Mondo Topless

'Mondo Topless' is Russ Meyer's pseudo documentary that starts out with snapshots from San Fransisco with narrator (John Furlong) praises the city's progress. Images of San Fransisco is cleverly cut with seemingly unnecessary shots of topless woman driving the car. It doesn't take long when the film turns its focus on different strippers dancing and their recorded conversations about their thoughts and troubles.

'Mondo Topless' is visually beautiful film (in here I don't mean the nudity, but cinematography) with many interesting shots. Almost monotonous monologues of strippers over the groovy pop-rock and girls dancing gives the film quite surreal feel. The humor is subtle as left hook from Mike Tyson. The film keeps its tone and rhythm all the 60 minutes, and by the last quarter, it starts to get little bit boring.

Russ Meyer is much more talented and smarter than many think based on his films, and 'Mondo Topless' proves his intelligence besides the love of big bosoms.

Mondo Topless (1966)

** (out of 4)

This film starts off as a nutty documentary of San Francisco but quickly turns into a tour of the lovely, big breasted strippers of the city. Thankfully this film runs just 60-minutes because anything longer would have really killed the entertainment factor even with the hour running time pushing its limits. The movie is set up as some sort of documentary but being from Meyer you know very well what it's going to be about. We see countless beautiful and big breasted women dance, jiggle and just bounce their breasts all over the screen and while this is certainly fun to watch, it does grow boring before the half-hour mark. The most interesting (look wise) woman is certainly one called Bouncy Babette Bardot who does a few nice tricks with her you guessed it. I think what really kills the entertainment is that we have these strippers telling us their stories and who in the hell wants to hear them? None of the stories are very interesting and all lean towards the boring side. This certainly isn't a bad movie but the director has much better work out there to be seen.

I was very excited to see this movie because of the title but it took me a really long time to find it on DVD. It is quite good and you do get to see quite a lot of female nudity I was really thinking there would be more. With a name like that you would really expect to see lots of breasts all the way through, not just sometimes so I want to write this review to warn people that it's not quite what you might be expecting. However, once you accept this it is pretty funny and not rubbish just not quite what I was hoping for. Also the women look a bit the same, having said that they do have great hair and shoes. Since watching this film I have really got into watching films with girls in high heels so in some ways, though it wasn't quite what it could have been it did open me up to new ways of appreciating the female form.

I couldn't help but laugh out loud while watching MONDO TOPLESS. The overexuberant descriptive narration along with the busty women's epileptic dancing gave the movie a kind of surreal, comical effect. Visually, there are some stunning shots (the woman dancing next to the incoming train) and the wacky yet clever narration parodies everything about the late 60s, 70s sexual revolution. So, clearly, Russ Meyer ain't no idiot. There's a method to his madness. But the movie gets a bit boring after a while. And many of the women look odd, due mainly to the dated hair styles and attitude. But it's worth a look just for the oddity of it all.

This is another great put on movie by Russ Meyer. Nobody but nobody makes a film like Russ Meyer although I am sure many have tried but nobody even comes close to combining all the elements so skillfully as Russ did in his movies.

Almost all of Russ Meyer's movies are put ons. I am sure Russ intended them just that way. It was his idea of winking at his audience which probably are mostly men. But the true fact is that Meyer's movies not only made women objects of desire and physically awesome and intimidating but in comparison to the men in his movies were far more intelligent than the men in them, and this was something Russ did long before anyone ever heard of the women's movement.