Something Weird's honchos have a philosophy similar to that of the late, great cinematheque maestro Henri Langlois: preserve a cross-section of ALL filmed material, regardless of quality. The clearest example of this for me is THE NAUGHTY SHUTTER, a 1963 theatrical release of such amateur technique and poor quality that it makes today's You Tube (and yesterday's home movies) seem professional by comparison.
Be warned that this was made in the Silent Film tradition, as so much 1960s soft porn was executed, with an annoying hayseed voice-over narration by the reporter protagonist filling in as many blanks, and at times even making fun of the idiotic "action" on-screen, as possible. The film is so cheap that even its topical Nudist Camp theme is reduced to off-season "Wintertime" sunbathers, who hang out nude under heat lamps in one of the hotel rooms, or wander around naked in the corridors -no exterior shots! The film's content would barely fill out a Mack Sennett short circa 1913, and the aptly named director Sammy Helm's lack of understanding of film technique seems to predate Georges Melies. Basically the unattractive cast motion for the camera the way kids & neighbors do in backyard home movies, and the SW DVD ran an interminable 53 minutes of repeated filler, notably each cast member rummaging through garbage cans in search of a missing camera. Even so notable a genius at the exact opposite of the film-making talent spectrum, Stanley Kubrick, realized in moving from preview to final release version of his classic 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY that repetition for effect is not always wise (witness his famous excising of several scenes of the Gary Lockwood character that were adequately handled in the final version of the film by similar footage of Keir Dullea -designed to show the repetitive tedium of daily activities on the spacecraft). Tedium is the name of the game here.
Even in seemingly intentionally crappy films like this (the SW-revived THE PEEK SNATCHERS comes to mind as a similar stinker), sometimes the basic premise is interesting or mildly diverting. Here, the idiots who concocted this storyline come off as especially braindead: the camera that is the center of attention takes polaroids of clothed people, resulting in magically nude photos -so far so good, but later the same camera pointed at members of a nude sun worshipers association supposedly creates images of them with clothes on (not shown, however), a completely illogical concept -it is one thing to suspend disbelief and imagine the camera making something disappear (in the manner of Superman or an airport Homeland Security attendant delivering an X-Ray vision image), but how does a mechanical photography device create the fabric not present on a nude woman? Thank God I was too young to get stung sitting through so-called "Adult" movies like this in the early '60s - I can only imagine how irritated the poor audience felt at this insult. The only element in the entire film that strikes some sort of chord is a serendipitous segment of 3 of the female nudists playing with an Undertaker's coffin, one lying inside, and the others holding candles in some makeshift ritual; this sort of sex/nudity/coffins motif keeps popping up in '60s softcore films for no logical reason, which I can only speculate is related to an ongoing interest in satanic rituals.
Be warned that this was made in the Silent Film tradition, as so much 1960s soft porn was executed, with an annoying hayseed voice-over narration by the reporter protagonist filling in as many blanks, and at times even making fun of the idiotic "action" on-screen, as possible. The film is so cheap that even its topical Nudist Camp theme is reduced to off-season "Wintertime" sunbathers, who hang out nude under heat lamps in one of the hotel rooms, or wander around naked in the corridors -no exterior shots! The film's content would barely fill out a Mack Sennett short circa 1913, and the aptly named director Sammy Helm's lack of understanding of film technique seems to predate Georges Melies. Basically the unattractive cast motion for the camera the way kids & neighbors do in backyard home movies, and the SW DVD ran an interminable 53 minutes of repeated filler, notably each cast member rummaging through garbage cans in search of a missing camera. Even so notable a genius at the exact opposite of the film-making talent spectrum, Stanley Kubrick, realized in moving from preview to final release version of his classic 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY that repetition for effect is not always wise (witness his famous excising of several scenes of the Gary Lockwood character that were adequately handled in the final version of the film by similar footage of Keir Dullea -designed to show the repetitive tedium of daily activities on the spacecraft). Tedium is the name of the game here.
Even in seemingly intentionally crappy films like this (the SW-revived THE PEEK SNATCHERS comes to mind as a similar stinker), sometimes the basic premise is interesting or mildly diverting. Here, the idiots who concocted this storyline come off as especially braindead: the camera that is the center of attention takes polaroids of clothed people, resulting in magically nude photos -so far so good, but later the same camera pointed at members of a nude sun worshipers association supposedly creates images of them with clothes on (not shown, however), a completely illogical concept -it is one thing to suspend disbelief and imagine the camera making something disappear (in the manner of Superman or an airport Homeland Security attendant delivering an X-Ray vision image), but how does a mechanical photography device create the fabric not present on a nude woman? Thank God I was too young to get stung sitting through so-called "Adult" movies like this in the early '60s - I can only imagine how irritated the poor audience felt at this insult. The only element in the entire film that strikes some sort of chord is a serendipitous segment of 3 of the female nudists playing with an Undertaker's coffin, one lying inside, and the others holding candles in some makeshift ritual; this sort of sex/nudity/coffins motif keeps popping up in '60s softcore films for no logical reason, which I can only speculate is related to an ongoing interest in satanic rituals.
