NOT Available on DVD: MONDO TOPLESS

MONDO TOPLESS (1966) is Russ Meyer’s send up of the swingin’ 60′s, a pseudo-documentary portrait of San Francisco, and most of all, a tribute to Meyer’s favorite subject; naked women! The 61-minute sort-of-documentary is sparse, even by Russ Meyer standards – just a rock soundtrack by The Aladdins accompanied by an overexuberant announcer who provides double entendre narration as stacked women dance about displaying their figures. MONDO TOPLESS, which seems relatively wholesome now, was definitely a product of its time and requires historical perspective (and, despite the name of this column, it IS available on DVD).

With today’s endless cornucopia of internet porn, it’s hard to believe that less than 50 years ago, there was an entire industry based on a glimpse at women’s breasts. In the 1950s, when healthy male movie fans wanted to see females naked on-screen, their only choice were ‘nudist camp movies’ – a genre that portrayed nudists as a blissful and hygienic group who just happened to spend all day in their birthday suits. Due to slightly loosened obscenity regulations and the producers claims that these were ‘sociological studies’, films such as 10 DAYS IN A NUDIST CAMP (1952) and GARDEN OF EDEN (1954) were able to bypass censors and the wonders of the naked female form were finally available to any adult purchasing a movie ticket. Nudist camp films claimed to depict the lifestyles of members of the nudism movement, but were of course nothing more than a vehicle for the exhibition and commercial exploitation of female nudity, and there were hundreds of them.

In 1953 ‘Playboy’ magazine debuted and one of its first centerfold photographers was Russ Meyer. Meyer had a knack, and a passion, for photographing gorgeous, busty women and felt that the gals in the nudist camp movies were far too plain-looking for his tastes. In 1959, Meyer scraped together $24,000 and made THE IMMORAL MR. TEAS, a quaint, colorful, and cartoonish movie about a nerdy fellow whose life is constantly interrupted by beautiful large-breasted women in various stages of undress. There was no sex in Meyer’s film and he made no pretense of presenting nudity as a lifestyle choice, as did the nudist camp movies. It was a simple and honest film about voyeurism and the display of the unclothed female form. THE IMMORAL MR. TEAS was a huge hit, the genre known as the ‘nudie-cutie’ was born, and for the next twenty years, Russ Meyer was known as the ‘King of the Nudies’.
Russ Meyer was a true American film artist who wrote, directed, edited, photographed and distributed all his own films.

He financed each new film from the proceeds of the earlier ones, and became a wealthy man in the process. A Russ Meyer film is instantly recognizable – superior production values, rhythmic editing and wide-angle shots leering up at the impossibly top-heavy actresses that populated his films. Meyer spent a lot of time at ‘The Body Shop’, a famous Sunset Boulevard strip club where he discovered many of these bra-busting starlets. After achieving success with more ‘Nudie Cutie’ such as EVE AND THE HANDYMAN (1960 which starred his wife Eve Meyer), and WILD GALS OF THE NAKED WEST (1961), Meyer embarked on a more ambitious phase in his career with quartet of black-and-white films that combined his love of female anatomy with potboiling melodrama. LORNA (1964) and MUDHONEY (1965) were Erskine Caldwell-inspired backwoods morality tales while MOTORPSYCHO and FASTER PUSSYCAT, KILL KILL! (both 1965) were violent desert gothics. All four are bold and energetic films that were way ahead of their time on many levels and have aged well (In his 1982 book ‘Shock Value’ John Waters wrote: “FASTER PUSSYCAT, KILL KILL! is beyond a doubt, the best movie ever made and is better than any film that will be made in the future!� I can’t argue with that!) but these actually contained less much nudity than his earlier color films and were not box-office successes. So for his next opus Meyer switched back to color and packed as many full-bosomed naked lovelies into one hour as he could and the result was MONDO TOPLESS.

With MONDO TOPLESS Russ Meyer abandoned all traces of plot (or logic). The movie is about one thing alone: Breasts. Wall-to-wall breasts, they’re everywhere in MONDO TOPLESS. You see breasts indoors, outdoors, in cars, and underwater. You see breasts gyrating, jiggling, bouncing, and flopping around. You see breasts covered in water, whipped cream and mud. If breasts are your thing (as in the real unenhanced kind), you’ll no doubt find MONDO TOPLESS a certain type of spiritual nirvana. It’s like Meyer made up for the lack of nudity in the previous four films by smothering his audience with sweater meat as penance. It’s far from Russ Meyer’s best film (that would be FASTER PUSSYCAT…followed by 1975’s SUPER VIXENS) but it’s a lot of fun.

Accompanied by bombastic narration by John Furlong, MONDO TOPLESS begins as a snapshot of San Francisco, displaying famous images of the city as a nude Babette Bardot drives through its famous hilly streets, her mammoth gazongas squished behind the wheel. Pat Barringer shakes it topless at atop a telephone tower, in a swimming pool, and in the desert. Darlene Grey hops into a muddy lake. Lorna Maitland writhes in the desert. Sin Linee, a long-tressed stacked blonde dashes naked through the woods and does a berserk go-go routine in an abandoned shack and takes an outdoor shower. Diane Young, a tiny pigtailed busty blonde boogies down on a beach, shimmying to the music while holding her reel-to-reel tape deck! Brunette Darla Paris also carries a radio with her as she cavorts in the woods. Cut back to Bouncy Babette Bardot as she hoofs it topless some more, this time on a railroad track as a train roars past her.

And so it goes with MONDO TOPLESS for an hour, cutting back and forth between these curvy women as the narrator breathlessly intones such profundities as “You’ve only dreamed there were women like these–until now! But they’re real!â€�. Occasionally the women speak as well about their careers, philosphies, and figures. “Almost any type of music makes me feel sexâ€�, intones one “also color makes me feel sex!â€�. Apparently Meyer originally recorded himself asking these women questions, then later cut out his own voice. Meyer also constantly mixes in close-ups of transistor radios, reel-to-reel tape players,and telephone lines. As crazy as it sounds, MONDO TOPLESS overflows with aggressive energy. Some of the footage (the indoor scenes) in MONDO TOPLESS is from Meyer’s (now lost) 1963 documentary EUROPE IN THE RAW.

If there’s a star in MONDO TOPLESS it’s the amazing Babette Bardot. In his book ‘Big Bosoms and Square Jaws’ Russ Meyer biographer Jimmy McDonough decribed Bardot as having “a body so ripe flies might be interested and let’s not forget the tongue-waggling/thumb-sucking monster red lips that look like they could swallow a hummer. With flesh quivering in all directions, there’s something abstract about Babette� Bardot was a burlesque dancer who’s only other film appearance was Russ Meyer COMMON-LAW CABIN in 1967. Babette claimed to have modeled nude as a teen for Pablo Picasso and to be a fourth cousin of French superstar Brigitte Bardot. I doubt either claim is true but Babette’s 44-24-38 figure and her mangled English make quite an impression in MONDO TOPLESS. Lorna Maitland had previously worked with Russ Meyer in LORNA and MUDHONEY and Pat Barrington was a popular nude model in men’s magazines who appeared as the gold-painted girl in Ed Wood’s ORGY OF THE DEAD (1965).

MODO TOPLESS was a hit in 1966 but Russ Meyer’s first real blockbuster was VIXEN in 1968, after which he was hired to make studio films by 20th-Century Fox. The first of these, BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS (1970 with a screenplay by Roger Ebert) was a smash but after the failure of the second, THE SEVEN MINUTES (1971), Meyer went back to independent filmmaking. BLACK SNAKE (1973), SUPER VIXENS (1975), UP (1976) and BENEATH THE VALLEY OF THE ULTRA-VIXENS (1979) completed his filmography.

Meyer owned all of his films (except the two for Fox) and in the 1980’s, his video label, Russ Meyer Enterprises, released them on VHS and sold them for $60.00 each. Even by the late 1990’s, when most videos had come down to the 10-20 dollar range, Meyer stubbornly insisted on his $60.00 price tag. His tapes were in red clamshell boxes that all said “Russ Meyer’s Bosomania� across the top. On the back of the video box was the phone number of Russ Meyer Enterprises if you wanted to buy more tapes. For years, Russ Meyer himself would answer the phone if you dialed that number! I never called it myself (I wish I had) but I’ve been told stories by friends who did that Meyer was always ornery and cranky, refusing to offer bulk discounts or even combine shipping costs.

By 2000, Meyer had developed alzheimers and suffered from severe dementia, but was still answering that phone! Today, Meyer’s estate runs things and is known as ‘RM Films International’ (www.russmeyer.com). They still sell his films on VHS (!), though they’ve finally come down to $40.00 a pop and eleven Russ Meyer films, including MONDO TOPLESS, are available on DVD for the same price. In September of 2004 Russ Meyer, ‘King Leer’ himself, died of pneumonia at age 82. His tombstone reads: “RUSS MEYER, King of The Nudies – I Was Glad to Do It!”