More Deadly Than The Male

About this episode

The episode explores the film 'Satan in High Heels' and its cultural context within exploitation cinema.

A bold attempt by a smut publisher and an exploitation director at melding fetishism with general release melodrama, Satan in High Heels is a film that aims big with its sophisticated lounge jazz LP and its lesbianic novelization tie-in. But maybe the world wasn’t ready to get fully Bizarre just yet . A few years later, One Shocking Moment would open with a sharp heel to the back of a hand, among other sadomasochistic things, but in the early 60s, exploiteers were still testing the waters of acceptability, and legality. Olga and her House of Shame were still a few years away, so temper your expectations for leather, lingerie and bondage, and you’ll find something just, if not more, interesting—a seriously well-made film featuring Hollywood players, a mononymous pin-up queen, and that lady from Dark Shadows with the crazy eyes and smoker's scream. Behind the camera is the incredibly talented Bernie Hirschenson, who made William Mishkin’s super-smash nudie, Orgy at Lil’s Place , infinitely more watchable than it had any right to be. It all comes together surprisingly well, even if it doesn’t fully capture fet-publisher Leonard Burtman’s original vision (for that, maybe read the…

People in this episode

Guest: Alex DiSanto

Topics covered

• film analysis
• exploitation cinema
• fetishism in film
• 1960s cinema
• interviews
• melodrama

Keywords

• Satan in High Heels
• exploitation film
• fetishism
• Bernie Hirschenson
• 1960s
• interview
• Alex DiSanto

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Satan in High Heels, One Shocking Moment, Olga and her House of Shame, Orgy at Lil’s Place, Dark Shadows

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