As most of you are probably aware, the only way you could legally have nudity in your movie in the early 1960’s was if you filmed at a nudist camp (ostensibly giving your movie the ability to claim to be some kind of documentary on nudism - what a loophole). Since the only thing that sells better than violence is nudity, exploitation filmmakers from the bad (like Barry Mahon, auteur du crap of today’s titty-thon) to the downright revolutionary (H.G. Lewis) took their cameras to nudist camps across the country, filming light and bouncy (heh) bubblegum fare known as nudie cuties. As audiences began demanding more, the nudie cuties gave way to the “roughies” of I-need-a-shower-with-borax-and-carbolic-acid-to-wash-the-movie-off-me directors like Doris Wishman. And falling somewhere in between the roughies and the nudie cuties are the cheap-ape-suit-terrorizes (or possibly just annoys)-volleyball-playing-nudists, which brings us to The Beast That Killed Women.

The plot, as you might expect, is as bare as the stars of the movie. A woman (Delores Carlos - that’s the actress, since I didn’t bother to catch any of the characters names, assuming they were even given in the first place, I’ll just refer to the “actors,” such as they are) and her husband (Byron Mabe), tired of being unable to get an even tan without their nosy neighbors watching, move to a Miami nudist camp to bake in the buff. Shortly after they arrive, the camp is set upon by an escaped gorilla (in this case meaning the director’s cousin wearing the most raggedy-ass dollar store monkey suit in the history of movies - seriously, this thing makes Ro-Man look like a fuckin’ Stan Winston creation), which apparently has a taste for Italian loafers, as its shoes are plainly visible in more than one scene.

Throughout the movie, we are treated to scenes of two women bunking together who apparently turn in early every night, and then sit up complaining about the other nudists playing their music too loud. I wouldn’t even bother to point this out if it weren’t for the fact that they have more screen time than the damn monkey. The flick should have been called The Music That Annoyed Women instead, making me think that behind all the titties and apes, the director was really making an impassioned plea for good neighborliness. Please, these women need their sleep, or their breasts will deflate like a flan in a cupboard, and none of us want that.

Eventually some cops show up (stealing the show with the greatest scene in the movie - carrying out the first dead girl on a stretcher right through a nude volley ball game, after which the nude volley-ballers seem to get depressed and just wander away from the net), fail to catch the monkey, mill around for a while, and at the end of the flick, the monkey apparently just disappeared. At least, that’s what I gathered. If anyone else has seen this and knows how it ended, please e-mail me.

And why, you might ask, do you not know what happens at the end? Aren’t you the one who’s reviewing this? Well, yes, I am, but I’ll tell you what - The Creeping Terror had a more competent sound crew than Barry Mahon had to work with. The only times you can understand the dialog are the linking hospital scenes (Byron Mabe tells the whole thing as a flashback from his hospital bed, after being laid low by rent-an-ape attack) or when the actors (and I use that term more loosely than a Thai hooker on a cocaine binge) are standing next to a Coke machine at the nudist camp. The only thing I can figure is that Coke put up all the post-production money on the grounds that the only microphone used was placed in the Coke machine to guarantee the greatest amount of product placement time for their investment dollar.

But enough about the story. That’s not what you came for anyway, right? We all know what the deal is here - TITTIES! I love titties. Who doesn’t? But I have to say, when you’re inundated with this many titties, they start to lose all meaning. Like if you take an everyday word and say it to yourself over and over and over until it starts sounding like a foreign language and loses all meaning. It starts to feel a bit like car shopping, just a constant parade of naked women flowing by for your approval. I mean, the sheer titty volume/run time ratio in this movie is nothing short of astounding. It’s almost super-saturated with pure, unadulterated titty. But as exploitative as it is, at least it’s honest. That’s part of what I love about exploitation flicks - their honesty. I know what you’re thinking, exploitation filmmakers have about as much honesty as a used car salesman, right? Wrong. They unabashedly parade their wares to appeal to your baser instincts, knowing that you’ll shell out the dough to see it. They don’t lie to you about what you’re going to see.

I recently had the misfortune to see Brokeback Mountain, which is one of the most boring movies I’ve ever seen in my life. Don’t tell me I didn’t get it, either. Fuck you. I got it. I just didn’t care. All the characters were completely loathsome and I didn’t give a shit about their badly-paced (fuck you, Ang Lee) trials and tribulations. The worst crime a movie can commit is failing to entertain (don‘t give me any shit about films making statements, you have to engage the audience to make a statement, not bore them into a fucking coma), and this sumbitch is a capital offender.

Anyway, on to my point. There are titties in Brokeback Mountain - those of Anne “Please Don’t Pigeonhole Me As A Disney Star” Hathaway and Michelle “What The Hell, I’m Married To The Star, Might As Well” Williams, to be precise. And there are titties in Beast That Killed Women. Beast exists solely to showcase titties, so while the purpose may not be an honorable or intellectual one, the titties are there for a reason. Brokeback Mountain exists to tell the story of two cowboys who find manly ass-love on the open range. Can you find a reason for titties in that? I sure as hell can’t. But they’re there anyway. And while I’m not complaining, my point is that the titties in Brokeback Mountain are more dishonest and exploitative titties than the titties in Beast That Killed Women. The only reason Anne and Michelle took their tops off is because it was “for their art.” The movie was Oscar-bait from the get-go, so they figured it was tasteful. Except neither of the tit shots serve to advance the plot or aid in developing the characters. They’re just titties for titties’ sake, but pretending to be artistic titties. Therefore, Beast That Killed Women is not only more interesting than Brokeback Mountain (admittedly the 60-minute run time probably has something to do with that), it’s more honest about its intentions and therefore has more artistic integrity. Fuck you, Academy Awards.