The Immoral Mr. Teas
| The Immoral Mr. Teas | |
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Theatrical poster to The Immoral Mr. Teas
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| Directed by | Russ Meyer |
| Produced by | Peter A. DeCenzie |
| Starring | Bill Teas Ann Peters Marilyn Wesley |
| Music by | Edward J. Lakso |
| Cinematography | Russ Meyer |
| Edited by | Russ Meyer John F. Link Sr. (uncredited) |
| Distributed by | Pad-Ram Enterprises |
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Release date
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Running time
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63 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $24,000 |
| Box office | $1.5 million |
The Immoral Mr. Teas (1959) is the first commercially successful film of director Russ Meyer. The film was described as a nudist comedy and was noted for exhibiting extensive female nudity. The film cost $24,000 to produce and eventually grossed more than $1,500,000 on the independent/exploitation circuit.
The only sound in the film is the voice of a narrator and a very monotonic musical theme.
Mr. Teas (Bill Teas) is a door-to-door salesman for dentist appliances who delivers on his bicycle. Teas is a clumsy and shy man, who likes to watch happy couples and daydreams when looking down the necklines of women he meets. The only way that he is able to have sex is with a prostitute. After undergoing surgery at the dentist, Teas realizes that the anesthetic has overcome his inhibitions, and given him X-ray vision, enabling him to see all women without their clothes. He is happy at first, but gradually begins to be embarrassed. For example, he goes to the river and sees three women swimming, and he sees them as naked. The three women are those he sees daily: the dental nurse, a secretary and waitress in the bar. Teas decides to go to a psychoanalyst, and he also sees her naked. The voiceover says: "On the other hand, some men are happy to be sick."
Before this film was released, the only moving pictures exhibiting extensive nudity were either underground (covertly produced and distributed) pornographic films, typically distributed "under the counter" in 16 mm black and white movies, or naturist pictures, openly displayed in specialized movie theaters, usually under the cover of exhibiting the fun and freedom of nudism in naturist reserves (nudist camps).
The Immoral Mr. Teas was the first American "above ground" movie since the pre-Code early sound era to show female nudity without the pretext of naturism. It is considered to be the first commercially viable American "skin flick" and popularized the nudie cutie genre.
The movie consists of a series of short scenes. In a sense, no one is actually naked; the only nudity seen is through the viewpoint and vivid imagination of Mr. Teas. Mr. Teas's mental constructions extend beyond the nudity (always exclusively of female characters)—there is an underlying surrealism in Mr. Teas's imagination which results in a number of genuinely bizarre situations.
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