Bad Girls Go to Hell

The roughie glossary names Doris Wishman and the canon holds none of her films, so here is the definitive one. A housewife kills a man who attacks her, bolts for New York, and drifts from one predatory landlord and lover to the next through the grubbiest apartments 1965 had to offer. Wishman worked without sync sound and hated cutting to a talking face, so she plugs the gaps with her trademark inserts of feet, ashtrays and furniture legs, which lends the whole thing the logic of an anxiety dream.

Nobody else made films that look and move like this, and that alone earns her the shelf space.