A Night to Dismember

A Night to Dismember

1983 • English-language films

Body count: 16 • Sleaze count: 5

Amazon • IMDb

Filmed in 1979, the release of A Night to Dismember was delayed until 1983 due to a mishap at Movielab, where the film was being processed. With most of her original footage destroyed, Doris Wishman rebuilt the film using what remained, adding a narrator (Tim O'Malley, the detective investigating the murders) to constantly explain the proceedings, often before they actually occur. At other times, the narrator simply reiterates what is being shown on-screen, voices the other character's dialogue for them, or tells us what they're dreaming of.

Gorgon Video and MPI offered a VHS in 1989, but its rarity left the film largely unseen until Elite Entertainment, Inc. released their DVD in 2001. John Charles writes in Video Watchdog #81 that "the anamorphic presentation ... almost certainly masks-off more picture information than it restores on the sides." The included commentary track from Doris Wishman and her cinematographer C. Davis Smith alternates between barbed insults, arguments, and occasionally relevant facts (such as the aforementioned film loss at the lab), and a promotional trailer contains a lot of the missing footage.

Death by: 1: axe (sleaze); 2: axe (accidental); 3: pruning shears (sleaze); 4: hanging (self-inflicted); 5: spike; 6: machete; 7: machete, decapitation; 8: machete, decapitation, fire (insurance); 9: axe, heart removal (insurance); 10: car; 11: axe, decapitation; 12: icepick; 13: axe; 14: buried alive; 15: strangulation; 16: axe. Sleaze by: 1: bath (death), breasts (death); 2: breasts (unfulfilled); 3: full-frontal nudity (death); 4: striptease (unfulfilled); 5: sex.