Chuck Smith: Keyholes Are For Peeping!

By Jens

I've previously written in LowCut about Doris Wishman ("Deadly Weapons", "Double Agent 73", "Let Me Die A Woman" etc. http://www.lowcut.dk/006_lc/front/index.htm), the first lady of sexploitation cinema, so I was more than pleased when her cinematographer and partner in crime, Chuck Smith, contacted me recently after reading my article. Even though he directed some sexfilms of his own, Chuck is what you could call a working man, member of the blue collar underbelly of the low budget American film industry. Guys like him rarely get the glory or fame, and are rarely mentioned in cultfilm books etc., which is why I thought his tale would be very interesting from that perspective. His body of work includes titles like "Bad Girls Go To Hell", "Satan Was A Lady", "The Girl From S.I.N.", "Another Day, Another Man", "Teenage Gang Debs", "A Night To Dismember, and "The Amazing Transplant". As you can see we ain't talking about cleancut family movies, haha, these were some of the outrageous favorites in seedy grindhouse theaters in the 60s, 70s and early 80s. Right now he's writing his memoirs on a life spent in the fast lane of making exploitation movies. Chuck's 'professional' name in the biz is 'C. Davis Smith', if you want to check out his impressive list of credits.

LC: You started making shortfilms for the US Air Force like "B-36 Bomb Loading" in the early 50s?

Chuck Smith: The Korean Skirmish was drafting all my friends and being a coward I thought it better to be in the Air Force than in a fox hole carrying a rifle. Fortunately, my father was a projectionist for a Warner Brothers Theater and for some reason the Air Force thought I could be the same and so sent me to Scott Air Firce Base to project training films. I was transferred to England Air Force Base in the Pan-handle of Florida where I thought I would be projecting films but it turned out they needed a film
editor. Their reasoning was that film ran through a projector and a moviola (editing machine) was the same thing. I lucked out that the guy in charge taught me basic editing; long shot, medium shot, close up and cut-away. During my four years in the Air Force I fell in love with motion picture production and read everything I could from Eisenstein to how-to-do it books. Mostly I edited training films and information films that were used on the base. I made friends with others that were as interested in film making as I, one was Gordon Willis.

LC: In the 60s you moved to New York and was the cinematographer on Doris Wishman movies like "Sex Perils Of Paulette" and "Bad Girls Go To Hell". Wishman was one of few women who directed exploitation films at that time. How was it working with her?

CS: Working with Doris was a pleasure in the fact that she allowed me to light, frame and shoot whatever I wanted so long as it illustrated her idea. Many people have marvelled that I was the one who invented her "style" of shooting after her nudist picture days. I did NOT have any connection with her 'editing' style, much of which has been compared to the French film makers of the 60's. Doris did NOT rob anything from them. As far as I could make out she never saw a French or Italian film and her post production style was from guess and by-golly in the editing room. Some times she used a 'cutter' over who's shoulder she lurked and sometimes she actually did her own cutting and splicing. All in all working with Doris was great. She let me do my work and always paid everyone at the end of the day or end of the shoot.

LC: I love the camera work in "Bad Girls Go To Hell", easily my fave Wishman 60s feature. The handheld b&w 16 mm camera really captures the urban despair and gives the film a neat gritty atmosphere.

CS: Thank you! I was a fan of a show on TV called "The Naked City" and I also DID know about the French film industry as I was editing a tv series for U.S. consumption titled "Paris Calling". It was for the French Embassy and went out to 98 tv stations around the country, a sort of cultural exchange of information. I saw much hand holding in that material. By the way, most of Doris' films were shot in 35mm b&w with an Arriflex...they just looked 16mm because of the gritty-realness of the cinematography. Thanks again for noticing.

LC: Many of Wishman films has narration instead of actors' dialogue, was that a result of the extreme low budgets?

CS: In the 60's going into a shoot Doris had ideas of what she wanted but never a written script. She would direct the actors and me in what she wanted to portray and then make notes of what was shot on a large legal lined yellow pad of paper. In the editing room she would put the film together and then record dialogue, much of the time letting the off-camera person speak. I attempted a couple of time to get here to do sync-sound shooting but to no avail, she wanted to do it her way, which turned out to be very unusual for the most part. I don't think it was because of the extremely low budgets on the films as much as Doris not wanting to be locked into what the actors said. She once commented that the people (actors) that she used were not very professional and that a lot of them had bad accents so she had everyone dubbed.

LC: "The Amazing Transplant" is one crazy story, even for Doris. A man has a wellendowed friend's penis transplanted and becomes a serial killing rapist. How did the audience react to such outrageous plots? I'd imagine her films were mostly shown in 42nd Street grind houses and not mainstream theaters?

CS: The outrageous plots were Doris way of getting the attention of the audience. She would come up with a title or idea and then built a story around it. A lot of times she would make a trailer so that she could get money from backers for her films. Back in the 60s & 70s there were grind houses in NYC but in major cities all over the country there were 'art houses' that would play anything that the main stream houses wouldn't. How did the audiences react? Well, Doris kept making films for years and years and years, I made 17 or 18 features with her.

LC: You also worked with Roberta Findlay, married to Michael Findlay, another prolific exploitation filmmaker (mostly known for the infamous "Snuff" movie, see my Lowcut article on the Findlays)?

CS: I met Roberta after her husband had been killed in a hellicopter mishap in New York. She was working out of a place that did sound mixing, Sears' Sound, and I was mixing a sound track there. I visited her at a shoot in New Jersey once and she pressed me into duty as an actor portraying the abusive step-father of the leading lady. We kept in touch but never worked together. All of us in NY at that time knew each other, it was a small group although we each had our own agenda.

LC: "The Girl From S.I.N.", "File X For Sex" and "To Turn A Trick" are some of the films you directed in the 60s. You enjoy directing as well as cinematography?

CS: I LOVE MAKIN' FILMS! I have done every job in the film making industry, except the lab work. I once told an interviewer that I would make films for free (and I have). I love all aspects of film making and am happy that I could spend my life earning a living and raising a family on it.

LC: One of my fave juvenile delinquent movies is "Teenage Gang Debs" which you both shot and edited. Any memories of the production of this cult film? There was a lot of location work on the streets.

CS: This was a film I did with Sande Johnson and Jerry Denby. We had gathered enough money to make the film and written a script. Actually, thinking about it there is not much I remember, it was a straight forward normal film shoot. We did hire up and coming actors from New York as well as a real motor cycle gang from Brooklyn. I will have to look at that one again and let it joggle my memory.

LC: You acted as Gorilla Hop in the softcore comedy "A Touch Of Sweden" which starred Russ Meyer cult starlet Uschi Digart, any anecdotes? You have also done other acting jobs, any thoughts on being on the other side of the lens?

CS: I HAVE NEVER SEEN THAT FILM AND DOUBT VERY MUCH THAT I AM IN IT! I have no idea how that got on my imdb credits. Most of the time I have been on the 'other side' of the camera out of budget necessity. I have no great desire to be a performer, only fill in as needed for friends.

LC: The 70s saw you working more in television, which I'd imagine gave you a more steady income?

CS: When TV reared it's lovely head I was so busy that I didn't have much time for the exploitation market and it quickly took a back seat in my earning career. I was constantly employed by producers for the three networks; ABC, NBC and CBS. As well, I did many shows for PBS and syndication. Then came corporate films for the giants of U.S. industry. I always stayed very busy during my career.

LC: You did audio commentary for the "A Night To Dismember" dvd, the 'lost' Doris Wishman horrorfilm. That was a troubled shoot, all the original negatives somehow disappeared?

CS: Doris tells the story that the lab, in some manner, destroyed the negative to her film. Who knows? There is much conjecture on the subject but we must take Doris' word. I do have a copy of the first version of the film which makes more sense than the released version. Someday maybe I will market it as 'The Lost Film of Doris Wishman'. I hope you have heard the commentary track, it gives a lot of insight into both Doris and my characters.

LC: "Each Time I Kill" (2002) was Wishman's swansong, a slasher comedy. John Waters has a cameo?

CS: I said earlier that I would work for free. Well, the producer Michael Bowen took me up on that and I shot the film with Doris in Coral Gables, Florida. It took all of 30 days to shoot, but again that was with Doris doing a lot of adlibing, but she DID have a written script. Of course, we never knew when it would change. John Waters did a cameo, Fred Schneider of the B-52 music group played a father to the lead and Linnea Quigley, a famous scream queen, played her aunt who was killed in a train station rest room. I could write a book about this episode and in fact it is in the works, I just have to devote more time to it.

LC: Which movie do you have the fondest memories of? And which one was the hardest to make?

CS: My fondest movie was "Bad Girls Go To Hell". It was the first of the Wishman films and I had artistic freedom as the cinematographer to do anything I wanted to do. Doris NEVER once looked through the viewfinder to see what the shot looked like. The most difficult was "Keyholes Are For Peeping", Doris was out of her element in trying to make a comedy. She and the comic lead, Sammy Petrillo, did not get along in their ideas and we tried to shoot it lip sync, not something Doris wanted to do. All in all Doris hated that film, she said that it was a disaster. Another I'll have to review in the light of many years gone by.

LC: Guys like David F. Friedman and Herschell Gordon Lewis are very popular at cult film conventions, have you been a guest at those?

CS: I was a guest at Chiller Theatre a couple of years ago and sat at a table with Dave for three days. He is one amazing guy. He told me stories and stories and stories, and in the three days, HE NEVER ONCE REPEATED HIMSELF!!! (I also had pleasure of meeting Mr. Friedman once in '99 and I can verify Chuck's story, Dave's never out of a good yarn)

http://www.cultcinematographer.com