laing in a one-scene appearance. Tying it all together is a covert inheritance scam with Claudia at the center, which really just pops up at the very end to give it a noir-ish flourish to justify the title. Sprinkle is the real star here and gets most of the screen time along with Richards, along with the usual kitschy apartment interiors Wishman loved so much. The plot isn't even remotely as nuts as the companion film, but the director's fans will get a kick out of this one anyway with Doris herself providing some of the dubbing as usual.

Reviewed on December 4, 2022.

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