American Nudie Classics (2011)

Starring Various

Directed by Various

Unrated

USA

"Off with the clothes -- and on with the initiation."

Spanning the early 1930's through to the late 1960's, Independent Entertainment's January 25, 2011 release of American Nudie Classics is an entertaining and educational look at nudity in American cinema in all it's many guises throughout the early years of film.

Believe it or not, but the naked human form has not always been as readily available for ocular consumption as it is today. We as a people are blessed, yes, and spoiled, perhaps, by the rampant offerings and ease of availability that wondrous tools such as the internet have bestowed us with. Never are we to be want for a nipple, or burdened by bushlessness. No, we are living the true American dream that our forefathers fought and died defending and preserving. As the custodians of the wealth of exposed flesh the pioneers of provocativity have provided us with, we must look to and celebrate the humble beginnings that brought us to this blessed age.

American Nudie classics is an enlightening exploration of not only nudity in film, but also a fascinating look at the styles, trends and attitudes toward life and sex that cultures of our past possessed.

Divided by decade, containing about 30 minutes of material each, our journey starts out with the silent films of the 1930's. Among the 6 features here are a good variety of nudist/educational film,"erotic" dancing, nudie-cuties and even some fairly explicit lesbian action.

For slight clarification of terms, the nudist film usually features one or more females casting aside their clothing to take part in outdoor activity as a means to enjoy the "nudist lifestyle", while the nudie-cutie still features rampant nudity, but lacks the educational excuse used in the nudist film. While not necessarily self-satisfaction material, this genre of film is actually pretty entertaining. It's light-hearted, innocent fun with frolicking flesh in all it's natural beauty, which is a nice digression from throat gagging and extreme anal antics.

Next up, we explore the 1940's. The 12 loops here show a rise in the pin-up girl aesthetic, and a dramatic lessening of stark naked flesh. While there is still plenty of nudity to be had, there is a prevalent reliance on lingerie, bikinis and costumage to provide the thrills. The clips here share their time between girls frolicking in previously mentioned lacy underclothing, doing little dance routine things (including one really surreal one in a cake shop with women in chef's hats singing on a spinning cake), and hanging out in their apartment complex striking poses awkwardly in and out of the pool.

With the 50's come a collection of 14 more short erotic films. This decade concerns itself primarily with the stylings of burlesque, vaudeville and "hoochie coochie", with only a few loops concentrating on solo girls doing intimate stripteases in what look like hotel rooms. Again, the nudity is limited here - maybe even more so than the previous decade.

I myself am not a huge fan of the burlesque genre, or of dancing in general, so I may not be the fairest judge of these reels, but if you like this sort of thing, I genuinely believe you will be giddy with delight at the clips contained within this decade.

Finally, we come to the 60's and the last 9 loops in this collection. This decade consists solely of solo girl stag loops. Here we see a re-emergence of nudity, albeit it's still quite chaste. There's a strange haunting quality to these types of films, made more so by the absence of audio, the scratchy, faded prints, and the intimacy of the situation itself.

With over 3 hours of content, there is no doubt that you will find plenty in American Nudie Classics that will amuse, titillate, educate, or otherwise illicit endless entertainment value for you. Although often more educational than arousing, this suburb historical look at the genesis of the nudie film is a must own for any connoisseur of vintage American erotica.

- Jeremy Vaca

Monster of Camp Sunshine (1964)

Directed by Ferenc Leroget
Starring Deborah Spray, Sally Parfait, Harrison Pebbles
Unrated
USA

"The motion picture that follows is a fable. In it there are many nudists, but only one monster. In life, it is generally the other way around."

Marta and Claire are two mismatched roommates. Marta (Sally Parfait) is a nurse in a lab that experiments on mice and rats. Claire (Deborah Spray), on the other hand, is a full-of-herself model, a blowhard that says stuff like "Does it shock you, that I pose topless?" to couldn't-care-less photographer's assistants. One fateful day at work, Marta accidentally lets a white super-rat escape from his cage. He and a few of his buddies go berserk, and hop all over the jittery nurse. In her panic to get away from the rodents, she falls out the window, and ends up hanging by her fingers, several stories up, from the ledge. Luckily, a doctor, Harrison (James Gatsby), comes rushing in at the last moment to save her.

Clearly frazzled by the experience, Marta tries to relax at home. Claire can see her friend is at wits' end, so she schedules a quick vacation to their favorite spot - a nudist camp, Camp Sunshine.

Turns out that the prim and proper Marta is actually a long-time nudist, and recruited the formerly uptight Claire into her alternative lifestyle the year before. In fact, Claire owes her success as a model to Marta. Without her and Camp Sunshine, she would have never let go of her inhibitions.

We flash back to Claire's first visit to the camp. At first, she is too shy to frolic naked, but after fortifying her nerves with some cigarettes (there's a lot of smoking in this movie), she drops her towel and lets it all hang out. She feels pretty good about waltzing around starkers, but she is somewhat disturbed by the one non-nude member of the camp - a leering fatty named Hugo (Harrison Pebbles).

Susanna, who runs the camp, explains to Claire that Hugo is her dimwitted but harmless brother. The way he menacingly waves his shears around would suggest otherwise, but whatever. Susanna keeps him around to do gardening and maintenance work, and it's just better for everybody if he stays buttoned-up.

So, that was last year. Meanwhile, Marta runs into the Dr Harrison on the street. He explains to her that the incident in the lab was a million to one event. Seems as though the rats were exposed to an accidental chemical compound that made them aggressive. He assures her that said compound has been destroyed. And by "destroyed", he means he dumped a jar of the stuff into the harbor.

Naturally, the chemicals end up leaking into the lake at Camp Sunshine. Also naturally, this happens while dumb ol' Hugo is wading in the water, trying to spear fish with a stick. Thirsty, he sucks up a handful of water and starts screaming like a gorilla.

Unaware of the mayhem going down at Camp Sunshine, Claire and Marta prepare for their trip. Before they leave, Claire calls her photographer friend Ken and tells him that she'll model that 'topless bathing suit' he asked about. "After all," she says, "I am a nudist." He asks her to bring his timid secretary along with her. He thinks it might break her out of her shell. I think Ken just wants to see his secretary naked. Claire agrees. More the merrier, and all that.

The girls show up at Camp Sunshine (which, by the way, is just somebody's front yard) to find it abandoned. Marta wanders around looking for Susanna or some sign of life while Ken, Claire, and his prissy assistant set up camp. They get a hibachi going, and a topless Marta plays a zither. Susanna shows up and they all try to goad the secretary into stripping. She refuses and wanders off.

Meanwhile Hugo, who is now some sort of bewigged mutant, chomps on a cucumber while chained to the wall of a shed. Hearing voices, he struggles to break free of his bonds. Eventually, he snaps the chains and gets outside. He grabs an axe and trundles off into the woods.

Miss Non-nude, enjoying her solitude, finally feels good enough to peel off her clothes and go skinny dipping. Then she suns her naked flesh on the grass, while Hugo, axe in hand, looms in the background.

Susanna finds out that her brother has gotten loose, and tells Marta about the chemical spill. Marta smartly suggests they talk to a doctor, pronto. And so they do.
Marta calls Harrison and tells him what's up. Turns out he's just about finished with his antidote for the rats, so he takes a jug full of the stuff and hauls ass over to Camp Sunshine. Harrison also calls his army buddy to back him up.

Susanna and Marta decide not to tell the others about the monster, because they don't want to ruin the evening. Besides, it's Claire's birthday, so they have to throw her a little moonlit outdoor party. Unfortunately, as the curious silent film title tells us, "The monster invited himself" to the shindig, as well.

Hugo and his axe fuck the party up but good, but he has no idea what hell he's unleashed. In a finale too incredible to accurately describe, Hugo finds himself battling a gun toting guy in his underwear, naked women with banana cream pies, a paratrooper, mortar fire, and an entire army division. Despite this apocalyptic climax, everybody lives to frolic in the nude again. Well, except for Hugo. He gets turned into a rock.

Fun, dumb, and mostly incomprehensible, Camp Sunshine is low-grade 60's trash sure to please monster-nudie fans. And who doesn't like a good (or bad) monster nudie?

PS: The credits list the camerman/men as Motley Crue!

Clip: Monster of Camp Sunshine trailer!

Monster of Camp Sunshine is available from Something Weird Video.

- Ken McIntyre

House on Bare Mountain (1962)

Directed by Lee Frost
Starring Bob Cresse, Angela Webster, Anne Myers, Fran Sinatra
Unrated
USA

In 1962, America was balls-deep in Monster Mania, so a nudie-monster mash-up like this must have seemed like an obvious move. Consider just how monster-y the era was: The Munsters, Addams Family, The Monster Mash, Zacherle, Famous Monsters, Aurora monster model kits, on and on. The whole country was bananas for Frankenstein and mummies and all that bullshit. Throw a pile of boobs into the mix, and how can you miss, really? Released two years before the vastly superior Kiss Me Quick, Bare Mountain can, at least, claim to be the first "Monster Nudie" flick, although even then, it's less monster-y than you'd hope.

It was directed by exploitation legend Lee Frost (RIP), who has a long and impressive resume that includes nudie-cuties, mondo movies, and mouth-watering array of 70's drive-in junk, including Chain Gang Women (1971), The Thing with Two Heads (1972), The Black Gestapo (1975), and Dixie Dynamite (1976). Frost clearly got sleazier as he rolled through the decades, and is responsible for one of the roughest hardcore films of the Seventies, "Climax of Blue Power" (1975). Bare Mountain, however, is Frost at his sugary beginnings. It stars - in drag - Bob Cresse, ironically credited as "Lovable Bob Cresse" here. The irony being that he was considered one of the sleaziest, most opportunistic bastards in the business. Cresse (also RIP), is probably most well-known for his role as the porcine Commandant in 1969's Love Camp 7, the early Nazisploitation roughie often cited as the inspiration for Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS. He acted in/produced many of Frost's films, and, from all reports, did a lot of Frost's dirty work to get them all made. Like, for example, performing in a dress for no good reason.

Cresse opens this one up in a very odd fashion as Granny Goode, a lil' old lady (Cresse looks exactly like Jonathan Winters in drag) currently locked up in the local hoosegow. Why? Well, she's gonna fuckin' tell you why.
"It's a horrible, terrifying story," she explains. "You see, I had a little girls' school. 'GGSFGG'. Granny Goode's School for Good Girls..."

Cut to what Granny describes is 'vine-covered little cottage', but what is actually an imposing, Hammer horror-esque mansion on a blustery, dark hill. Granny is in her office, splayed out on the floor, sucking down gin, when she gets a call from her secretary, telling her that Mr. and Mrs Bumgartner have arrived. She quickly hides the half a dozen empty bottles of hootch littering her office and invites them in. They're trying to get their daughter, Prudence, enrolled in Granny's exclusive school, and while she interviews them, bombs keep going off outside, causing them to fall off their chairs and land on the floor.

And then Honey (Angela Webster), a topless girl in white panties, walks in to tell Granny she's finished her paper on nuclear physics. Granny hands her a dictionary and tells her to memorize it. This jarring display of bared flesh shock the Bumgartners, but Granny assures them that there's no cause for alarm.
"We have very few discipline problems here," she says. And then she pulls out a bull whip.

Convinced that they've made the right choice, they call Prudence (Laura Eden) into the office. Granny tells them she's going to get her new roommate so that they can get acquainted, but as soon as she splits, the Bumgartner's start frantically searching through Granny's office. What sort of treachery is this?

Later that evening, the various students of Granny's school get ready for bed. Prudence wants to leave her window open for some air, but Sally (Ann Meyers) warns her against it. She says that all the girls leave their windows closed, for fear of 'something' that may or may not lurk in the garden at night. Prudence thinks this is silly, but goes along with it anyway. Then she takes her shirt off. Everybody takes their shirt off. And then they all take showers.

That night, Prudence is woken by the howl of wolves. Sally and the girls, smart enough to keep the goddamn windows closed, snooze soundly.

The next morning, Granny stomps down to the basement, where she confronts Krakow (William Engesser, who also played Bigfoot on an episode of Isis!), her 'handyman'. He's actually a werewolf who is so tall that Granny has to climb a ladder to see him eye to eye. She tells him to stop bugging the girls at night, or she'll release him back in the wild. Apparently, she's got him running a moonshine still down there. Why not? The exploding bottles explain the bombs, at least.

After yelling at the wolfman, Granny takes the girls outside for their daily exercise. She tells them to do the "Sag, Straddle, Hop", which sounds fantastic. One of the girls complains that it's too hot outside, so Granny tells them to take off their shirts. And so they do.

After some rigorous exercise (jump rope, jumping jacks, really anything that makes the boobs bounce), the girls have a topless outdoor drawing class (Granny in some sort of clown suit serves as the model), and then they have an hour of recess. Most prefer to spend their hour sunbathing. Topless.

Then they go for a jog, but Granny gets winded, and makes the girls carry him/her home.

So that was a pretty eventful day. Then, all the girls take another shower and get ready for their annual costume party/dance/prom/whatever it is. One by one, the girls all sneak off to the phone in the hall and tell their boyfriends or whoever to sneak in a bottle of booze with them. Clearly, they are unaware of the boooze still blasting away in the basement.

At first, everybody's pretty depressed at the party. Not even the girl with the giant tits can liven it up.

Meanwhile Prudence - who it turns out is really a cop - sneaks up to her room and pulls out a walkie talkie. She calls up the chief to report on the sinister goings-on at the school.

Meanwhile, Dracula pours a bottle of vodka into the punch to get things going at the party. That doesn't quite do the trick, so Frankenstein pours some whiskey into the mix.
So then Prudence goes snooping down in the basement. She runs into the werewolf while she's down there, which causes her to pass out.

Upstairs, Granny tosses some hooch in the punch as well, unaware that it's already a toxic brew, thanks to Dracula and Frankenstein. Then everybody dances. Frankenstein even dances with Granny.

So then the fuzz shows up to bust Granny. She convinces the cops that it's not booze at all down in the basement, but "elderberry wine", and to prove it, she gives them all a cupful. They gulp it down and promptly pass out.

And then some girl with an amazing beehive hairdo does a crazy topless dance. Granny, meanwhile, gathers all her booze up in a couple of suitcases and tries sneaking out the backdoor, but is stopped by some guy in a hat, who she assumes is another cop. He's actually from the Werewolf Union, come to bust her for paying Krakow a shameful 13 cents a day. So they take her away.

At this point, the party has devolved into debauched mayhem.

And that, in a nutshell, is how Granny ended up behind bars. Or did she?

House on Bare Mountain has much more plot and dialogue that you'd expect (or want) from a nudie-cutie flick, and it's really only got one monster, since Drac and Frank are just dudes in masks. Also, in comparison to its closest cousin, Kiss Me Quick, the girls aren't as pretty or as well proportioned (save for that one un-credited brunette Britney Spears doppelganger showing off her whiskey-soaked, softball-sized spongecakes towards the end - her, you could waste the afternoon over, easy).

Still, the climactic party looks like the most fun ever, the nudity is wall to wall, the soundtrack (by Pierre Martel), is awesome, and Something Weird's print is sharp and vivid. So it's pretty impossible not to like. In fact, I may spend a good portion of my next ten years trying to recreate that last half hour on a semi-regular basis in the comfort of my own home. I've already got weirdo friends with monster masks. All I need is a dozen or so topless girls. Likely candidates are encouraged to email us. Please include a recent picture and your preference for toxic fruit punch combinations.

House on Bare Mountain is available from Something Weird Video.

- Ken McIntyre

Nude on the Moon (1961)

Directed by Doris Wishman
Starring Lester Brown, William Mayer, Marietta
Unrated
USA

"Here are your messages, Mr. Huntley."
"The devil with the messages. We're going to the moon!"

Sexploitation pioneer Doris Wishman was one of the very first film-makers to bring cinematic nudity to the general public; prior to her nudist camp cycle, it was grubby 8mm loops in your drunk uncle's basement or nothin'. Wishman's first film, 1960's Hideout in Sun, established the aesthetic: throw a few half-sketched characters into a situation that forces them to interact with nekkid people. In the case of Hideout, two bungling bank robbers take refuge from Johnny Law in the warm, sunny embrace of a nudist colony. In the more high-concept Nude on the Moon, two cockamamie 'scientists' build a rocket and visit the moon, which just happens to be populated by naked girls. Hey, it was 1962. Nobody had been there yet. Could be anything up there.

Wishman was often referred to as 'the female Ed Wood', and the reasons why become glaringly obvious right off the bat. Right away you know that something's amiss, because the entire (awesome) theme song is played over a static painting of the moon. No credits. The credits don't actually start until after the song is over. Never mind the middle, Doris starts padding the running time before the credits even roll. The song, "I'm Mooning Over You (My Little Moon Doll)" is performed by Ralph Young, later of popular 70's easy-listening duo, Sandler and Young. Once you hear it, there's a good chance it will never escape from your brain, so be forewarned.

After that languorous intro, we meet our two space stooges. Dr Jeff Huntley (Lester Brown, in his debut - and final - role) is an impetuous scientist with heady dreams. His partner, known simply as "Professor" (frequent Wishman collaborator William Mayer), is the more grounded of the two. Older and wiser, he goes along with Jeff's schemes, but complains pretty constantly.

Also on deck is Kathy (one-time, singularly-named actress Marietta), Jeff's secretary. Kathy clearly pines for Jeff - she even keeps a bizarre painted portrait of him in her desk drawer - but he barely knows she's alive. I'm not sure what the appeal is for Kathy, since Jeff is a dick, but love is notoriously blind.

Life plods along at the lab until one fateful day, an excited Jeff bursts in to tell the prof that his uncle just dies and left him a princely sum of one million dollars, an almost unfathomable amount in 1961. So what's he going to do with it? Buy a castle? No, he wants to use the dough to build a rocketship and fly to the fuckin' moon. While the professor is amused by this news, he's also a little concerned. He tells Jeff that maybe he should think about pursuing something a little less dangerous, like getting married - to Kathy, for example - and raising a family. Jeff tells the prof off. "I'm not interested in getting married," he says. "All I care about is science." Then he takes off. The professor takes this rare quiet moment to feed his pet monkey, which he keeps in a tiny little dog house.

I'm not sure why they keep brewing up chemicals if they're trying to build a rocketship to the moon, but that's what they do. They spend quite a bit of time staring at bubbling beakers and spouting scientific-sounding nonsense in order to meet their six-month deadline for the moon trip.

Finally, the fateful day arrives. The professor and Jeff drive out to god knows where to take their trip to the moon. They open up a gate that has a "Huntley Rocket Project" on it and stare at something off-camera.
"Well, there it is," says the professor. "Isn't it beautiful?"
How would I know? You have not shown it to us, sir.
So then they both climb some scaffolding that does look like it could be a rocketship bay, only there is clearly no rocketship attached to it. They climb in, tell mission control that they're "all set", and then they shoot off into space. This effect is achieved, naturally, with a model rocket. By the way, no spacesuits for our heroes, no way. They prefer denim for space flight.

Things seem to be going ok, but then the professor, followed quickly by Jeff, falls into a sudden slumber. When they wake up, they've landed safely on the moon.

Now, they put on their spacesuits - they're Ace Frehley sorta deals, with motorcycle helmets and rubber breathing tubes. Naturally, the astronauts are taken aback when they get off the ship to find trees, grass, and blue skies outside. They expected the usual: dust and rocks, or perhaps green cheese. They wander around for awhile and discover that there's chunks of solid gold littering the ground. The prof wants to scoop a bunch of it up to take back with them so that they can use it to finance their next trip, but grumpy Jeff insists they move on, as they are there for "science, not gold." Reluctantly, the professor agrees, and they wander around some more. They encounter a man-made wall with a ladder propped up against it.

"Look, there's a ladder," says Professor Obvious. And so he climbs it.
On the other side of the wall, there's a park where topless men and women (and a couple naked kids) frolic. A couple of brawny moon-men (you can tell they're from the moon because they have pipe cleaners on their heads) spot the peeping prof and snatch him.

Jeff, who is still standing there on the opposite side of the wall, finally decides to climb the ladder and see what's up. Naturally, he gets snatched by the no-nonsense moon men as well. Soon, both astronauts find themselves locked up in a coral grotto. That's when it hits you: everything in this screwy place is made of coral. Maybe it is the moon!

Actually, Nude was shot at Coral Castle in Miami, a popular tourist spot with an awesome/sad backstory. Seems there was this Latvian teenager, Edward Leedskalnin, who was engaged to his true love, sixteen year old Agnes Scruffs. For reasons unknown, Scruffs jilted our man Eddie, so he left Latvia and ran away to Florida to escape his heartbreak. When he got there - in 1920 - he started obsessively building a structure out of coral. He continued to build this odd "Coral castle" for 28 years, usually at night, away from the prying eyes of his neighbors. How he moved the incredibly large and heavy slabs of coral back and forth remains a mystery, but build and build he did. He eked out a very modest living by granting tours of the property, but otherwise kept to himself. One day in 1951, Eddie started to feel ill, she hopped a bus to the hospital. When he got there, he found out he was suffering from malnutrition, and died three days later. He left no real explanation for why he dedicated thirty years of his life to the Coral Castle, but then tourists asked him, he'd tell them it was for his "Sweet sixteen". And that is officially the most heartbreaking fucking thing I've ever heard in my life. Billy's Idol's 1986 hit "Sweet Sixteen" was about Eddie. The video even opens with a shot of him in front of the Coral Castle.

Anyway, ten years later, Doris rented the joint and stocked it with booby girls. Back to the story.

So the guys are locked up. Meanwhile, the bosomy queen of the topless moon people (Surprise! It's Marietta again!) has a telekinetic meeting with them (one of whom happens to be about 60) and tells them she's not sure what's up with these new dudes, but she'll have a meeting with the Great Council and figure it out.

So then she has said meeting at a big rock table, but it happens to be with the exact same crew. Maybe the Great Council was busy. She decides the Earth Men are friendly - one blonde disagrees, but what is she gonna do? She's not the fuckin' queen - so they let them out.

Happy to have their freedom, Jeff and the prof wander around, taking photos of rocks and trees. They're surrounded by topless girls, and they take pictures of rocks and trees. Meanwhile the girls do their best to distract them by fiddling with their spacesuits, playing catch really slowly, splashing around in the pond, and taking naps. A couple of the girls goof on the prof's dumb mustache. Moon humor.

The fellas get enough "interesting data" together (Honestly, no notes are needed, are they? You just go back home and say, 'There's naked girls and hunks of gold on the moon!', and that'll pretty much explain everything), but before they split, Jeff wants to hit on the queen. While he does this, "Moon Doll" plays on the scratchy soundtrack again. Jeff gives the Moon Queen a candy bar, which she gobbles up while it's still in the wrapper. This cracks him up. The two fall instantly in love.

The grumpy old prof comes by and tells Jeff that it's time for them to go, since they're running out of oxygen. Dunno why they'd need oxygen, since the moon appears to have the same atmosphere as Miami, but regardless, Jeff says he doesn't want to go back. He wants to stay there and feed candybars to the queen.
"I'm in love," he says. "For the first time in my life, I feel for someone, and it's wonderful."
The queen feels it too, but she knows their love is doomed. So she bonks him gently on the head and sends him on his way.

Jeff and the professor make it their rocket and blast off back to Earth. Jeff's sore about having to leave the queen, but even worse, he forgot his fuckin' camera, and the prof forgot his satchel, so there's no proof of their trip. When they get back, the professor has some scientists look at the rocket ship, figuring that might convince them, and they tell him they don't even think the thing could get off the ground, never mind go to the moon. Now the prof isn't sure where the fuck they went.


Jeff has no regrets, though. Especially when Kathy walks in, and he suddenly notices her resemblance to a certain candy-freak from outer space.

While its never reaches any heights of outrage or high-camp, the good-naturedly goofy Nude on the Moon is still a howl to watch. From the wretched acting of the two leads to the mismatched shots (Shot one: it's day. Shot two: it's night), Nude is threadbare, nonsensical, and thoroughly charming.

Sci-fi sex-flicks would get weirder and raunchier as time went on (see Flesh Gordon, Flesh Gordon Meets the Cosmic Cheerleaders, Zeta One, or even Bimbo Cheerleaders from Outer Space for a few prime examples), but Doris, as she was often wont to do, did it first. Ten years later, she was making some of the most over-the-top sexploitation films of the 70's - and that's saying something - but Nude is very much a fluffy, lighter-than-air Nudie Cutie. Fun stuff.

Here's the trailer!

- Ken McIntyre