DORIS DECEMBER: BLAZE STARR GOES NUDIST (1963) * ½

(Originally posted July 17th, 2007)

Renowned stripper Blaze Starr stars as herself.  She’s tired of being famous and wants to get away from it all.  She goes to a theater playing a nudie movie and decides to visit the nudist colony featured.  There she encounters naked picnicking, checkers, archery, canoeing, volleyball, chess, and swimming.  She loves being a nudist so much that she neglects her celebrity duties such as attending parties, photo shoots and press functions which causes problems for her boyfriend/agent.  She drops that loser and walks off into the sunset with the camp director, Andy (Ralph Young of Sandler and Young fame).  

Blaze looks good naked, but it doesn’t help that the first half of the movie is filled with scenes of her talking on the phone fully clothed.  This is a nudist flick, and there are a lot of naked bodies on display, but I just couldn’t stop asking myself these burning questions:  A) If Blaze was going to a nudist colony, why would she have to pack her bags?  B) If Andy is a nudist, how come he is never seen without his goofy rainbow-colored shorts?  C) Why would a nudist colony need a clothesline?  D) If these people are truly nudists, how come they have tan lines?  

Director Doris Wishman also directed Deadly Weapons.  Starr (from Maryland) was also the subject of the biopic, Blaze starring Paul Newman and Lolita Davidovich.  This flick has been re-released several times under different names.  

AKA:  Blaze Starr:  The Original.  AKA:  Back to Nature.  AKA:  Nature Girl.  AKA:  Blaze Starr Goes Wild.

DORIS DECEMBER NOTES:  

1) “Going Back to Nature”, like Nude on the Moon’s “Moon Doll” is a bop and a half.  Doris Wishman might not have been the most technically adept filmmaker, but she sure knew how to secure bangers for her opening credits sequences.  (The closing theme, “The Moon is the Lamp of Love” is also very good.)

2) Also, like Nude on the Moon, there is a LOT of padding in the early going.  

3) One of Wishman’s signatures is the lack of synch sound.  In Nude on the Moon, there was at least an attempt to mask some of the dubbing to make it less obvious.  Here, the bulk of Starr’s dialogue is in the form of thoughts/narration or spoken offscreen (so they didn’t have to loop her lines).

4) Another one of Wishman’s signature touches begins to crop up here as well:  Gratuitous close-ups of feet.  Quentin Tarantino, eat your heart out!

5) The print is a little beat up here and there, but the folks at AGFA still did a great job preserving the flick.

6) Blaze looks great topless, but an actress she is not.

7) Despite the novelty of nude accordion playing and nude “Siamese” dancing, many of the nudist camp scenes are mostly lifeless and dull.  The fully clothed scenes are even worse.  

8) Seriously, Blaze’s bust is the only thing that separates this from a * movie and a * ½.