The Grindhouse Era, part 6: The Mid Sixties

UncleScoopy

Once again Brainscan takes a deep dive into a forgotten chapter in the history of film nudity: the grindhouse era. Brainscan alone created all the commentary and collages, as well as the myriad of film clips that accompany this article in the members’ version of the Fun House.

During the mid-1960’s most of the movies shown in grind houses were New York productions that addressed subjects that were grim and gritty – with titles that announced the fact – and that starred the same group of actresses from one film to another.

Buxom blondes showed up commonly enough and included

Sharon Kent in Unholy Matrimony,

Maureen Gafney in One Shocking Moment

and Lorna Maitland in a couple of Russ Meyer films.

LornaMaitland in Lorna (1964)


Lorna Maitland in Mondo Topless (1966)

But much more common were brunettes in just about everything else, and foremost among them from 1964 to 1966 were Darlene Bennett and June Roberts.

Ms. Bennett has 34 credits on IMDb, including both full-length movies and short films, all within the period of 1963 to 1969.  In a couple of the shorts, she appears with her sister, Dawn.  That is true for 1966’s Double Trouble, which has the distinction of feeding three of the prime fantasies of your typical 60’s American man.  1) A guy stumbles onto a semi-clothed gal (Dawn Bennett) who seems utterly unaware of his presence; 2) The guy and gal hit it right off, so she invites him up to her apartment; 3) The guy, the gal and her sister (Darlene) wind up in bed together.  Tis the trifecta of every man’s dreams.

Darlene

Dawn

both

 

 

One of Darlene’s 1965 movies was The Beast That Killed Women

which co-starred Judy Adler, one the most attractive women to ever star in grindhouse fare.

I don’t know much about The Beast because I did not work on it.  The collages were from a decade-old post by a retired imager who called himself Unique1 – all I did was balance the color a bit and add the names.

I did watch Darlene and Judy’s other 1965 effort, Sin Syndicate, and I am sorry for it.  The movie is a sordid, miserable mess that qualifies as a roughie – usually not my cup of tea, but the star power was too great an allure.  Darlene is in a lesbian-lite scene with Marlene Eck (neither party disrobes)

and in a walking around topless scene by herself

.

Sin Syndicate also has an actress named Yolanda Moreno,who plays a stripper with pointy pasties in one scene

and who sleeps topless in another.  Yay for her.

And Judy Adler – cute as can be – is in the roughest of scenes by herself

and in a long shower scene with June Roberts.


Over a period of less than 4 years, Ms. Roberts appeared in more than 20 movies and 1 short.

Those movies included Flesh and Lace,

The Girl From Sin,

My Brother’s Wife,

The Sexploiters.

and Rent-a-Girl

June even managed to play a nudist who never goes outside, in a 1965 movie called Censored.


Those who made the movie claimed it was composed of scenes cut from other films but all that is bullshit – they are just a series of poorly filmed and barely edited clips strung together with some modicum of  narration.  The inestimable Oz sent me the clip from Censored that included Ms. Roberts’ scenes at the beginning and end – I stitched them together – and a bunch of gals playing nudists in between.

Also noteworthy in the June Roberts classics are:

Darlene Bennett, who was featured in Rent-a-Girl,

and Gigi Darlene, whose challenge in The Sexploiters was to strip out of her clothes while eating ice cream – the gal had talent.



By the end of 1966, the winds of change were blowing at gale force.  Mainstream movies shown at reputable theaters began to include nude scenes and hardcore movies began to show up at places that might get  raided now and again, but that offered the viewer much more than shower scenes shot from the waist up or lesbian scenes in which neither party got out of her clothes.  Grindhouse movies would have two more years – 1967 and 1968 – to use the same formulas that had brought in customers for a while, but they would need to go much farther in the years that followed if they wanted to keep those customers.

Part 1 of this series, The Immoral Mr. Teas, can be found here

Part 2, Nudie Cuties and More, 1963-1965, can be found here.

Part 3, The Nudie Cuties of 1963, can be found here

Part 4, The First Nudie Musical, can be found here

Part 5, Early Nudie Costume Comedies, can be found here

to be continued …

 

 

If you enjoy Brainscan’s work, here are the other series that can be found on Other Crap:

The Films of Harry Novak

Part 1, The Sixties, can be found here.

Part 2, Hicksploitation, is here.

Part 3, The Seventies, is here.

Part 4, The Models in Print (and in his films), is here

 

The Early Years of Film Nudity

Part 1: 1932. Peak Pre-Code Talkies.

Part 2: 1929-1934. The Other Pre-Code Talkies.

Part 3: 1927. The Swan Song of the Silents.

Part 4: 1900-1926. The Silent Era.

Part 5: 1935-1951. The Dry Years.

Part 6: 1952-1959. Europe to the Rescue

The same articles, with the added bonus of all of Brainscan’s film clips,  can be found in the members’s version of the Fun House, along with the many thousands of other collages, clips and commentaries that Brainscan has created in the past two decades. (And his contributions represent only a tiny fraction of the content in the back issues, since the Fun House has been updated every day, seven days a week, without exception, for the past 24 years.)