← Back to Reviews

Too Much Too Often!


Too Much Too Often! (Wishman, 1968)



Doris Wishman essentially remade Too Much Too Often! in 2001 as Satan Was a Lady (not to be confused with the 1975 Satan Was a Lady, a hardcore film she did with Annie Sprinkle that has little do with either of these), and probably the most drastic difference aside from the wide gulf in quality (cannot stress how much more entertaining this one is) is that the gender of the protagonist differs between the versions. In Satan Was a Lady, the evil scheming dominatrix who sets out to blackmail a client and seduce the client's son for easy money is female. In Too Much Too Often!, the evil scheming dom...inator? (that sounds like a killer robot; looks like it's just dom) who sets out to blackmail a client and seduce the client's daughter for easy money is male.

From having seen my share of sexploitation movies, this character type feels so distinctly female that having their gender flipped colours the proceedings interestingly. These movies were made for primarily straight male audiences, so it's no surprise that the female dominatrix types, even when presented as the protagonist, were an object of desire as much as a point of audience identification. Switching the character to male, the audience identification is still there (the somewhat aspirational story arc kind of forces this on the material), but surprisingly so is the sense of desire. I wouldn't call this a particularly homoerotic movie (the one gay sex scene, a whipping session between the main character and his client, is presented in frantic and shadowy contrast to the more sensual straight scenes), but the character is one defined by his charisma and sexual potency. Wishman seems to be in love with this character, even if the things he does (blackmailing his client, beating his pregnant ex-girlfriend) should make us hate him. It helps that the actor playing him, Buck Starr, is pretty magnetic even when he's being dubbed over.

Other than that, this is pretty classic Wishman, with the visual style maybe a bit more forceful and adventurous than usual. (The Something Weird / AGFA Blu-ray for some reason has this on an S-VHS transfer. It actually doesn't look that bad, but I wish this had gotten a proper restoration. Wonder if there's an elements issue.) There's one sex scene between the protagonist and his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend that has a nice playful energy, especially when the camera gets up nice and close and starts tilting on its axis and moving along their bodies. And you get late appearances from Wishman regulars Sam Stewart and the great Darlene Bennett. The latter is seemingly dubbed by someone several years her senior (possibly Wishman herself), and is introduced her nipple perfectly framed in a hand mirror, which is just great cinema. Now, things maybe don't turn out too well for either of them, but that just drives home what a POS the protagonist is.