Customer Reviews

Take Me Naked/A Thousand Pleasures

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Experience (former) husband and wife exploitationeers Michael and Roberta Findlay at their most pretentious and their most whacked in this double feature. On the pretentious side, there's "Take Me Naked," a droning sex drama set in the Bowery. This is probably as close to an "art" film the Findlays ever got, but its only point of interest is featuring Mrs. Findlay herself (as "Anna Riva"), starring as the object of neighbor Kevin Sullivan's erotic obsessions. Not exactly a sexpot, Roberta trudges through the movie, showing off her Rubenesque figure and indulging in blurry lesbian encounters, all the while looking as if she wishes she were dead. There's no dialog, only readings of the risqué poems of Pierre Louys ("Consider our luxurious haunches" coos a female narrator) over warbling violin music. The psychosexual violence in the movie's final act is more in line with the Findlays' later works, but it's too late to offset "Take Me Naked"'s overwhelming dullness.

A whole lot more interesting--and the only reason to own this disk--is the second feature, "A Thousand Pleasures." The insanity begins when Richard Davis (played by Michael Findlay), after having murdered his wife (Roberta, in a brief but grating appearance), picks up two female hitchhikers wearing matching wigs. One promptly falls asleep in the backseat while the other pleasures Richard orally ("You'll love it," she promises, sounding like Barbra Streisand imitating Mae West). But, uh-oh, the woman in the backseat notices there's a dead body in the back of Richard's station wagon. The women then blackmail Richard into staying at their home, where he encounters Baby, an adult woman in diapers who sleeps in a crib, and "Boobarella," an ample-bodied African-American woman with an insatiable sexual appetite. Richard learns the reason he's being held captive is to act as a sperm donor for the two hitchhikers--"true lesbians" who "hate the filthy touch of men"--who want a real baby. Before it's all over, Baby is the star of a floor show that has her being whipped and "fed," Richard gets a cigarette extinguished in his face and his feet held to a fire (remarkably, neither torture raises a blister), and we get a death by breast scene that pre-dates Doris Wishman's "Deadly Weapons" by about four years.

If you're a fan of John Waters' early works, or just have a love of celluloid lunacy, "A Thousand Pleasures" is more than worth the price of admission. It makes a great party film (just don't serve dairy products during the Baby-getting-whipped scene). Also on this disk are trailers for other Findlay roughies, including "The Ultimate Degenerate," "The Curse of Her Flesh," "The Touch of Her Flesh," and "Satan's Bed" (featuring a young Yoko Ono!). There's an excerpt from the Findlay lesbian movie "Mnasidika." Also featured is a segment from "Janie," photographed and narrated by Roberta Findlay (who later went on to direct hardcore movies) that's strangely hypnotic. Guess it has something to do with Roberta's flat Brooklyn accent accompanied by bargain basement acid rock.

Although I grew up in the 60s I had never even heard of the Findlays or their movies until I discovered Something Weird Video about five years ago. Since then I have sort of been waiting for these movies to come out on DVD so that I could see for myself. I had pretty low expectations and they certainly lived up to them. Take Me Naked is nothing more than a pathetic wino fantasizing (mostly) about Roberta Findlay who lives in a nearby dingy apartment in a run-down section of New York. She looks good, as do the other SMV regular women who all get naked a lot. Someone in the background is constantly reading poetry. There is no dialogue, everything is voice-over. A lot of the time the camera shoots from weird angles and often (deliberately) out of focus. That's too bad since the explicit sex would have improved the movie a notch.. And its always a pleasure to see Darlene Bennett (even briefly) in these movies. A Thousand Pleasures has an interesting premise and actually has some plot (sort of). Michael Findlay snaps while doing the dishes in his cute apron and murders his nagging wife Roberta Findlay. So he places her corpse in the back of his station wagon concealed under a blanket and takes to the highway. Incredibly, he stops to give a ride to two attractive women hitchhikers. One of them proceeds to offer him a sexual favor just to say thanks, while the other quickly discovers the body in the back. The two women decide to take him home because, of course, they are even sicker than he is, and it just gets weirder from there. There are unbelievably stupid holes in the plot but then I suppose the whole idea is just to showcase a lot of depravity. Most of the women get naked and look pretty good. There is an adult blonde woman called baby kept naked as she has the mind of an infant and even breast feeds off one of the other women. There is a large light-skinned black or mulatto woman with big floppy breasts called boobarella who is capable of smothering a person with her breasts. So if that is to your taste then check out this movie, otherwise I suggest that you steer clear.

I found this DVD a bit weird it will only play on my computer but not on my combined DVD/Video player in the UK.
The infant in this film was not wearing protective [...] over her diaper/napkins