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We
open, fully clothed, in the studio of some
nightly news broadcast, where the sports
anchor, George Bowman
(Brad Grinter), wraps up his
segment, and then tosses it back to the
news desk ... No
longer live, when Bowman
asks his cameraman, Steve Bradford
(William Kerwin), how his new marriage is working
out, Bradford says it's going great except for one
little hang up: his wife, Lori
(Suzanne Robinson), freezes up
whenever they get naked, which kinda puts
the kibosh on their sex life.
Thinking
Lori must have had some kind of
nudie-fueled
traumatic experience when she was younger,
the sportscaster decides he's also an amateur
psychoanalyst; and his solution
to his friend's problem is some shock
therapy for the missus, and invites the
couple to come and visit a nudist colony
he belongs to. Bowman's logic is as
follows: If Lori is the only one not
naked, then she will be different, and
uncomfortable because of it. And if she
wants to fit in, she'll have to lose her
inhibitions and go native. So this action
will either cure Lori, or finally provide
the psychotic break she needs and trigger
a mass murderer...
I
don't know where you all stand on the idea
of nudity and pornography, but to me they
are two very different things. You can use art to defend the
former, but the later gets a little
prickly. To illustrate, let's go back to
my freshman year of college and a couple
of anecdotes that will hopefully help to
explain the difference. On one hand, I had
some old high school buddies who dropped
by the dorm a lot, one of whom was a
professional porn-enthusiast. I will
freely admit that I have no problems with
the teasing, and titillating kind of porn,
but hard-core does absolutely nothing for
me. Watching two people doing the
horizontal bop, to me, is the cinematic
equivalent of watching paint dry. Does
that make me a prude? Fine. Whatever. I'm
not judging, whatever turns your crank,
turns your crank, know what I mean
(--
'cuz we're not even gonna discuss my
proclivities). Anyways,
the porn enthusiast would always bring a
sample of this genre, encased in a plain
brown rental box, for what came to be
known as Pizza-n-Porn night. This
tradition only lasted for three
excursions, though, because each time my buddy
brought the same damn film. No! I
don't mean they had similar plots and
scenes. It was the EXACT. SAME. MOVIE.
This
foul up was through no fault of his own.
He'd rented the tapes on three separate
occasions, in three different rental
places, under three different titles; but
each time it was the same dang film about
a town's local Sex Club coming under fire
by the repressed and frigid "Ice
Queen" mayor, who planned to shut
them down. To rectify this, they kidnap
Her Honor, sit her on a vibrator, and then
put on a sex-show to prove how vital the
club is to the town's economy -- or
something like that. After the show,
forgive me, climaxes [...and the batteries run
out],
the club is saved and the mayor turns into
their best client ... After unsuccessfully
protesting the repeated viewings, and then
sitting through this fine film -- for the
third damn time in as many weeks,
Pizza-n-Porn night died when I made some
excuse about not being around for the next
proposed get together (--
in fear that I'd see it for a fourth time
under yet another, different title).
Our
second anecdote begins when a certain art
major had his first experience with a nude
model. On the first day, I couldn't draw
or sketch worth a poop. I admit it. I was
distracted by her ... huge tracts of land,
but by the fourth or fifth session, it was
no big deal. Then,
about halfway through the semester, I
happened to be dining with my mother, who
has very strong, and very negative opinions about
our subjects being one in the same:
both being pure evil. And it just so
happened that our waitress that evening
was the nude model at the college, who
recognized me. Of course, Mom wanted to
know how I knew her, and this comedic
set-up led down a very rocky path and
heated debate over our egg rolls, where I
finally convinced her that there was, in
fact, a difference, and not all nudity was
bad. Pornography, however, was still the
root of all things evil. Sorry. I tried.
Watching
porn is almost a right of passage.
Originally the staples of grindhouses and stag parties,
these naughty pieces of cinema have been
with us since the beginning. Today,
hard-core is a high-profit industry. They're
glossier now,
with higher production values, and the
full-body-tanned actors and actresses are
silicone and surgically enhanced Barbie
and Ken dolls. Old
school titillating porn, like this screwed
up nudist short, on the other hand, is a
world of visible boom mikes, lost delivery
boys, skanky soundtracks, and lots-n-lots
of earth tones. They were populated
by tan-lines, fish-white beer guts, and
drooping *ahem* equipment. And I
miss them dearly as one of the few who
actually likes a little plot in his porn
-- and the wonkier the plot the better,
like, say, trying to save your marriage by
taking your nudie-phobic wife to a nudist
colony.
After
getting assurances from Bowman that all the strange things
he's heard about nudists camps aren't
true, Bradford thinks it's a great idea and
really gives Lori the hard sell as they
get ready for bed. Lori, meanwhile, doesn't
appear to be very stable to begin with as we zoom in on
her head and hear the magic voices that
lurk inside there
(-- which
leads me to believe this will end in a
all-nude bloodbath).
Wanting to save their marriage, when Lori
reluctantly agrees to go, her husband thanks her
by promptly passing out on top of her.
The
following weekend, when the newlywed
newbies arrive at
the nudist colony, Steve has to drag Lori
out of the car. Seems she's having second
thoughts, but before the wife can bolt, Barrows
and his partner -- both
buck-ass naked, greet them, and judging by the way he
poses, Barrows is very proud of his *ahem*
microphone. As they show them around, we
spy several naked campers of all shapes
and sizes, playing all kinds of games,
including golf, volleyball, badminton, and
one very interesting game of Twister.
(Right
hand-blue. Left foot-red. Wedding
Tackle-green).
After
taking all that in, Steve
and the completely overwhelmed Lori go to their
bungalow, where Steve quickly and happily strips
out of his clothes. But Lori balks, and
I'm not sure if the POV shots of her
looking around, that continually go in and
out of focus, are supposed to represent
the struggle in her mind over the nudity
thing, or just some ineptness on the
cameraman's part. Eventually, Lori
discards her clothes but wraps herself up
in a sheet when Barrows rounds them up to
continue the tour over to the barbecue
pits
(--
and
WATCH YOUR WIENERS, boys, that thing's
hot!), where Lori's internal voices
reach a
crescendo, and we finally decipher what
she's saying: "cooperate
together."
As
the day progresses, Lori's inhibitions
slowly melt away and there's a brief
self-realization that her mother was the
root cause of her hang-ups, but that
doesn't matter now because she's naked --
and there ain't a dang thing mom can do
about it. With that, she kisses Steve, and they take
a stroll by the lake, where Lori admits to
finally being free, thanks to the power of
nudity.
The
End
Brad
Grinter was a
full time nudist and a part-time film teacher, who
allegedly funneled money from his
student's projects to make his own nudist
camp films. He would later move on to
crap-cinema infamy when he teamed up with
Steven Hawkes -- a nudie-noir veteran
himself, for
the all time gonzoidal classic, Blood
Freak. But before that, Grinter
knocked around with the Kerwin brothers,
William, Edward and Harry, who were all
veterans of Florida's seedy film industry,
most notably serving in some fashion or
another in several of Hershell Gordon
Lewis' earlier gore-soaked epics.
Collaborating together, this fearsome
foursome put their head together and
dropped their drawers for Sweet Bird of
Aquarius, from which this short is
culled. In the extended version, not only
does the nudist camp cure Lori of her
hang-ups, it super-charges her libido, and
soon enough, is taking all comers who will
enter her bed. Turns out all those nudists
were also partner-swapping swingers --
anybody else remember Barrows mentioning
that in his sales pitch?
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