Goldilocks and the Three Bares

Legendary Herschell Gordon Lewis, future "godfather of gore", invites us to a nudist colony. "Goldilocks & the three bares" is a mixture of comedy and musical, in which the whole (very simple indeed, I must say) plot is just a pretext for showing a viewer a gallery of naked bodies. In the early 1960's that must've been a taboo. Today..., well, we cannot even call this one a sexploitation flick. It's just a silly trifle that may be useful for some anthropologists. What is valuable here for me, it's the spirit of the times - those haircuts, stylish cars, those tender songs that still can make you smile. If you're into this kind of old-fashioned garbage, you probably will be satisfied with Lewis' work. Bad acting, poorly edited - that's the stuff for connoisseurs.

Goldilocks and the Three Bares (1963)

1/2 (out of 4)

Our film takes place at a local club where we meet a singer and a comedian. Soon the two friends meet a couple nice girls who they fall for but the poor guys just can't understand what their women are doing on the weekends when they disappear. They decide to follow and it turns out that the women are members of a nudist colony.

Look, it takes a special kind of person to be able to sit through these nudist camp movies. I understand back in the day men didn't have many options if they wanted to see nude women on a big screen so they were forced to go see these movies. Today, well, let's just say there are more and better options. Of all the nudist movies made by Herschell Gordon Lewis, this here is the worst I've seen to date for a number of reasons.

For starters, the 69 minute running time drags on forever. I really mean it when I say that because this thing felt longer than ROOTS. Another problem is the fact that it's just downright weird in its structure. It takes twenty minutes before we see the first bit of nudity and it's pretty much just a flash. It's over forty minutes before we actually get a good view of the nudist colony. The majority of the running time is the club acts where we get some horrendous comedy bits and pretty bland singing.

GOLDILOCKS AND THE THREE BARES has a terrific title but it's not used anywhere in the actual film. It's too bad because I'm sure it would have been more interesting than the mess we eventually got.

Although there were plenty of nudie cutie and sexploitation flicks of the era that dwelled around the novelty of the advent of the nudist beach, "Goldilocks and the Three Bares" is somewhat disappointing in that it actually attempts to create some sort of legitimacy within the genre. Granted, the dialogue isn't entirely cheesy, and the plot itself is somewhat entertaining, it throws the viewer for a loop by tossing in a nudist colony at the end for whatever effect Lewis hoped to achieve. It's not clearly understood what he hoped to achieve with it, since it has no real purpose. If we understood the fact that this movie was all about the nudist colony and the nudist lifestyle, maybe this would work. But the whole previous 2/ 3 of the film is about Eddie getting the girl, and her uncertainty about opening up to him about her secret lifestyle. "Goldilocks," when basically stated, is just not that interesting of a movie. Granted, there are plenty of retro nudie benefits to it, it's hardly worth the high cost of purchasing the new DVD, and hardly worth the time trying to track it down otherwise.

If you are looking for nudity go to the 45 minute mark, otherwise forget it, This movie features a comedian that can't comede, sing, or play the piano. He is just awful. And then there is the singer, who seems to be able to sing at least, if that is really him singing, but his musical choices are mediocre at best, plus he has one of the worst attitudes I have ever seen, he is constantly angry, and he said to his girlfriend, 'I don't care what you think, I care about you', WTF? And you shouldn't really call this a musical just because it has 3 or 4 songs in it. And remember this is from the early 60s so no full frontal nudity. Watch one of the documentaries about nudism instead they are much better than this thing.