The Immoral West

'Wild Gals of the Naked West' is nudie-cutie western spoof directed by 'King of the Nudies' Russ Meyer. The film tells a story about a town that was so bad that people were too ashamed to name it. Forget Tombstone or Dodge City because this place is most wild and woolly town out of them all, where no one is a good shot. One day a stranger arrives to the town and after nonchalantly surviving every obstacle the chaos ridden town throws into his path the mysterious gunslinger begins to clean the town up. The story is told silent movie manner, only with occasional narrations. There are many running gags, that somehow doesn't run empty by the end of the film, lot of slapstick and of course - big breasts.

Somehow 'Wild Gals of the Naked West' reminded me sketches from Benny Hill only with explicit nudity. Interesting colorful sets give the film kind of surreal feel - the piano player pounding a piano that is clearly drawn, like rest of the saloon. And don't worry, although called as a pornographic movie, this film is pretty tame - naked breasts only.

This comedy western was one of the early nudie cuties from sexploitation king Russ Meyer. Like his other early films this one is effectively a silent movie, seeing as there is no synchronised sound aside from the cowboy who occasionally pops up to narrate events. The lack of sound synchronisation means that it's sometimes hard to get very involved with events on-screen and what we are effectively left with is comedy and breasts. Of the latter, there really is a limited supply, of the former there is sadly rather a lot. I say sadly because the humour is almost all very lame indeed. As it turned out, Meyer directed several very funny movies but he needed an actual plot-line and characters to achieve this. This one, like all his nudie cuties, is little more than an extended sketch. It clocks in at just over an hour but to be honest that's more than enough given the distinct lack of material.

Jokes are replayed over and over. It's not particularly erotic, although there is one pretty striking woman in a burlesque get-up. There is only a bit of the director's famed visual style and quick edits, although he does make the most of his shoestring budget and does at least attempt to make the sets appear interesting and colourful, even if they are more or less cardboard. Overall, this is a film for Meyer completists or students of early cinematic erotica. It's not really going to do much for anybody else.

This is the first Russ Meyer film I ever watched, although not a good movie it is certainly worth watching.

The plot line is simple, in a POV, you, the main character(let's assume it is at least since it's never shown who is) walks into an old western city in ruins, a chap shows up and tells you how the town used to be in flashbacks. "This town was so bad that we was ashamed to name it." in the old drunk own words.

The next minutes are filled with cheap jokes so bad that it will make you giggle anyway.

One thing worth noting is the nightmarish nature of the flashback sequences, specially the ones in the bar and the motel. I don't know if that's what Meyer wanted to achieve but if so, he certainly did.

This is one of those movies that you should watch at 4 in the morning when you can't sleep and nothing good is on TV.

5/10

Although Meyer should be given props for attempting to satire the then-popular westerns with his trademark brand of whit and situational comedy, Meyer still produced a lackluster effort largely through casting, and the unnecessary use of a rather unconvincing 49er who's obviously a young man but is supposed to be a white-haired, lame old man. Go figure. This actor's performance alone brings down the rest of the film significantly, however the set designs and general premise of the story are interesting enough. The general impression from this film is that Meyer had money to burn, otherwise he would've put out a much better quality film. None of the jokes really work, and the only redeeming factor, which is sadly what Meyer's bottom line has always been, is to use breasts as a means for getting butts in the seats. Other than the amorous breasts, great use of design and color, this film is truly a let-down.

Wild Gals of the Naked West (1962)

** (out of 4)

Russ Meyer directed spoof of Westerns has an 80-year-old man (played by a guy in his 20's) telling how the West really was. You can tell a lot of thought went into trying to make this film funny because the jokes are flying left and right throughout the running time but most of them fall flat on their breasts. The film plays mostly like a silent film with sound effects and visuals getting the laughs and some of them are funny. The best moments deal with the stereotyped Indians as well as a guy in a gorilla suit. However, even at 65-minutes this thing starts to get dragged down by repeat gags.