Bad Girls Go to Hell is a 1965 film directed by the queen of 1960s nudie movies, Doris Wishman.
Meg (Gigi Darlene) is a housewife who, one lazy Saturday morning, would like nothing more than for her husband Ted to have sex with her. Ted manages to resists the charms of his smoking hot wife, because he has to take care of some things at the office. So he goes to work.
Left to her own devices Meg does a little light cleaning before stepping out of the front door of the apartment...where she is immediately assaulted by the janitor. When he hears someone coming he lets her go, but later, he slides a note under her door demanding that she come to his apartment or he'll tell her husband. Like a moron Meg goes, and sure enough the janitor tries to rape her again. This time she winds up whacking him over the head with a ceramic bowl. She kills him.
Panicking, with blood spattered over her face and a dead guy on the floor, Meg decides that no one will believe her, so she must get out of town. She takes the train from her home of Boston to New York, hoping to fade into the crowd. She has a lot more adventures that tend to involve rape, attempted rape, and women in lingerie.
Tropes:
- The Alcoholic: Apparently Al, the first person Meg stays with in New York. He is so nice and kind that he lets her stay in his apartment without expecting any form of payment, monetary or otherwise—in fact, when she puts her hand on his, he swats it away. But then she makes the mistake of offering him a drink. He instantly flies into a rage, chugging most of the whiskey bottle before taking his belt off and whipping poor Meg with it for no reason at all.
- All Just a Dream: Meg has been caught by a detective and is about to be taken away, when she wakes up in her own bed at home, screaming. It was all a dream.
- Contrived Coincidence: There are eight million stories in the naked city, but Meg winds up living with and working for an old lady who is mom to one of the detectives that's looking for Meg. Of course, this may be justified by the All Just a Dream ending.
- Exploitation Film: One of Doris Wishman's "roughies", a nudie flick centered around violence towards women. The unfortunate Meg can't seem to find a man who doesn't want to rape her.
- Filming for Easy Dub: Wishman, who didn't record with synchronized sound but looped everything in later, was famous for this. Over and over again this film has Filming for Easy Dub shots, with one person shown onscreen while the offscreen person talks, or a conversation between two people as they walk away, or a scene where the camera points at ducks in the park as Meg talks to Al.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: The most surreal bit in the movie comes when a knock is heard on the door, the old lady announces that her son the detective is home, and the detective enters—by stepping through a closet, not the front door. This seems to be a hint that something very weird is going on, and just second later, the story is revealed to be All Just a Dream.
- Here We Go Again!: A dark example. Meg wakes up in her bed as the story is revealed to be All Just a Dream. Her husband, who had to double back for some documents, bids her goodbye, again. She putters around the house in a lacy see-through nightie, again. She steps out the front door in her nightie, again. And she's assaulted by the janitor, again, and the film ends. Indeed it comes close to "Groundhog Day" Loop, except things didn't truly reset, as Ted specifically says that he came back to get the documents.
- Hitler Cam: The detective who catches Meg is shot this way, looming above her and the camera as he tells her he knows who she is and the game is up.
- Hong Kong Dub: Famously Wishman never made a movie with synchonized sound, instead Filming for Easy Dub most of the time. Whenever she does actually have a character's lips visible as they talk onscreen, the dubbing is horrifically awful.
- Idiot Ball:
- Meg narrowly escapes being raped in the stairwell by the janitor. Then, after he sends her a note saying she has to come over to his apartment or he'll tell her husband, she goes. Why? What is the janitor going to tell Ted, that he nearly raped Ted's wife?
- The morning after Della and Meg have sex, Meg packs up and leaves. Della asks why, saying "You know I love you," and Meg answers that she loves Della too, and "That's why I must go." What? Why does having sex with Della mean that Meg has to leave, especially since leaving once again leaves her broke and homeless on the streets of New York? When she also now knows the cops are looking for her?
- Lingerie Scene: Probably half the movie is lingerie scenes. It seems that 1965 women don't sleep in pajamas or anything and they don't putter around their house in robes; instead they all wear lacy see-through peignoirs, or full body stockings, or bra and panties.
- Lipstick Lesbian: Della, briefly Meg's roommate, wears lacy fancy underwear and makeup and has carefully styled hair, and is a lesbian, as shown in the scene where she crawls into bed next to Meg and they (seemingly) have sex.
- P.O.V. Cam: From Meg's perspective as Al, driven to a violent frenzy by alcohol, approaches her with a look of crazed hatred on his face.
- Rape Discretion Shot: The film cuts away as Meg is raped by the husband half of the couple that rented her the room.
- Scenery Censor: Despite Meg being half-naked or all-naked for most of the movie, the film is oddly coy. There is little actual nudity, and in all three rape scenes the sequence is blocked so that the man on top of Meg hides her breasts. This is doubly strange because Wishman hadn't been shy about breasts earlier in her career, and packed lots of topless women into films like the ridiculously titled Nude on the Moon.
- Sexy Discretion Shot: The scene cuts away before Della and Meg have sex. In fact it's not clear that they did have sex, but given how Meg turned back to face an amorous Della, and the cut to Della's bra abandoned on the floor, it seems that they did.
- A Taste of the Lash: For no reason whatsoever, Al pulls his belt off and whips Meg with it.
- Toplessness from the Back: Della, the lesbian that Meg briefly rooms with, is shot this way when she's changing out of lingerie and into bra and panties.
- Within Arm's Reach: The janitor has torn Meg's clothes off and is about to complete raping her when Meg, flailing around, finds a ceramic bowl. She bashes his skull in with it.
- Worst News Judgment Ever: Meg knows that the cops have traced her to New York when she sees a paper with the headline "POLICE SEEK BLONDE SUSPECT IN BOSTON MURDER CASE"...on the front page of the paper in type big enough for the Kennedy assassination.
