THE BASHFUL BIKINI is probably the weirdest of the nudist camp films I've seen. The expected visit to the nudist camp only occupies about ten minutes of the running time while the rest is some kind of slow-paced marriage drama with plenty of political subtext rallying against the McCarthyist witch-hunts of the previous decade. This makes it stately and uninteresting, long-winded and dated in the extreme. Inevitably the version available on Amazon Prime excises what few nude scenes exist in the film.
2 Reviews
Misfire: the perils of "high-brow" porn
lor_29 November 2010
I'm as guilty as anyone of making a mountain out of a molehill when it comes to viewing and analyzing porn, but it is a serious error when pornographers take themselves and their work too seriously. This is an art form all about arousing the viewer, and you've got to keep that in mind during scripting and shooting, or else!
Case in point is this evidently unreleased junker, not even listed in the thorough AFI Catalogue of Feature Films: 1961-1970. With a story by mainstream author Meyer Levin (he wrote the Leopold/Loeb-inspired novel "Compulsion") and a would-be film maestro Robert Gurney Jr., this is one of the lamest sex comedies known to man.
Loaded with WTF? scenes of abominably obvious (and unsuccessful) comedy setups, film often plays like one of those Saturday Night Live sketches gone wrong -on & on with flop sweat and the feeling of "will it ever end" escalating alarmingly.
A decent character actor William Smithers stars as a scientist working on developing anti-missile technology -ok, I have to give Levin and Gurney credit for prescience some 15 years before creepy old Pres. Reagan unveiled his Star Wars defense program. But the film is more about Smithers' rivalry with back-stabbing co-worker Danny Meehan and his horrid wife Louise Troy, latter just a notch short of a live-action version of a Disney villainess like Cruella De Vil.
The antic situation comedy motifs that unfold are moronic beyond belief, never convincing and so awkwardly developed it's not surprising they screened this baby at Cannes, hoping some French critics who revere Frank Tashlin (and Jerry) would bite.
Central premise is that Smithers' beautiful French wife Liliane Brousse (whose film career was apparently snuffed out with this opus) insists they join a New Jersey nudist colony in order to escape the oppressive Manhattan heatwave. They've got to keep creepy Meehan and Troy from discovering they've gone au naturel, and even dumber complications occur when Meehan tries to get Smithers in trouble with their old-fashioned boss.
This trash seems to have been filmed in 1962, judging from some items on screen and scenes tagging that year. (For example, there is a wise crack: "now you're famous like Jack Paar" which had to be much older to still be topical than the 1964 date of this film, given that Paar was already replaced by Carson in 1962.) There are some occasionally interesting location shots, such as the old Waverly theater in Greenwich Village that are momentarily diverting, but the unfulfilled sex tease is more than annoying throughout.
We get to see a huge-breasts denizen of the Nudist Colony in a couple of fleeting scenes, and Brousse goes topless, oddly enough in a scene where Troy intrudes upon her in the bathroom. A vast supporting cast is completely wasted, such as Naura Hayden as the boss's secretary (who's into yoga), Grayson Hall in a brief scene midway through the film, Paul Dooley, unfunny for once in his lengthy career, and porn vet Sam Stewart thrown away as the groom at a nudist wedding.
Of course, the usual proselytizing for the nudist cult is included, but without the requisite Wishman or H.G. Lewis delivery of the nudist goods. It's like taking your castor oil, but not being rewarded by mom with a cookie.
Case in point is this evidently unreleased junker, not even listed in the thorough AFI Catalogue of Feature Films: 1961-1970. With a story by mainstream author Meyer Levin (he wrote the Leopold/Loeb-inspired novel "Compulsion") and a would-be film maestro Robert Gurney Jr., this is one of the lamest sex comedies known to man.
Loaded with WTF? scenes of abominably obvious (and unsuccessful) comedy setups, film often plays like one of those Saturday Night Live sketches gone wrong -on & on with flop sweat and the feeling of "will it ever end" escalating alarmingly.
A decent character actor William Smithers stars as a scientist working on developing anti-missile technology -ok, I have to give Levin and Gurney credit for prescience some 15 years before creepy old Pres. Reagan unveiled his Star Wars defense program. But the film is more about Smithers' rivalry with back-stabbing co-worker Danny Meehan and his horrid wife Louise Troy, latter just a notch short of a live-action version of a Disney villainess like Cruella De Vil.
The antic situation comedy motifs that unfold are moronic beyond belief, never convincing and so awkwardly developed it's not surprising they screened this baby at Cannes, hoping some French critics who revere Frank Tashlin (and Jerry) would bite.
Central premise is that Smithers' beautiful French wife Liliane Brousse (whose film career was apparently snuffed out with this opus) insists they join a New Jersey nudist colony in order to escape the oppressive Manhattan heatwave. They've got to keep creepy Meehan and Troy from discovering they've gone au naturel, and even dumber complications occur when Meehan tries to get Smithers in trouble with their old-fashioned boss.
This trash seems to have been filmed in 1962, judging from some items on screen and scenes tagging that year. (For example, there is a wise crack: "now you're famous like Jack Paar" which had to be much older to still be topical than the 1964 date of this film, given that Paar was already replaced by Carson in 1962.) There are some occasionally interesting location shots, such as the old Waverly theater in Greenwich Village that are momentarily diverting, but the unfulfilled sex tease is more than annoying throughout.
We get to see a huge-breasts denizen of the Nudist Colony in a couple of fleeting scenes, and Brousse goes topless, oddly enough in a scene where Troy intrudes upon her in the bathroom. A vast supporting cast is completely wasted, such as Naura Hayden as the boss's secretary (who's into yoga), Grayson Hall in a brief scene midway through the film, Paul Dooley, unfunny for once in his lengthy career, and porn vet Sam Stewart thrown away as the groom at a nudist wedding.
Of course, the usual proselytizing for the nudist cult is included, but without the requisite Wishman or H.G. Lewis delivery of the nudist goods. It's like taking your castor oil, but not being rewarded by mom with a cookie.
See also
Awards | FAQ | User Ratings | External Reviews | Metacritic Reviews
