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In Kiss Me Quick, Sterilox, an alien from the sexless Buttless Galaxy, is sent to Earth to find someone to do all their menial labor. The Grand Glom, ruler of the Buttless, has heard that there are creatures on Earth called “women”, who “make ideal servants, if you train them properly.” (Welcome to 1962!) Sterilox’s destination is the laboratory of the mad Dr. Breedlove, who has been working for years to not only perfect his Sex Machine, but to create the Perfect Female; this of course requires women to take off their clothes at regular intervals. House on Bare Mountain, on the other hand, takes place at the Boarding School of Granny Good, an all-girl academy where much of the time, clothing seems to be optional. Granny is actually a notorious bootlegger, forcing the seven foot tall werewolf in her basement to manufacture homemade liquor. Under the guise of the School’s annual Halloween Party, Granny plans to sneak her latest shipment out under the nose of investigating Federal agents. Both of these summaries make the movies seem more interesting than they actually are; these are “nudie-cuties” which are, as Frank Henenlotter points out in his typically fine liner notes, “..undoubtedly the stupidest movies on the face of the Earth . . . the average Nudie-Cutie looks like a dirty movie made for little boys.” Kiss Me Quick stays closer to its burlesque roots, being composed of striptease after striptease, backed and bracketed by bad jokes. Bare Mountain, on the other hand, can be seen as a forerunner of the disposable R-rated drive-in movies of the 70’s - lots of shower scenes, undressing to put on sheer lingerie, and more jokes. But the humor in House can be a lot more funny than those in its counterpart, and it also has an actual plot! Not a good one, mind you, but it’s more than a series of vignettes linked together.
Much has been written elsewhere about Something Weird Video’s amazing work in restoring and presenting marginal titles that no more than a comparative handful of folks knew about; this package is no exception. Kiss Me Quick looks absolutely gorgeous, with only a minor amount of film damage apparent at the very opening. Otherwise the image is marvelously clear and the colors sumptuous. House is in a bit rougher condition, with speckling throughout and slightly muffled sound (though I suspect the original soundtrack was never that glorious in the first place). Image and colors are still very strong, though. The interactive menu screen wastes no time in letting you know what you’re in for and Something Weird has been producing some very interesting - even artistic - menus.
There is a chatty commentary track behind Kiss Me Quick by producer Harry Novak and Something Weird’s Mike Vraney, which goes into the making of the movie, nudie-cuties in general, and the adult film trade back when the operative word was “naughty” rather than “explicit.” There are also trailers for both films. Something Weird never skimps on the extras. With nudie-cuties generally running only slightly over an hour, producers padded out the program with shorts, and two of these featuring “The Sex Bombs” of Kiss Me Quick are included - “Hot Hot Skin” (all three Sex Bombs) and “The Nudie Watusi” which features the blonde Sex Bomb, who can’t dance, but is certainly talented at shaking her… um… maracas. The other Sex Bomb who cannot dance but can certainly strike a pose, Natasha, is in TWO shorts, “Natasha’s Suburban Exercise” and “Strip Tease Queen.” The redheaded Sex Bomb, who actually shows some dancing chops, is not featured. Two more shorts are actually excerpts from other Something Weird products; “The Vampire and the Vixen” appears to be from “Striptease Through the Ages,” while the black and white “Werewolf Bongo Party” is from… something else. Anybody who knows, please drop me a line (Pete Cummings did, almost two years later - it's from The Love Captive, currently unavailable on DVD. Thanks, Pete!). There is also the usual parade of ad slicks accompanied by sound spots for adult features. Kiss Me Quick is generally considered to be the best of the nudie-cuties; whether or not you’ll find this salacious substrata of film interesting will depend on your tolerance for bad jokes and random gratuitous breast shots - though if theyre near-constant, they can’t really be called “random,” can they? Dr. Freex, 2/2/2002 |
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