User reviews

This one time "lost film" has been found and is now available on video. Okay so it may not be exactly a lost classic but it's always nice to finally see a movie that we have only heard about. Judy is a go-go dancer who accidentally gets her hands on a rare jewel. She has hardly had time to get used to it before she finds herself being chased all over the place by gangsters who want it back. Joe E. Ross plays a Cuban hit man assigned to get the gem back at all costs. Yes that's right, Joe E. Ross former burlesque comic and the memorable Gunther Toody from TV's "Car 54, Where Are You?" as a Cuban gunslinger! Now you know this picture is going to have lots of comedy! John Lodge, who also starred in THE WITCHMAKER before giving up acting and going into politics, eventually becoming governor of Connecticut is the handsome hero who gets to skinny dip with Judy. Watch for real life ex-burlesque queen Zorita playing the boss of a strip club (it was her own real life club too!) and busty blonde Sabrina (later the star of THE ICE HOUSE) turns up as, what else?, a stripper. This movie also features the first ever death-by-chainsaw done in movies so the comedy and violence are offered in equal amounts. Okay, now we know this movie is out there. It probably wasn't really "lost" just sitting on a shelf somewhere in unmarked cans. But it is available now so let's all go see it!

I discovered this sloppy but fitfully amusing drive-in movie while looking at mid-late 70s progammes for the Arcadia Cinema in Kenmare, County Kerry, Ireland. At the time, said movie house offered "special late nite adult only" shows, and I assumed quite naturally that 'Judy's No No' was a soft or hardcore porno about a woman and a vibrator, as the title implies - or perhaps a nudie cutie of Herschell Gordon Lewis's pre-Blood Feast era, or a kinky live show of some sort.

Instead, it's a bargain-basement comedy, light on the skin with one softcore lovemaking sequence, about a gorgeous stripper who gets conked on the head and chucked into the ocean by some jewel smugglers, and resuscitated by a beach-dwelling heartthrob.

The film suffers from a surfeit of problems, including a key tonal miscalculation. The majority of women, upon being abducted, tossed to their death in the waves, fished out and then pursued, would be shell-shocked, if not clinically traumatized. Judy, on the other hand, acts happy go lucky and carefree, and - even upon her beachside deliverance from the watery depths - looks impeccably coiffed, made up and manicured, as if she's just finished posing for a Cosmopolitan cover.

Funniest aspect for me is a game show music style soundtrack that plays over the heroine and her rescuer's shoreline trip to Miami in a Cessna.

'Little No No' is never as technically incompetent as a Doris Wishman film. To his credit, director Sherman Price at least knew where to place the camera and how to edit. Price's sole claim-to-fame prior to this outing was apparently a proto-Borat hidden camera romp that followed Weegee through Europe and witnessed his crazy stunts. So we get a basic level of directorial know-how that keeps this from being truly abysmal. And lead John Lodge was a capable actor.

Yet there are enough visual non sequiturs and sound production lapses, and the lighting and cinematography are shoddy enough, to confine this stinker to Davy Jones's Locker.

A softcore film starring John Lodge, the man who later became Governor of Connecticut and former burlesque comic turned actor Joe E. Ross. This is a forgotten film that no one remembers or talks about. I have a 3 minute trailer in my collection (it's on Super 8mm sound film to tell you how far back my collection goes) and that is all I've ever seen. It is something about go-go dancers, a stolen diamond, and I think Joe E. Ross is a gangster. Is this movie still out there somewhere? I certainly hope so because I want to see the whole thing one of these days. Okay all you collectors out there . . .start looking and when you find it, e-mail me!