“You can’t say you’re not gettinga horror film here!”: Authorship,Genre, and the AccidentalAvant-Garde in Doris Wishman’s

This chapter considers the question of authorship in A Night to Dismember—a film commonly downplayed in Wishman’s oeuvre due to its stilted production and post-production history—and concludes that the film is quintessentially a Wishman film despite its critical denigration. Considering the film through three lenses—as a Wishman film and its attendant engagement with the hallmarks of her earlier filmography; as a piece of paracinematic horror that draws on/departs from trends of the contemporaneous slasher cycle; and, as an accidental evocation of avant-garde aesthetics—the chapter demonstrates indicates the impracticality of ever fully disentangling its respective authorial and generic influences.