Mondo Topless

Mondo Topless (1966)

** (out of 4)

This film starts off as a nutty documentary of San Francisco but quickly turns into a tour of the lovely, big breasted strippers of the city. Thankfully this film runs just 60-minutes because anything longer would have really killed the entertainment factor even with the hour running time pushing its limits. The movie is set up as some sort of documentary but being from Meyer you know very well what it's going to be about. We see countless beautiful and big breasted women dance, jiggle and just bounce their breasts all over the screen and while this is certainly fun to watch, it does grow boring before the half-hour mark. The most interesting (look wise) woman is certainly one called Bouncy Babette Bardot who does a few nice tricks with her you guessed it. I think what really kills the entertainment is that we have these strippers telling us their stories and who in the hell wants to hear them? None of the stories are very interesting and all lean towards the boring side. This certainly isn't a bad movie but the director has much better work out there to be seen.

Although Russ Meyer made this movie in a hurry to make some fast money, he later came to see it for what it is - a classic sendup of the go-go and striptease girls of the swingin' 60's! The movie is sparse, even by Russ Meyer standards - just a music soundtrack accompanied by an announcer who introduces the "girls"!

But the "girls" are something else! Most of them are California based professional strippers of the era who jumped at the chance to get in front of a movie camera and do their go-go bad thing. All of them are eye catching, but one stands out, literally, from the rest.

Russ was actually ready to run this film through his paces, featuring the already well known Lorna Maitland, when he got a phone call from a great "procurer" friend, one Andy Anderson. He told Russ that he had a major discovery in front of him at a strip club in downtown Los Angeles (San Francisco has been incorrectly reported) and that Russ should "get his body down to a certain club a.s.a.p." in order to be the first to shoot her. Andy said "I'll hold the dogs off until you get here!"

Russ complied, went to the club and together, he and Andy went to the dressing room of one Vivian Cournoyer. She had apparently just begun dancing at the club and was new to the art of striptease and the area, temporarily staying with a friend. Identifying himself, Russ asked Ms. Cournoyer to display the goods whereupon Russ got to see, according to him, "the greatest set of breasts I've ever seen or filmed", all the more remarkable on a petite 112 pound body!

Realizing he had to act quickly in order to be the first to get this buxotic lady on film, Russ Meyer drove with her to the desert early the next morning and spent the entire day shooting stills and film of the woman he called Darlene Grey for his ode to the go-go era, MONDO TOPLESS. Darlene Grey went on to a short-lived career in magazines such as Arv Miller's FLING, posing as Candy Morrison, Vivian Moyer and Angela Carter.

Then, as Russ tells it, she just disappeared from sight after less than a year of posing. Nevertheless, Russ Meyer still claims that MONDO TOPLESS has been one of his best selling videos over the years "simply because of Ms. Grey's great heaving chest".

If for no other reason, enjoy this movie for the "girls", but especially for the extended "desert boogie au go go" done by Darlene Grey near the beginning. No less a film critic than Roger Ebert felt compelled to specifically comment on the voluptuous Ms. Grey in MONDO TOPLESS. Seeing her cavort, topless in the desert, holding a tiny AM transistor radio in one hand is an experience never to be forgotten!

I couldn't help but laugh out loud while watching MONDO TOPLESS. The overexuberant descriptive narration along with the busty women's epileptic dancing gave the movie a kind of surreal, comical effect. Visually, there are some stunning shots (the woman dancing next to the incoming train) and the wacky yet clever narration parodies everything about the late 60s, 70s sexual revolution. So, clearly, Russ Meyer ain't no idiot. There's a method to his madness. But the movie gets a bit boring after a while. And many of the women look odd, due mainly to the dated hair styles and attitude. But it's worth a look just for the oddity of it all.

I was very excited to see this movie because of the title but it took me a really long time to find it on DVD. It is quite good and you do get to see quite a lot of female nudity I was really thinking there would be more. With a name like that you would really expect to see lots of breasts all the way through, not just sometimes so I want to write this review to warn people that it's not quite what you might be expecting. However, once you accept this it is pretty funny and not rubbish just not quite what I was hoping for. Also the women look a bit the same, having said that they do have great hair and shoes. Since watching this film I have really got into watching films with girls in high heels so in some ways, though it wasn't quite what it could have been it did open me up to new ways of appreciating the female form.

This is another great put on movie by Russ Meyer. Nobody but nobody makes a film like Russ Meyer although I am sure many have tried but nobody even comes close to combining all the elements so skillfully as Russ did in his movies.

Almost all of Russ Meyer's movies are put ons. I am sure Russ intended them just that way. It was his idea of winking at his audience which probably are mostly men. But the true fact is that Meyer's movies not only made women objects of desire and physically awesome and intimidating but in comparison to the men in his movies were far more intelligent than the men in them, and this was something Russ did long before anyone ever heard of the women's movement.