5. The Immoral Mr Teas (1959)
The Immoral Mr Teas was Russ Meyer's first commercially successful film and made him a rich man. It is a nudist comedy and features plenty of naked female skin. Mr Teas, a door to door salesman, is socially inept and incompetent. He is also sex starved and dreams about what lies beneath ladies' clothes. He is only able to attain sexual relations with a prostitute. After a trip to the dentist he realises that the treatment has left him with X-ray vision. His dream comes true - he can see all ladies naked. At first this is delightful for Mr Teas but he dislikes the fact that he is seeing naked women he interacts with on a regular basis such as the dental nurse, a secretary and a waitress. He goes to a psychoanalyst and sees her naked too. The film ends with a quote - "on the other hand, some men are happy to be sick". The Immoral Mr Teas forged new ground in cinema. It was the first 'above ground', non porno film to showcase nudity without being a film on nudist camps. Meyer effectively invented the Nudie Cutie genre. A huge big deal in 1959, the film is rather tame and dull today. There isn't even a whiff of sex about the film as that would have been intensely shocking for audiences of that time and would have transgressed limits of what was then acceptable on the screen. The film has no sound but a heavy narration. Narration would go on to be a trademark of Meyer's. The film is directed work man like by Meyer who would develop his own inimitable directorial and editing style as he progressed through future works.
The Immoral Mr Teas was Russ Meyer's first commercially successful film and made him a rich man. It is a nudist comedy and features plenty of naked female skin. Mr Teas, a door to door salesman, is socially inept and incompetent. He is also sex starved and dreams about what lies beneath ladies' clothes. He is only able to attain sexual relations with a prostitute. After a trip to the dentist he realises that the treatment has left him with X-ray vision. His dream comes true - he can see all ladies naked. At first this is delightful for Mr Teas but he dislikes the fact that he is seeing naked women he interacts with on a regular basis such as the dental nurse, a secretary and a waitress. He goes to a psychoanalyst and sees her naked too. The film ends with a quote - "on the other hand, some men are happy to be sick". The Immoral Mr Teas forged new ground in cinema. It was the first 'above ground', non porno film to showcase nudity without being a film on nudist camps. Meyer effectively invented the Nudie Cutie genre. A huge big deal in 1959, the film is rather tame and dull today. There isn't even a whiff of sex about the film as that would have been intensely shocking for audiences of that time and would have transgressed limits of what was then acceptable on the screen. The film has no sound but a heavy narration. Narration would go on to be a trademark of Meyer's. The film is directed work man like by Meyer who would develop his own inimitable directorial and editing style as he progressed through future works.