The Naked Venus

This had to be one of the most overblown melodramas in the history of the cinema. The film basically is a soap opera with nudity thrown in as filler. It reminded me very much of every soap opera I have ever seen in my life, but the only difference here is the fact that the character of Yvonne is the typical soap opera heroine who is fighting not only her mother in law, but her reputation as most soap heroines do. Bob is the typical mama's boy as he is forced to divorce Yvonne just because his mommy doesn't like her. And the mother in law makes Endorra from Bewitched look like a sweetheart. Also, the nudist scenes only act as filler to help push the story along, and it definitely needs as much pushing as it can because the scenes away from the camp as well are some of the most excruciating to sit through. In fact the scenes inside the courtroom wouldn't even make a good episode of Divorce Court. This definitely is one of those films that aren't even bad enough to be called funny.

The Naked Venus (1959)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Yvonne (Patricia Conelle) is living in France when she meets the American Robert (Don Roberts) and before long the two are married. Everything turns to hell when they return home and Robert's mother learns that her new daughter-in-law was a nudist. Before long mommy is pushing for her son to get a divorce.

THE NAKED VENUS, believe it or not, comes from director Edgar G. Ulmar, the man behind Universal's THE BLACK CAT as well as countless other "B" movies. When they said Ulmer messed with every genre they really weren't kidding as this nudist/docu-drama is a pretty silly movie but it's clear that the producers wanted to try something a tad bit more serious and I'm going to guess that's why Ulmer was hired. Why he wanted to do the picture is a mystery to me but perhaps it was just a job that paid.

For the most part I found this film to be very entertaining, or at least once it gets to the scenes that were the reason someone like Ulmer would have been hired. A lot of the early stuff is basically nude camp footage where we see various people walking around naked. The scenes on the nudist camp really aren't anything overly special but for 1959 there's a lot of nudity and of course that's why people would come to a film like this.

The final portion of the film is devoted to a divorce trial where the woman has to get a lawyer (also a female) and the two must battle and prove that being a nudist shouldn't be looked at as a crime. We get countless experts testifying and of course some of it is rather campy but at the same time I must admit Ulmer does a good job at telling the story and the courtroom scenes play out quite effective and entertaining.

The performances aren't the greatest and that's what really keeps the "drama" from being better. For the most part THE NAKED VENUS isn't going to appeal to everyone but it's certainly an interesting little film.