I discovered this sloppy but fitfully amusing drive-in movie while looking at mid-late 70s progammes for the Arcadia Cinema in Kenmare, County Kerry, Ireland. At the time, said movie house offered "special late nite adult only" shows, and I assumed quite naturally that 'Judy's No No' was a soft or hardcore porno about a woman and a vibrator, as the title implies - or perhaps a nudie cutie of Herschell Gordon Lewis's pre-Blood Feast era, or a kinky live show of some sort.
Instead, it's a bargain-basement comedy, light on the skin with one softcore lovemaking sequence, about a gorgeous stripper who gets conked on the head and chucked into the ocean by some jewel smugglers, and resuscitated by a beach-dwelling heartthrob.
The film suffers from a surfeit of problems, including a key tonal miscalculation. The majority of women, upon being abducted, tossed to their death in the waves, fished out and then pursued, would be shell-shocked, if not clinically traumatized. Judy, on the other hand, acts happy go lucky and carefree, and - even upon her beachside deliverance from the watery depths - looks impeccably coiffed, made up and manicured, as if she's just finished posing for a Cosmopolitan cover.
Funniest aspect for me is a game show music style soundtrack that plays over the heroine and her rescuer's shoreline trip to Miami in a Cessna.
'Little No No' is never as technically incompetent as a Doris Wishman film. To his credit, director Sherman Price at least knew where to place the camera and how to edit. Price's sole claim-to-fame prior to this outing was apparently a proto-Borat hidden camera romp that followed Weegee through Europe and witnessed his crazy stunts. So we get a basic level of directorial know-how that keeps this from being truly abysmal. And lead John Lodge was a capable actor.
Yet there are enough visual non sequiturs and sound production lapses, and the lighting and cinematography are shoddy enough, to confine this stinker to Davy Jones's Locker.
