The Immoral Mr. Teas
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''The Immoral Mr. Teas'' (1959) is the first commercially successful film of director
Russ Meyer Russell Albion Meyer (March 21, 1922 – September 18, 2004) was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, and editor. He is known primarily for writing and directing a series of successful sexploitation films that fea ...
. The film was described as a nudist comedy, and was noted for exhibiting extensive female nudity. The film cost $24,000 to produce, and eventually grossed more than $1.5 million on the independent/exploitation circuit.


Storyline

The only sound in the film is the voice of a narrator and a very monotonic musical theme. Mr. Teas (Bill Teas) is a door-to-door salesman for dentist appliances who makes deliveries on his bicycle. Teas is a clumsy and shy man, who likes to watch happy couples, and who daydreams when looking down the necklines of women he meets. The only way that he is able to have sex is with a prostitute. After undergoing surgery at the dentist, Teas realizes that the anesthetic has overcome his inhibitions, and given him x-ray vision, enabling him to see all women without their clothes. He is happy at first, but gradually begins to be embarrassed. For example, he goes to the river, and sees three women swimming, and he sees them as naked. The three women are those he sees daily: the dental nurse, a secretary, and a waitress in the bar. Teas decides to go to a psychoanalyst, and he also sees her naked. The voiceover says: "On the other hand, some men are happy to be sick."


Cast

*Bill Teas as Mr Teas


Background

Before this film was released, the only moving pictures exhibiting extensive nudity were either underground (covertly produced and distributed)
pornographic Pornography (often shortened to porn or porno) is the portrayal of Human sexual activity, sexual subject matter for the exclusive purpose of sexual arousal. Primarily intended for adults,
films, typically distributed "under the counter" in 16 mm black and white movies, or
naturist Naturism is a lifestyle of practising non-sexual social nudity in private and in public; the word also refers to the cultural movement which advocates and defends that lifestyle. Both may alternatively be called nudism. Though the two terms ar ...
pictures, openly displayed in specialized movie theaters, usually under the cover of exhibiting the fun and freedom of nudism in naturist reserves. Russ Meyer was approached to make a "nudie" film by burlesque impresario Pete De Cenzie, who was interested in making an American version of the nudist camp films then coming in from Europe. Meyer agreed provided he could do something with a scriptline and that he could use "well built girls instead of the usual unattractive types that populated nudist films."King of the Nudies on Biggest Film Caper Yet Thomas, Kevin. Los Angeles Times 30 Nov 1969: s18. He hired his friend Bill Teas. "I had no idea when we started," he said. "All I had was Teas, three girls and my dentist and my attorney for assistants." Meyer says his dentist agreed to let his office be used on the weekend for filming. The script was made up as they went along and the voice over narration was added later.RUSS MEYER: King of the Nudies Ebert, Roger. Film Comment; New York Vol. 9, Iss. 1, (Jan/Feb 1973): 35-46. Meyer said he shot the film in four days "I knew exactly how it was going to begin, I knew how it would be in the middle, I knew how it would be at the end. I based it on my experiences doing stills for ''Playboy''. There's a lot of stuff on the girl next door, the common man, the voyeur - little nude photo essays."


Nudity

''The Immoral Mr. Teas'' was the first American "above ground" movie since the
pre-code Pre-Code Hollywood was the brief era in the Cinema of the United States, American film industry between the widespread adoption of sound in film in 1929LaSalle (2002), p. 1. and the enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code censorshi ...
, early sound era to show female nudity without the pretext of naturism. It is considered to be the first commercially viable American "skin flick", and popularized the
nudie cutie In film, nudity may be either graphic or suggestive, such as when a person appears to be naked but is covered by a sheet. Since the birth of film, depictions of any form of sexuality have been controversial, and in the case of most nude scenes ...
genre. In a 1960 Philadelphia court case, the film was held not to be obscene, although the judge described the film as "vulgar, pointless and in bad taste". The movie consists of a series of short scenes. In a sense, no one is actually naked; the only nudity seen is through the viewpoint and vivid imagination of Mr. Teas. Mr. Teas's mental constructions extend beyond the nudity (always exclusively of female characters) – there is an underlying
surrealism Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...
in Mr. Teas's imagination, which results in a number of genuinely bizarre situations.


A typical scene

Mr. Teas attends an appointment with his dentist, who must perform an extraction of a molar. The dentist has an assistant (Marilyn Wesley), who is stunningly beautiful, and not-quite modestly dressed. The application of
analgesic An analgesic drug, also called simply an analgesic (American English), analgaesic (British English), pain reliever, or painkiller, is any member of the group of drugs used to achieve relief from pain (that is, analgesia or pain management). It ...
s releases Mr. Teas's fertile imagination, and the scene is shown through this viewpoint. Rather than the typical equipment-cluttered dental office, only a dentist, a dental chair, Mr. Teas, and the assistant are present against a stark and simple background. Only, now, the assistant is completely nude. As the procedure is completed, the dentist removes the molar from Mr. Teas's mouth, but rather than only a small object in the extraction pliers, the molar has the appearance of a single large staghorn (
deer Deer or true deer are hoofed ruminant mammals forming the family Cervidae. The two main groups of deer are the Cervinae, including the muntjac, the elk (wapiti), the red deer, and the fallow deer; and the Capreolinae, including the reindeer ...
antler Antlers are extensions of an animal's skull found in members of the Cervidae (deer) family. Antlers are a single structure composed of bone, cartilage, fibrous tissue, skin, nerves, and blood vessels. They are generally found only on male ...
) with a number of points. The body of the "molar" is white, and each tip (representing the roots of the molar) is colored a bloody red. Mr. Teas has paid a price for his lustful imagination.


Reception

The film was a big box office success. According to
Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
, "As plots go, ''Teas'' was not terrifically subtle. It is essentially a silent comedy with counterpoint narration. But the movie's jolly irony overcame any feeling of embarrassment or self-consciousness on the part of audiences who were, for the most part, seeing a nude woman on the screen for the first time." Meyer called the film's success "a fluke, an absolute fluke."Films: The 'skin-flicks' of producer Russ Meyer Cross, Robert. Chicago Tribune 16 Feb 1969: a8. According to ''
The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'', the film led to over a hundred imitations being made in the next 12 months.


References


External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Immoral Mr. Teas, The 1959 films 1950s sex comedy films 1959 independent films Films directed by Russ Meyer 1950s English-language films American independent films American sex comedy films Films about businesspeople 1959 comedy films 1950s American films