How Russ Meyer changed the face of American film | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

How Russ Mey­er changed the face of Amer­i­can film

21 Mar 2020

Words by Justine Smith

Black and white image of a woman with dark hair looking away from a man in a hat.
Black and white image of a woman with dark hair looking away from a man in a hat.
The sleaze king of Hol­ly­wood cin­e­ma paved the way for a gen­er­a­tion of film­mak­ers, evad­ing post-Code cen­sors with his nudie-cuties”.

There was no sex in Russ Meyer’s ear­ly films. Through­out the 1950s, some film­mak­ers found a loop­hole in America’s strict cen­sor­ship laws: doc­u­men­tary. By shoot­ing films in nud­ist colonies, film­mak­ers were able to bring nudi­ty to the big screen. While cen­sor boards attempt­ed to sti­fle these attempts, legal­ly, they had very lit­tle to ground to stand on. With the oppor­tu­ni­ty of a life­time, Mey­er was about to trans­form the genre and change the land­scape of Amer­i­can film forever.

Dur­ing World War Two, Mey­er worked as a wartime pho­tog­ra­ph­er, and after return­ing he planned on start­ing up a career in Hol­ly­wood. He had lit­tle suc­cess, and it was only in the late-’50s that his career took a turn as the nud­ist colony films, often referred to as nat­u­ral­ist” movies, start­ed to gain promi­nence. Although Mey­er was ini­tial­ly ret­i­cent when offered to make one of these films for $24,000, he had a plan.

Com­bin­ing the ado­les­cent fan­ta­sy of x‑ray glass­es with the basic ten­ants of the nat­u­ral­ist film, Mey­er came up with the con­cept for his first film, The Immoral Mr Teas. In the film, the tit­u­lar Mr Teas acquires x‑ray pow­ers after vis­it­ing the den­tist and can now see women naked. While shot in full colour, the film is rel­a­tive­ly prim­i­tive; it fea­tures no sync-sound and is lit­tle more than a series of vignettes. Work­ing with­in the scope of what was allowed in nat­u­ral­ist films, the nudi­ty fea­tures no sex­u­al touch­ing and, despite the lech­ery of Mr Teas, was rel­a­tive­ly chaste.

While even the nat­u­ral­ist films were screened in under­ground cin­e­mas, The Immoral Mr Teas was giv­en a wider release. Its mea­gre bud­get pro­duced a healthy prof­it, and inde­pen­dent pro­duc­ers raced to imi­tate it, spurring a new genre which came to be known as nudie-cuties”. These films would fea­ture female nudi­ty with­in the scope of light­heart­ed com­ic premis­es and proved rel­a­tive­ly suc­cess­ful, if not con­tin­u­al­ly con­tro­ver­sial. Mr Teas would also ini­ti­ate Meyer’s to the court sys­tem, as he had to defend the film against obscen­i­ty charges. In one Philadel­phia case, a judge ruled that the film was not pornog­ra­phy but was vul­gar, point­less and in bad taste.”

Blonde woman in black underwear standing on grassy field.

After the suc­cess of The Immoral Mr Teas, Mey­er made two more nudie-cutie films, Eve and the Handy­man and Wild Gals of the Naked West. With thou­sands of imi­ta­tors, it was clear why Meyer’s films rose to the top: he had a cin­e­mat­ic eye, bound­less imag­i­na­tion and an iron­ic sense of humour. Inspired by his fan­tasies, Mey­er felt that what turned him on would trans­late to a broad­er audi­ence. But he quick­ly grew tired of the aching­ly adorable genre he invent­ed and began tak­ing even greater risks.

Among these new films were Lor­na and Mud­honey, grit­ty black-and-white South­ern Goth­ic noirs that inte­grat­ed nudi­ty into the sto­ry­lines. Inspired, improb­a­bly by Ital­ian neo-real­ism, these are among Meyer’s most earnest efforts. Gone were the goofy antics, and the more camp aes­thet­ics he’d refine over the decade were also absent. Both films were big suc­cess­es and required Meyer’s to defend his projects against new obscen­i­ty charges, paving the way for oth­er film­mak­ers look­ing to take risks in terms of nudi­ty and sex on the big screen.

While the imme­di­ate bene­fac­tors from his suc­cess were oth­er sex­ploita­tion film­mak­ers, the real­i­ty was that Meyer’s films (and their sub­se­quent obscen­i­ty cas­es) were paving the way for post-Code Hol­ly­wood and the New Amer­i­can Wave of the 1970s that inte­grat­ed sex and nudi­ty into dra­mat­ic plots.

Meyer’s work only gained in promi­nence over the ensu­ing decade, grad­u­al­ly refin­ing his style with Faster, Pussy­cat! Kill! Kill!, Vix­en!, and Beyond the Val­ley of the Dolls. While his films are not for all tastes, his tra­vails in push­ing the bound­aries of sex on screen brought about sig­nif­i­cant changes, for­ev­er alter­ing the look and feel of Amer­i­can film.

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