The persistent Eve (Eve Meyer, wife of the director, Russ Meyer) follows a handyman (Anthony James Ryan) all around town. Wherever he goes, she spies on him (usually while he’s peeping on various women) and takes notes. After about an hour of foolishness, we finally learn why Eve has been stalking him.
At first, Eve and the Handyman seems like it is going to be a clever switcheroo on the old Peeping Tom plotline as we have a woman Peeping Tom (would that make her a Peeping Thomasina?) peeping on a Peeping Tom while he’s peeping. However, very little is done with the concept as it’s just a clothesline to hang a bunch of innocent, unfunny, and just plain dumb comic relief scenes. The jokes and sight gags are all pretty lame, but I guess that’s to be expected in a nudie-cutie, a genre that’s not exactly known for its crackling wit.
The most perplexing scene occurs when the handyman dips off into the woods where a nurse is waiting for him. He then changes into ER scrubs and delivers a baby tree?!? (He even spanks the sapling’s bottom.) I have no clue what the heck all this had to do with anything, except maybe pad out the running time.
I could deal with all the scenes of the handyman perving on women in the bathroom as he cleans toilets, ogling secretaries while washing windows, and looking down the blouses of waitresses in an ice cream parlor. The other comedy shit was downright painful. The big reveal at the end is corny too.
I guess most of this would’ve been easy to stomach if the nudity was up to Russ’s usual standards. Unfortunately, the skin quotient is appallingly low. (I guess Russ wasn’t about to let his wife be projected nude onto hundreds of movie screens nationwide.) Mostly, all we get is a woman shown nude from behind in a laundromat and another who has a brief skinnydipping jaunt in a creek. Alas, no frontage is shown. The only real nude scene comes during an artist’s model sequence near the end, but it’s too little too late.
I know most of Meyer’s early movies are a little on the tame side, but this one is awfully lightweight and cheesy. It’s neither funny nor sexy and has to rank among his worst films. It’s not all bad though. There is one sequence in particular that showcases a glimpse of Meyer’s brilliance. It’s a great send-up of the old hitchhiking scene from It Happened One Night that would’ve made its own great stag loop or one-reeler (if it featured any nudity, that is).
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