Margaret Mary Emily Anne Hyra, known professionally as Meg Ryan, is an American actress. Known for her leading roles as quirky, charismatic women since the late 1980s, Ryan is particularly recognized for her work in romantic comedies, a genre she dominated during the 1980s and 1990s. Dubbed "America's Sweetheart" by the media, she became one of Hollywood's most bankable stars of the latter decade.
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is a 1964 American Christmas science fiction comedy film. It was directed by Nicholas Webster, produced and written by Paul L. Jacobson, and based on a story by Glenville Mareth. John Call stars as Santa Claus, ten-year-old Pia Zadora as Girmar the Martian girl, and Doris Rich in the first documented motion picture role of Mrs. Claus.
Ilana Wajc, better known by her stage name Chesty Morgan, and also known as Liliana Wilczkowska and Lillian Stello, is a Polish-born, retired exotic dancer of Jewish descent, who also starred in two films directed by Doris Wishman. Morgan was billed as having a 73 inch bust measurement.
Doris Wishman was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. She is credited with having directed and produced at least 30 feature films during a career spanning over four decades, most notably in the sexploitation film genre.
A sexploitation film is a class of independently produced, low-budget feature film that is generally associated with the 1960s and early 1970s, and that serves largely as a vehicle for the exhibition of non-explicit sexual situations and gratuitous nudity. The genre is a subgenre of exploitation films. The term "sexploitation" has been used since the 1940s.
In film, nudity may be either graphic or suggestive, such as when a person appears to be naked but is covered by a sheet. Since the birth of film, depictions of any form of sexuality have been controversial, and in the case of most nude scenes, had to be justified as part of the story.
David Frank Friedman was an American filmmaker and film producer best known for his B movies, exploitation films, nudie cuties, and sexploitation films.
Nazi exploitation is a subgenre of exploitation film and sexploitation film that involves Nazis committing sex crimes, often as camp or prison overseers during World War II. Most follow the women in prison formula, only relocated to a concentration camp, extermination camp, or Nazi brothel, and with an added emphasis on sadism, gore, and degradation. The most infamous and influential title is a Canadian production, Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (1974). Its surprise success and that of Salon Kitty and The Night Porter led European filmmakers, mostly in Italy, to produce similar films, with just over a dozen being released over the next few years. Globally exported to both cinema and VHS, the films were critically attacked and heavily censored, and the sub-genre all but vanished by the end of the seventies.
Uta Erickson was a Norwegian actress who appeared in many sexploitation films of the late 1960s.
Michael Findlay was an American filmmaker, producer and screenwriter. Along with his wife Roberta, Findlay created numerous low-budget Z movies in the 1960s and 1970s. They have been described as "the most notorious filmmakers in the annals of sexploitation".
Stephen C. Apostolof, sometimes credited under aliases A.C. Stephen(s) or Robert Lee, was a Bulgarian-American filmmaker specializing in low-budget exploitation and erotic films, who gained a cult following for a wide variety of films that range from erotic horror and suburban exposé to western-themed costume pictures and Mission Impossible-type capers such as. Apostolof had gained a reputation for creating high-quality mass entertainment with minimal budgets. He was also one of the few directors to work steadily with the infamous Ed Wood and such sexploitation icons as Marsha Jordan and Rene Bond in the 1960s and 1970s.
Mondo Topless is a 1966 pseudo-documentary directed by Russ Meyer, featuring Babette Bardot and Lorna Maitland among others. It was Meyer's first color film following a string of black and white "roughie nudies", including Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! While a straightforward sexploitation film, the film owes some debt to the French New Wave and cinéma vérité traditions, and is known to some under the titles Mondo Girls and Mondo Top.
Blood Orgy of the Leather Girls is a 1988 horror film directed by Meredith Lucas and starring Robin Gingold, Jo Ann Wyman, and Dale Soules. The film is a gory, low-budget, independent B movie made in the classic "sexploitation" style. The film focuses on the efforts of four very different women looking for revenge on men who have mistreated them.
Mad Cowgirl is a low-budget film by Gregory Hatanaka released in 2006. Hatanaka dedicated the movie to Doris Wishman, who directed 1960s sexploitation films such as Diary of a Nudist, Behind the Nudist Curtain and Bad Girls Go to Hell, and actor John Cassavetes. Mad Cowgirl officially was selected to the SF Indiefest and the Silverlake Film Festival, followed by a limited release in major cities such as New York City and Seattle. Mad Cowgirl was released on DVD on December 5, 2006.
Sex comedy, erotic comedy or more broadly sexual comedy is a genre in which comedy is motivated by sexual situations and love affairs. Although "sex comedy" is primarily a description of dramatic forms such as theatre and film, literary works such as those of Ovid and Giovanni Boccaccio may be considered sex comedies.
Black Shampoo is an American exploitation film directed by Greydon Clark. Released in 1976, the comedy film is considered an example of the blaxploitation and sexploitation subgenres of exploitation film. Produced on a budget of $50,000, the film stars John Daniels as Jonathan Knight, an African American businessman and hairdresser who frequently has sex with his predominantly white female clients, and Tanya Boyd as Brenda, Jonathan's secretary and girlfriend, who was previously in a relationship with a white mob boss, who, out of jealousy towards his ex's new lover, begins to regularly send goons to trash Jonathan's hair salon. The violence escalates as the film progresses.
Jack Ketchum's The GIRL Next Door is a 2007 American psychological horror-thriller film directed by Gregory M. Wilson from a screenplay by Daniel Farrands and Philip Nutman. It is based on Jack Ketchum's 1989 novel of the same name, which was inspired by the real-life murder of Sylvia Likens, to whom the movie is dedicated.
Love Toy is a 1968 soft-core exploitation film, produced and directed by Doris Wishman. It stars Pat Happel, Uta Erickson and Larry Hunter.
A Night to Dismember is a 1983 American slasher horror film, produced and directed by Doris Wishman. The film stars pornographic actress Samantha Fox as a psychotic young woman, recently released from a psychiatric institution, who is driven to kill by an ancestral curse. It was the first and only foray into the horror genre for Wishman, who mainly directed and produced sexploitation films.
Barry Shils is an American film director and producer. He is best known for directing and producing the films Motorama and Wigstock: The Movie, and for producing Vampire's Kiss starring Nicolas Cage.
