Goldilocks and The Three Bares (1962) from Tuna
Goldilocks and the Three Bares was thought to be totally lost before Something Weird found the original negative from which this DVD was mastered. It is one of two "musical fairy tale" titles on a new release from Something Weird Video, the other being Sinderella and the Golden Bra. Sinderella is in poor shape and actually has very little nudity. It was the second nudie musical. Goldilocks was the first nudie musical and, honestly, is an awful film. However, the DVD is a must own because it contains a commentary with the legendary softcore producer David Friedman, which is priceless. The back story for this film is orders of magnitude more interesting than the film itself. But first, let's correct the IMDB errors.

The film was made in 1962, not 1963. The industry and censorship laws were changing so fast in the 60s that a year is a big difference. The running time is 97 minutes, not 70, as reported. The film is a musical nudist film, not a drama. The lead actress, who was known as Bunny Downe, is shown as Allison Louise Downe at IMDB, and Vickie Miles in the actual film credits. The budget was $35,000, not $25,000.

Thomas J. Dowd was the floundering owner of a small art theater in Chicago, when a certain Walter Bibo took his 1954 film Garden of Eden to the New York Supreme Court against the New York Film Review Board, and received a "nudity itself is not obscene" ruling that cleared the way to exhibit nudist films. Dowd immediately booked Garden of Eden, splitting the receipts with Bibo. He was suddenly solvent, and decided he was going to make his own nudist film, and that it would be the best nudist film ever, and the first nudie musical.

He hired Dave Friedman to produce and future slasher king Herschell Gordon Lewis to direct.  Dowd bought the rights to a bunch of really bad original songs, and had Friedman record them in Chicago, with musicians from the Chicago Symphony, who couldn't believe they were actually getting paid to play this garbage. While on a pre-production scouting trip to Florida, Dowd found a singer that he decided was going to be the next male crooner and heart-throb, Rex Marlow. Rex was actually a pool boy, a job which he took after failing as a gardener by cutting off a finger with a lawn mower. His acting was about as good as his gardening, his singing was worse, and he was kind of a prima donna. When it came time to do the filming, Marlow couldn't even lip-synch to his own voice.

Dowd was the kind of guy who was impressed by celebrities, and he found a former Light Heavyweight Champion, Joey Maxim, to appear in the film. Maxim had won the title in a mid-August bout in Yankee Stadium when the champ collapsed from heat exhaustion in the 13th round. When scouting nudist camp locations, Friedman and Lewis visited one legitimate nudist camp. A woman Friedman called Madam Zelda, Queen of the Nudists, invited them to a lunch of Franco-American spaghetti, but they had to disrobe. As Friedman put it, "Madam Zelda's mammaries had long since served their purpose, and kept dipping into the spaghetti."

NUDITY REPORT

It's a nudist film. Well, allegedly. See the main commentary.
In the end, they couldn't shoot in an actual nudist camp because Dowd decided he wanted nude yachting, and nude horseback riding. Think about this. How would you like to be naked on a galloping horse? They rented a house on an inland waterway, and a neighbor's yacht to film the nudity, which is the last 10 minutes of the film. 

DVD info from Amazon

  • Commentary by producer and legendary raconteur David F. Friedman on "Goldilocks and the Three Bares"

  • Two complete films, Goldilocks and Sinderella

  • Nudie-cutie trailers for both features, "The Adventures of Lucky Pierre," "Boin-n-n-g!," "Bunny Yeager's Nude Camera," Calendar Pin-Ups," "French without Dressing," "Not Tonight Henry," and "She Should Have Stayed in Bed"

  • Strip queen Lili St. Cyr magically undresses in the burlesque novelty short "Cinderella's Love Lesson"

  • Classic cheesecake pin-up short "Goldielocks Goes Glamorous"

  • Barry Mahon nudie shorts: "This Diary Belongs to Fanny Hill," "Nude in the Window," and "Double Trouble"

  • A janitor on the set of a "Nudie-Cutie" imagines himself a movie mogul and auditions naked gals in the 27-minute featurette "The Super Dreams"

  • Gallery of sexploitation ad art with exploitation arts!

  • Full-screen format
Most of the film is plot and music. Marlow falls for a press writer, Downe, and, at first, has trouble accepting that she is a nudist. He comes around for the final 10 minutes of the film. No actual nudists were used in the making of this film, or, indeed, most of the "nudist camp" films. The truth was that typical nudists were not all that appetizing, and Bunny Yeager had a stable of young models that worked mostly as nudists in these films in South Florida. Although Bunny Downe was from this cadre, she had gone to High School with Bob Cressy, and struck up a friendship with the director, who brought her back to Chicago, where she worked mainly as a secretary. She is credited as screenwriter in several film credits but her actual contribution was typing the scripts.

Dowd invested $35K for this masterpiece, which was twice normal for the genre, but made it all back just from the run in his own theater, even though the Bibo case cleared the way for all of the 1930s B&W nudists films to be exhibited. This was, after all, the adult film of the early 60s, and the quaint nudity we see here was very hot stuff then. During the early 60s, "pickle and beaver" was absolutely forbidden in films, but in this film they slip into several frames, so male genitalia and female pubic areas can be seen through the modern miracle of freeze frame.

The Critics Vote

  • There are no reviews online, and there are no comments at IMDb. This is an obscure one.

The People Vote ...

 
The meaning of the IMDb score: 7.5 usually indicates a level of excellence equivalent to about three and a half stars from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm watchability, comparable to approximately two and a half stars from the critics. The fives are generally not worthwhile unless they are really your kind of material, equivalent to about a two star rating from the critics. Films rated below five are generally awful even if you like that kind of film - this score is roughly equivalent to one and a half stars from the critics or even less, depending on just how far below five the rating is.

My own guideline: A means the movie is so good it will appeal to you even if you hate the genre. B means the movie is not good enough to win you over if you hate the genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an open mind about this type of film. C means it will only appeal to genre addicts, and has no crossover appeal. (C+ means it has no crossover appeal, but will be considered excellent by genre fans, while C- indicates that it we found it to be a poor movie although genre addicts find it watchable). D means you'll hate it even if you like the genre. E means that you'll hate it even if you love the genre. F means that the film is not only unappealing across-the-board, but technically inept as well.

Any film rated C- or better is recommended for fans of that type of film. Any film rated B- or better is recommended for just about anyone. We don't score films below C- that often, because we like movies and we think that most of them have at least a solid niche audience. Now that you know that, you should have serious reservations about any movie below C-.

Based on this description, the film itself is a very low C-, and even that is based upon a genre that very few people will want to see, but the complete DVD package, mainly due to the commentary, is a great watch.

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