Brainscan once again takes a deep dive into the history of film nudity. In this presentation, he focuses on the exploitation master, Harry Novak, who filled the drive-ins and grindhouse theaters of America with some of their most memorable moments. All of the comments and collages below have been created by Brainscan. His accompanying film clips can be found in the members’ version of the Funhouse for Monday, April 6
Part 1: The Sixties
If we say grind house movie houses had a golden age, it would have to be the 1960’s and early 1970’s, after the demise of the Hays Code but before the dominance of legal hardcore movies.
A major producer during that time – the poster boy of exploitation movies – was Harry Novak. He shot two of his earlier productions, Agony of Love (1966) and The Girl With The Hungry Eyes (1967) in black and white, but his first movie was Kiss Me Quick (1964) and he shot it in living color.
Those first three films had a couple of features that would show up in his later productions. One was a narrative that at least made sense; the writers he chose were never in danger of winning an Oscar for best original screenplay, but a viewer could follow the story line without resorting to hallucinogens. And the other was his choice of actresses. Harry would find the best endowed and least bashful women in the business and he would hire them in as many movies as he or they could stand. Pat Barrington was the first of his starlets (?), with appearances in both Agony
and Girl
(if you think the scenes look identical in still frames, you are not mistaken. Pat walks in, looks straight at the camera and takes off her clothes – now, that is acting).
Also naked in Agony of Love: Joy Lowe
Also naked in Kiss Me Quick” Althea Currier
What followed for a couple of years was a movie or two, but Harry began to own the exploitation genre with two costume comedies in 1968 (The Notorious Cleopatra) and 1969 (The Secret Sex Lives of Romeo and Juliet).
Cleopatra introduces Dixie Donovan to the world, in what was the first of a half-dozen movies she made in a couple of years, before she disappeared. Dixie had several talents, all of them real and all of them spectacular. She plays Cleo’s favorite servant, not the last of Ptolemy pharaohs herself.
The honor of playing Cleo went to Loray White, the first of Sammy Davis, Jr.’s wives. The story there is lurid and irrelevant because Ms. White could not act a lick, but in her late 30’s, when this movie was made, she still looked wonderful.
(Loray and Dixie also did some scenes together.)
I’ve mentioned this a while back, but the movie really gets up my nose for its portrayal of Julius Caesar. He was not the first emperor of Rome – his adopted son, Octavian (Caesar Augustus) was – and he was not an obese libertine, but a consummate, disciplined soldier. He was killed by a group of senators not because they objected to his sexual habits, because he was a prude; they killed him for his ambition. And whereas he bedded Cleo – she bore him son who, for a week, was technically pharaoh – all of that was years before his assassination, not the day before. And whereas Ms Loray is an ebony goddess, Cleopatra was not black. She was not even Egyptian. The inbred Ptolemy pharaohs were Greek. Not sure why the screenwriter/director had to do such violence to the historical truth, but hey, he wrote a story that got a bunch of attractive women in the kind of clothing we like – which is to say, none – and kept the camera on them, so did his job.
Also naked in Notorious Cleopatra:
Cheryl Powell
Kathy Canella
Neola Graf
Ruth Liben
Secret Sex Lives takes on a work of fiction and shows it no respect. Dee Lockwood plays Juliet
and Mickey Jines plays her mom, even though the two look to be pretty much the same age.
That’s a good thing, too, because Juliet was supposed to be 13 and no one wants a 13 year-old acting the way Ms. Lockwood does in this movie. Vincene Wallace plays Juliet’s nurse, a role meant for a woman in her 60’s, but again we should be thankful the 20-year-old Ms. Wallace was cast, instead. Ms Wallace also did a scene with Dee Lockwood
And there is this long orgy scene with Ms. Jines, Ms. Wallace and a bunch of other women thrown in for your viewing pleasure.
Coming in Part 2 – on to the 70s
Scoop’s plug:
I’ve always eschewed the hard sell for the members’ version, but I think I’d be remiss if I failed to mention that it may be the single best way to pass the coronavirus stay-in-place order. A membership gets you access to 24 years of film clips, collages and comments, including the complete works of Brainscan, Tuna, Oz, Aesthete and Defoe. With some three terabytes of film clips, you would be challenged to watch them all in your lifetime. You will certainly not run out of things to see during the quarantine period.
Additional plusses:
Everything is on our servers, so you never have to deal with crazy online locker sites and their endless parade of spam. (As I often have to rely on with Other Crap which, as you know, generates no revenue.)
Once you are a member, you will not be pitched anything else. There are no ads, just content, and you get it all.
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