Beast That Killed Women, The (1965)

...aka: Beast That Ruined Women, The

...aka: Beast That Molested Women

Directed by:
Barry Mahon

Some movies, no matter how technically abysmal and brainless, are pretty much impossible for me to dislike. Case in point is this wonderfully awful full-color "nudie" effort from a guy who has plenty of experience in the field - Barry Mahon. The film revolves around a woman named Betty (played by Dolores Carlos from A TASTE OF BLOOD) who is obsessed with getting an "all over tan," and her hen-pecked husband Byron (played by future director Byron Mabe), who is so dedicating to making his pushy bride happy that her takes her to a Florida nudist colony... where the men wear shorts! The happy-go-lucky nudists are too caught up in topless sunbathing, shuffleboard, volleyball, square dancing and luaus (!) to notice when an escaped man-in-a-suit gorilla starts dragging people off into the woods and clobbering them to death! His first victim is a fully-clothed redhead wearing neon pink capri pants. Mary, a courageous policewoman, ends up going in undercover as a nudist to stop the monkey business. The all-too-few attack scenes where victims are cornered and then beat to death had my sides aching from laughing so hard. Two scared topless women cuddle in a bunk bed for comfort and speculate about the recent series of murders in another classic moment. The acting and dialogue (“She said it was big and hairy!”) are an almost indescribably bad and there's plenty of T&A (though no frontal nudity). This was filmed in Miami Beach and was Mahon's first color feature (and is surprisingly well photographed). No cast is credited, though it features many of the top nudie models of the era; some of whom are obviously foreign and don't seem to have a full grasp on the English language. For fans of bad movies, this one is a keeper.
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Something Weird Video comes through yet again on the DVD, which is a double feature with the almost equally hideous nudist camp horror opus MONSTER AT CAMP SUNSHINE (a black-and-white effort made in 1964). Also featured on the disc are some memorable shorts entitled BRING 'EM BACK NUDE (from way back in the 1920s!), EXPOSÉ OF THE NUDIST RACKET (1938), a nudie version of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (1952), BACK TO NATURE (1954) and THE NUDE FASHION SHOW (1963).

★1/2