The Immoral Mr. Teas announced Russ Meyer as a force of exploitation moviemaking. Even in this, his first movie, his style was already cemented. The rapid-fire editing, the acerbic narration, the scenes of nude women frolicking in the wild, and the boobs. Plenty of boobs. They’re all here. It’s as if he arrived on the scene as a fully formed filmmaker. I can’t say it’s his best work though. Even if it is fun to spot his various fetishes and idiosyncrasies on display so early, the movie itself leaves something to be desired.
Then again, the first of its kind is always sort of like that. While The Immoral Mr. Teas wasn’t the first nudie movie, it was the first one where the women were actually viewed as sexual objects and not passive nudists off playing volleyball or sunbathing or something. Now, we get them doing such things as cooking, typing, canoeing, and playing guitar. Ah, progress!
Mr. Teas (Bill Teas) is a meek deliveryman who spends most of his idle time looking down women’s blouses and/or peeping on them from afar. After a trip to the dentist, he finds he has the power to imagine women naked as they go about their everyday tasks. (A hypno-wheel is the special effect.) He eventually spends less time at work and more time girl-watching.
While most of the humor is lame, there are a couple of okay gags. My favorite bit is when Mr. Teas gets picked up by a woman he thinks is a hooker, but it turns out she’s… well… I wouldn’t want to spoil the joke. The rest of it just isn’t that funny. That wouldn’t matter if it managed to be sexy, but it’s much too innocent and tame to get your pulse racing. The longest (and best) sequence is when Mr. Teas spies on three women out in the woods, although you have to wait a long time to get to it. Also, the relatively short sixty-two-minute run time feels much longer due to the repetitive nature of the film. (How many shots of Mr. Teas’ daily commute did we really need?)
Meyer (who can briefly be seen as one of the patrons at a burlesque show) got his start as a Playboy photographer, and many of his compositions feel like live-action photo spreads (especially the scene where Mr. Teas eats watermelon). You can see that Meyer was still working at making a “real” movie out of what he knew best. However, the results, as uneven as they are, are mildly enjoyable.
AKA: Mr. Teas and His Playthings. AKA: Steam Heat.
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