The Immoral Mr. Teas

It used to be that European film makers had pretty much of a monopoly on cinematic nudity and sex. Their products – good, bad or indifferent – have long held the world-wide reputation for revealing far more of the female form than anything produced here. No more.

There is today a group of independent, low-budget producers, ambitious Americans all, who have made broad encroachments in the areas of nudity (sex, we assume, will come along later) on the screen. No Oscar hunters, the members of this West Coast wave are cranking out commercially conceived "art" films concerned mainly with cute chicks dressed in nearly nothing. What's more, these films are being distributed nationally, to the delight of backers and moviegoers alike, and doing big box office at the art houses where they play.

Vital to the warm climate in which this exotic cinematic bloom flourishes is the new liberal attitude of the federal courts toward film censorship. In a series of recent decisions, the courts have ruled: (1) that local censorship of movies, as long practiced in many parts of the U.S., is unconstitutional because it is a form of prior restraint which circumvents due process of law and puts the problem of censorship in the hands of local police officials or a few of the local citizenry, instead of in the courts where it belongs, and (2) that nudity per se is not obscene. These recent decisions have opened the door to a great many foreign films that can now be shown in their uncut versions throughout most of the country for the first time. And the portal had not been too long open before a few independent U.S. producers decided to step inside.

Several of these began producing sex cheapies and turned to naturalism for inspiration – pseudo documentaries shot in steaming jungle atmospheres where little or no clothing is the custom; and educational explorations of nudist camps and the sunbathing cult. Some, like The Immoral Mr.Teas, actually boast something of a plot.

Produced by Peter A. De Cenzie (PAD Productions), directed and photographed (in color) by pin-up lensman Russ Meyer, The Immoral Mr. Teas is a good-natured, if heavy-handed, comedy about an ordinary fellow who develops a most extraordinary ability: most men mentally undress women from time to time, but Teas is able to accomplish the feat in a disturbingly real way. Teas is a milquetoast, shy and retiring, caught – as the film's narrator explains – in the "mad, impetuous, senseless, driving bustle of the city." In our world of "higher buildings, automatic autos, more potent pills, bigger stomach-aches, quicker liquor, faster freeways and tighter underwear," Mr. Teas takes off on his humdrum rounds – delivering false teeth to dentists by bicycle.

Aside from being hit on the head by a hula-hooping neighborhood child and being made generally jumpy by the bulging figures of the women he meets each day in his work, things are going along smoothly enough for Mr. Teas until the afternoon he tarries in a dentist's office, where he often makes deliveries, to have a tooth of his own extracted. Under the influence of the anesthetic, he has a hallucination that seems half real, half fanciful. The dentist extracts an enormous molar, the size of a bicycle handle, and the bountiful, brunette dental assistant standing next to him suddenly appears stark naked. Passing the experience off as a dream induced by the anesthetic, Mr. Teas returns to work, wanders into his favorite lunchroom, only to discover that the blonde behind the counter is in a similarly embarrassing state of undress, though she seems blissfully unaware of it. The illusion – if illusion it be – is pleasant enough, but Teas fears that it may be only the beginning of some more serious mental disorder. He attempts to escape to the woods and the solitary pleasure of fishing, but there the visions become more intense: all the girls he has met in his workaday world appear before him and frolic about him in the water clad in naught save sunshine. At this point both Mr. Teas and the movie's plot tend to come apart, and only Mr. T manages a recovery: a visit to an analyst does the trick, but not in the conventional manner. Mr. Teas is not cured at movie's end, but after the analyst & – who turns out to be a scrumptious, bespectacled miss & – loses all her clothing, he decides to stop worrying about his new-found gift and simply make the most of it. As the film's narrator sagely comments, "Some men just enjoy being sick."