THE IMMORAL MR. TEAS (1959)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*

At the time Russ Meyer made this shoestring production, the oddball genre of the "nudie-cutie" was still in ascendance. The Hays Code still forbade the depictions of naked bodies in film, but court rulings made an exception for movies that depicted the social activities of nudist camps. Thus exploitation filmmakers whipped out a few dozen flicks in which the denizens of nudist camps gamboled about playing volleyball and other innocent activities. As long as the naked bodies weren't involved in sexual activity per se, grindhouse theaters could get away with screening such fare.

Purportedly Meyer was the first to transfer the nudie-camp experience into a modern urban environment, which would become the dominant format for 1960s sexploitation films (counterpointed somewhat by rural sex comedies). Though Meyer did get some legal pushback, TEAS made a lot of money, in part because the film didn't show any carnal activities, just like the cuties. I'm sure the titular protagonist is not the first cinematic appearance of a sexual voyeur, a fellow who likes pretty women but doesn't want to do anything but look. But the voyeur became a major figure in 1960s grindhouse productions, and Teas is, if not the first of his kind, an extremely influential type.

TEAS was also given the title of MR. TEAS AND HIS PLAYTHINGS, but the "play" exists entirely in the protagonist's mind, and it's almost entirely focused on the pleasure of looking at nude women. As in most nudie-cuties there's no dialogue-track here, just voice-over narration. But whereas the nudist-camp "documentaries" affected a professorial tone in order to justify the subject being filmed, the script for TEAS-- credited to both Meyer and narrator Edward Lasko-- intentionally burlesques such intellectual diversions, as the narrator spends a great deal of time discussing abstruse but irrelevant subjects like the origin of guitars. Teas may have been modeled on the example of popular French comedian Jacques Tati, showing how the protagonist meanders from one low-key absurd situation to another. However, whereas the narration is pretty funny, the vignettes themselves are lackluster, since their only real purpose is to place female cleavage on display.

Teas works as a deliveryman dealing in dental technology, though this is a bare excuse to send him stolidly plodding from one vignette-location to another. Most of the people he encounters are busty women, but though Teas sneaks peeks at their "peaks," he's so self-effacing that none of the females even notice his ogling. Then, something happens that breaks down some reserve on his part, and he spends the rest of the movie vividly imagining women walking around with full or partial nudity-- though without direct genital exposure.

What happens to Teas? Some reviewers had the notion that when Teas visits a dentist's office to have a sore tooth pulled, the anesthetic endowed him with the ability to see through clothes-- albeit only the clothes of gorgeous, stacked women, since Teas doesn't see through anything else. There's no evidence that any drug gave Teas X-ray vision. Yet the dental visit does serve as a demarcation point between Teas looking without daring to imagine what he can't see, and Teas suddenly feeling free enough to fantasize about what all the busty women would look like, if they were just going through their normal routines sans clothing. Possibly the advocates of the "X-ray theory" were fooled by the scene that transpires as soon as Teas leaves the dental office, for he immediately looks through a window and sees a woman un-self-consciously displaying her boobs. For the first and only time in the film, Teas goggles at the sight-- but then, for the rest of the movie, he just goes with it. One might hazard that Teas's mental transformation was meant to suggest the one that a movie-patron undergoes when he enters a movie. Said patron is initially aware of the restrictions of normal life, but as the movie makes clear that nothing bad can happen from enjoying the fantasy, the patron also just "goes with it."

At no time does Teas appear sexually turned on. His surveillance of female nudity-- mostly of the mammary-variety-- just mildly intrigues him. Only toward the end does he make anything like an attempt to get access to one of the busty beauties, in a comic bit where he tries to catch a girl with a fishing-line but only snags her bra. At two points he becomes mildly concerned about his new propensity and visits a psychiatrist. But he selects a hot lady shrink (first seen reading a book collection of the Feiffer cartooon "Sick Sick Sick"), so Teas imagines her nude as well. However, in the film's last scene he visits the shrink again, and the film ends with him ogling the naked doctor while the narrator rationalizes that "it's OK to be sick."

The visual inventiveness of Meyer's oeuvre is on full display here, particularly in the dream Teas has when he's under the anesthetic. The standard "whirling dissolve" as Teas falls asleep becomes a scene in which the dentist is powering his drill by pumping a wheeled device with his foot to generate electricity. Meanwhile patient Teas reclines in the dentist's chair, significantly holding his straw boater over his genitals, while to one side stands the dentist's big-breasted nurse-- but for the first time, Teas imagines her fully nude. One might say that the whole dental experience breaks down Teas's reserve, so that he can fantasize freely. There's one bit of metaphenomenal imagery in the dental dream, for the tooth the physician extracts is big enough to fit some dinosaur's mouth. But this is such a piddling fantasy that it falls within the sphere of the naturalistic.