IS THIS ANY WAY TO RUN HEALTH CARE? In the universe of Russ Meyer’s “THE IMMORAL MR. TEAS”, there isn’t a woman in view who seems to grasp the function of buttons. This is supposed to convey the sexy fantasies of the movie’s repulsive eponymous peeper, though- realistically -can only lead to concerns of the increased incidence of severe chest colds.
When sexiness is replace with the dull thud of the low-minded dirty snicker, there isn’t much room left for the engagement of such useful tools in the cinematically creative process such as a sense of suspense through anticipation, a feel for narrative drive, wit. All
of the above are in apparent absence in Russ Meyer’s truly pornographic 1959 nudie film “The Immortal Mr. Tease”, a film that is obscenely vulgar not through its content of sex (there is none) or graphic nudity (the flesh revealed is limited to women’s buttocks and breasts), but through its prepubescent attitude toward sex in general, women more specifically and cleavage and breasts most obsessively. The extra mile this vile little film travels is in the true objectification of women as purely images to satisfy craven lusty appetites, and of men (as represented solely by Teas who is the only male presence in the film outside of negligible background extras) as the uncontrolled practitioners of that same drooling, objectifying misogyny. No where in the film is there a moment which might suggest (or celebrate) a happy, mutually consensual connection between men and women, whether romantic, sexual or merely platonic in nature, all of which is deemed unnecessary in Russ Meyer’s depressingly misanthropic world view in which both men and women are debased and the very concept of sex made to feel unclean.
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