Mondo Topless (1966) User Reviews

Too Much for One Man

[hrkepler · 6/10 · 4 June 2018]

'Mondo Topless' is Russ Meyer's pseudo documentary that starts out with snapshots from San Fransisco with narrator (John Furlong) praises the city's progress. Images of San Fransisco is cleverly cut with seemingly unnecessary shots of topless woman driving the car. It doesn't take long when the film turns its focus on different strippers dancing and their recorded conversations about their thoughts and troubles.

'Mondo Topless' is visually beautiful film (in here I don't mean the nudity, but cinematography) with many interesting shots. Almost monotonous monologues of strippers over the groovy pop-rock and girls dancing gives the film quite surreal feel. The humor is subtle as left hook from Mike Tyson. The film keeps its tone and rhythm all the 60 minutes, and by the last quarter, it starts to get little bit boring.

Russ Meyer is much more talented and smarter than many think based on his films, and 'Mondo Topless' proves his intelligence besides the love of big bosoms.

Europe In The Raw:Remixed.

[morrison-dylan-fan · 6/10 · 11 May 2013]

After failing to get a DVD of Mario Bava's Gothic Horror The Whip And The Body to work on any of my DVD players,I decided,the after having spent an hour frustratingly trying to get the DVD to work,that I would instead watch an easy-going movie.With having found auteur film maker Russ Meyer's original Nudie Cutie period to be one that was light and pretty easy to watch,I decided o take a look at Meyer's last ever feature film visit to his Nudie-Cutie era.

The plot:

Starting in San Francisco and travelling across Eurpore,the film takes a look at some of the most successful/popular go-go dancing/strip clubs in the world,with the movie makers interviewing a number of the club's biggest dancers about what gives them the adrenalin rush to dance.Along with looking at the go-go dancing/strip clubs,the movie also takes a look at the behind the scenes of of the film that led to Russ Meyer leaving the Nudie-Cutie era behind:Lorna.

View on the film:

Checking a bonus interview on the DVD of the movie,I was surprised to hear writer/cinematography/editor/co-producer/director Russ Meyer say that he hated the film,due to the only reason that he made the movie, (in 5 days!) being that his then-wife (and co-producer) Eve was moaning to him about how their last movie had not made as much at the box office as had originally been hoped.

Whilst the 15 minutes or so of re-used footage from Meyer's earlier,near Silent Nudie-Cutie Europe In The Raw shows the very limited nature of the production,Meyer reveals that the titles he has made after finishing his Nudie-Cutie era have had a big impact on his sharp ear for the soundtrack of the film,with the (voiced over) interviews being backed by a terrific Surf Rock score from a band called The Aladdins and a witty narration by John Furlong,which all help to keep the movie moving at a quick pace.

Along with the soundtrack,Meyer also includes some very interesting screen test forage from his first non-Nudie-Cutie movie Lorna,that along with acting as a nice behind the scenes section on the film,also displays how much Meyer has excitingly moved from his original roots.

Not quite a boobtastic as I had hoped!

[leegreatorex · 6/10 · 28 September 2008]

I was very excited to see this movie because of the title but it took me a really long time to find it on DVD. It is quite good and you do get to see quite a lot of female nudity I was really thinking there would be more. With a name like that you would really expect to see lots of breasts all the way through, not just sometimes so I want to write this review to warn people that it's not quite what you might be expecting. However, once you accept this it is pretty funny and not rubbish just not quite what I was hoping for. Also the women look a bit the same, having said that they do have great hair and shoes. Since watching this film I have really got into watching films with girls in high heels so in some ways, though it wasn't quite what it could have been it did open me up to new ways of appreciating the female form.

Hilarious!

[Maciste_Brother · 1 February 2003]

I couldn't help but laugh out loud while watching MONDO TOPLESS. The overexuberant descriptive narration along with the busty women's epileptic dancing gave the movie a kind of surreal, comical effect. Visually, there are some stunning shots (the woman dancing next to the incoming train) and the wacky yet clever narration parodies everything about the late 60s, 70s sexual revolution. So, clearly, Russ Meyer ain't no idiot. There's a method to his madness. But the movie gets a bit boring after a while. And many of the women look odd, due mainly to the dated hair styles and attitude. But it's worth a look just for the oddity of it all.

It loses steam as it goes on but it does have its moments

[Red-Barracuda · 4/10 · 17 March 2024]

Russ Meyer directed this mondo film immediately after the commercial disappointment of his now classic Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Despite being considerably less interesting than that earlier movie, Mondo Topless did far greater business at the box office. It seems pretty obvious to me that this was on account of its no messing high-concept - i.e. The promise of large breasts - and beautiful provocative promo posters. In the event, it is kind of a boring film to watch from start-to-finish unfortunately, but, as you can probably imagine, it still definitely has its individual moments.

Like all Meyer movies, this one has a pretty solid dependency on its female cast and it boasts quite a number of pneumatic girls. The standout for this viewer has to be Babette Bardot (she of the iconic posters), who we see driving her car in glorious twin-peaked profile on several occasions. And it's definitely always a bonus to see Lorna Maitland, who appears in some behind-the-scenes stuff from Lorna. If the film in general was to be broken down into its basic parts it would be dancing, narration and fast edits. The narration combines knowingly over-the-top nonsense from a male narrator and voice-overs from the various strippers about their personal lives, as we watch them bust some moves. Its all underscored too by a particularly relentless soundtrack of garage rock guitar instrumentals. Despite the presence of all these lovely women in states of undress, it does get a bit tedious after a while though, given the overall sameyness of so many of the routines, the high-speed edits taking us from one girl to the next and the relentless soundtrack. Still, it wouldn't be a Meyer film if it didn't look good and this one is no different on that score, with loads of well composed static shots and a constant accent on making the women look great. There's a particularly fabulous shot of one of the girls booging on down, as an incoming train fires towards the camera at speed - its ideas like this that really show Meyer's unique eye in full splendour. So, overall, not the most engaging watch in truth but if you like buxom women and you like to see them photographed really nicely, well, this one is certainly worth a look at least.

Mondo Topless

[BandSAboutMovies · 4/10 · 31 March 2024]

"Two Much For One Man...Russ Meyer's Busty Buxotic Beauties ... Titilating ... Torrid ... Untopable ... Too Much For One Man!"

After going from nudies to roughies, Russ Meyer made this mondo film that explores San Francisco as well as the women who dance there in one of the first cities that permitted them to dance topless. As they show themselves to the camera, there's a non-stop barrage of a narrator speaking, the girls being interviewed and distorted guitars.

The women who appear include Bouncy, who is Babette "44-24-38 World's Most Sensational Exotic Entertainer" Bardot, who also appeared in Meyer's Common Law Cabin; Pat Barrington, who was in Mantis In Lace and dated jazz musician and serial killer Melvin Rees; Lucious (Sin Lenee); Buxotic (Darlene Gray); Yummy (Diane Young); Delicious (Darla Paris); Xciting (Donna X) and footage from Europe in the Raw of Veronique Gabriel, Greta Thorwald, Denice Duval, Abundavita, Heide Richter, Gigi La Touche and Yvette Le Grand. There's also screentest footage from Lorna of Lorna Maitland.

Pat Barrington says in this "All you're doing is a dance - it has no meaning whatsoever" and she's right. This is an hour and fifty-five minutes of women dancing nude in front of radios. What must a girl possess to measure up as a topless dancer? She must have a body well above the average in physical beauty - unblemished by an uneven suntan!" This is as pure a journey into what Euss Meyer wanted to see - well, he called it "crud" and made it just to make money - if he were the paying customer. I kind of enjoyed Abundavita, who has antenna of some sort. Also, Yvette LeGrand dances at the Crazy Horse and that reminds me that as dumb as Motley Crue was, they wrote "Girl, Girls, Girls" and that ensured they'd get free lap dances at every bar they mentioned (those would be the now closed Dollhouse in Ft. Lauderdale, Tattletails in Atlanta, the Seventh Veil on the Sunset Strip, Crazy Horse in Paris, the Body Shop in Hollywood, the closed Tropicana in Los Angeles and the closed Marble Arch in Vancouver).

This movie has no redeeming value unless you like to watch naked women dance next to trains. Maybe I do, you know?

Psychedelisexual

[BrianN · 7/10 · 13 July 1999]

Hilarious double-entendre narration (subtle as a sledgehammer) over "mod rock" music. Thoroughly pneumatic cast and hypnotizing choreography.

Russ Meyer blast from the past

[candyfan-1 · 10/10 · 27 March 2004]

Although Russ Meyer made this movie in a hurry to make some fast money, he later came to see it for what it is - a classic sendup of the go-go and striptease girls of the swingin' 60's! The movie is sparse, even by Russ Meyer standards - just a music soundtrack accompanied by an announcer who introduces the "girls"!

But the "girls" are something else! Most of them are California based professional strippers of the era who jumped at the chance to get in front of a movie camera and do their go-go bad thing. All of them are eye catching, but one stands out, literally, from the rest.

Russ was actually ready to run this film through his paces, featuring the already well known Lorna Maitland, when he got a phone call from a great "procurer" friend, one Andy Anderson. He told Russ that he had a major discovery in front of him at a strip club in downtown Los Angeles (San Francisco has been incorrectly reported) and that Russ should "get his body down to a certain club a.s.a.p." in order to be the first to shoot her. Andy said "I'll hold the dogs off until you get here!"

Russ complied, went to the club and together, he and Andy went to the dressing room of one Vivian Cournoyer. She had apparently just begun dancing at the club and was new to the art of striptease and the area, temporarily staying with a friend. Identifying himself, Russ asked Ms. Cournoyer to display the goods whereupon Russ got to see, according to him, "the greatest set of breasts I've ever seen or filmed", all the more remarkable on a petite 112 pound body!

Realizing he had to act quickly in order to be the first to get this buxotic lady on film, Russ Meyer drove with her to the desert early the next morning and spent the entire day shooting stills and film of the woman he called Darlene Grey for his ode to the go-go era, MONDO TOPLESS. Darlene Grey went on to a short-lived career in magazines such as Arv Miller's FLING, posing as Candy Morrison, Vivian Moyer and Angela Carter.

Then, as Russ tells it, she just disappeared from sight after less than a year of posing. Nevertheless, Russ Meyer still claims that MONDO TOPLESS has been one of his best selling videos over the years "simply because of Ms. Grey's great heaving chest".

If for no other reason, enjoy this movie for the "girls", but especially for the extended "desert boogie au go go" done by Darlene Grey near the beginning. No less a film critic than Roger Ebert felt compelled to specifically comment on the voluptuous Ms. Grey in MONDO TOPLESS. Seeing her cavort, topless in the desert, holding a tiny AM transistor radio in one hand is an experience never to be forgotten!

the usual Russ Meyer

[john22900 · 20 June 2009]

This is another great put on movie by Russ Meyer. Nobody but nobody makes a film like Russ Meyer although I am sure many have tried but nobody even comes close to combining all the elements so skillfully as Russ did in his movies.

Almost all of Russ Meyer's movies are put ons. I am sure Russ intended them just that way. It was his idea of winking at his audience which probably are mostly men. But the true fact is that Meyer's movies not only made women objects of desire and physically awesome and intimidating but in comparison to the men in his movies were far more intelligent than the men in them, and this was something Russ did long before anyone ever heard of the women's movement.

Great old time style soft core movie extremely humorous & entertaining

[celesto_moon · 10/10 · 3 August 2006]

This is a really great movie, hilarious! The narrator is just ridiculous, they keep calling it "the art of the topless" and how the girls are skilled in the art. Its a good movie to pull out when you have people over and need something to entertain everyone. Basically, its just girls who are topless talking about their jobs or other various things in their lives. It's pretty soft core & the most mischievous things one of the girls says is "When I go to bed, I don't wear a brassiere". The things the girls say are stupid but the movie is pretty caked in satire. The narrator actually says "try to concentrate on this girl as she's talking to you", its a joke! Old style movie but definitely worth it. Plus, it's entertaining! O & A party rock!

"Mondo Tito".

[fedor8 · 2 May 2008]

I am sure the now dead Yugoslavian dictator, Marshall Tito, would have had no objections to me renaming this movie so. Though I do think he himself could have appeared in it: his breasts were larger than some that we see here...

"Mondo Bimbo" has a great mid-60s feel to it, a colourful and vivacious style that is sorely lacking in today's often overly polished, sometimes sterile-looking movies - not to mention breasts that are REAL. (Oh, them da good ol' days that I never lived through...) No implants filled with dead chemical matter, sticking out of very small breasts, trying to escape their captivity, protesting their imprisonment by impersonating badly blown-up balloons; no, not here.

Still, all's not entirely perfect in the world of the 60s dancing harlots. These braindead women need dancing lessons like Paris Hilton needs a lobotomy. In fact, I take that back: I'd much rather have preferred that none of them danced at all. All that motion distracts from what the title tells us this world is really all about (which it is, in a way). Couldn't Russ have told them to keep still just for a single second? Sure, some of them do: some just stare into the camera emptily, grinning like pleased rhinos, but most of them prance around like deranged Elvis impersonators, to the rhythms of often annoying and ear-splitting jazz and blues music.

Someone here wrote that "no-one wants to hear these strippers talk". How wrong he is... After all, this movie would have been too dull with just breasts bouncing left and right. Some of the things Russ's bimbos say are quite amusing. I very much doubt that this stuff was scripted: it just seems so painfully honest, so utterly moronic, hence those must have been genuine thoughts exiting the empty heads of these mostly very pretty women.

And the winner for Movie's Best Pair Of Breasts goes to... the English-looking woman rolling in mud (also the largest pair). At one point she said that "Playboy Magazine" had rejected her because "my bust-line was too big". I always did hate Hugh Heffner; a niveau riche peasant with no sense of what does or doesn't make a woman beautiful. That magazine is strictly for fans of plastic bimbos...

Fair

[Michael_Elliott · 24 July 2008]

Mondo Topless (1966)

** (out of 4)

This film starts off as a nutty documentary of San Francisco but quickly turns into a tour of the lovely, big breasted strippers of the city. Thankfully this film runs just 60-minutes because anything longer would have really killed the entertainment factor even with the hour running time pushing its limits. The movie is set up as some sort of documentary but being from Meyer you know very well what it's going to be about. We see countless beautiful and big breasted women dance, jiggle and just bounce their breasts all over the screen and while this is certainly fun to watch, it does grow boring before the half-hour mark. The most interesting (look wise) woman is certainly one called Bouncy Babette Bardot who does a few nice tricks with her you guessed it. I think what really kills the entertainment is that we have these strippers telling us their stories and who in the hell wants to hear them? None of the stories are very interesting and all lean towards the boring side. This certainly isn't a bad movie but the director has much better work out there to be seen.