Rant #2,009: You're No Good

Note: This Rant is a little off the beaten path today, and I would proceed with caution, as it delves into "adult" subjects that are normally not spoken about here. 

I guess that that description will further whet your appetite, but at least you have been warned.


I often talk about how I simply don't like today's television and movie offerings.

I find them bloated, uninteresting and pretty much boring from top to bottom.

When I have the time, usually on the weekend, I go through places like YouTube and Daily Motion to find older movies from the 1940s through the early 1970s that I might have missed the first time around, but want to see now.

I also find movies that I saw, generally as a teenager, that I haven't seen for years.

I have found some great films, and on the other hand, I have found some really bad films.

And then, there are films that defy all descriptions like "great" or "bad." If I find an adjective to describe these films, I will let you know.

I found one of these films this past weekend, and I have to say that this movie defies any description I can give it.

It is in a class by itself, a class that I have not defined yet, but one where this movie stands out as being so outrageous, so insipidly bad that it must be seen to be believed, simply to witness something that someone thought was a good idea.

That movie is "Lady Godiva Rides," not to be mixed up with any other film with Lady Godiva in the title, including "Lady Godiva at Coventry" or even "Lady Godiva Rides Again," which I believe was a British movie featuring England's answer to Marilyn Monroe, Diana Dors.

Anyway, the film I am talking about was released in 1969, but it appears dated for that year, and most probably was filmed a year or two or even three years earlier.

This film, directed by Stephen Apostolof, stars such luminaries as Marsha Jordan, Harvey Shain, Deborah Downey, and Elizabeth Knowles.

Not that anyone has ever heard of these people--that doesn't necessarily make a film bad--but there are just so many things wrong with this film, that the lack of any recognizable names is the least of its problems.

The film starts out as what one would call a "period piece," in Victorian England in probably the early 1800s. The infamous Lady Godiva has gone into hiding as the wife of a nobleman--her famous long blond tresses are now brunette--and she has an affair with someone well below her pay scale by the name of Tom Jones (no, not the singer, but you do know that name, from the classic Henry Fielding novel of the same name). The nobleman finds out, walking in on the two when they are in the middle of their ecstasy, and gets shot by Lady Godiva for doing such a thing.

She and a number of other wenches need to leave Merry Olde England for one reason or another, and are able to get onto a pirate ship headed for America. Nobody knows that Lady Godiva is part of this bunch, and that is the way that she wants it to be.

Once in America, the scene shifts to the Wild West, and the women--whose way was paid to the New World by a saloon keeper/pimp--employs the women as hookers.

Lady Godiva's boyfriend from England manages to track her down, but runs afoul of the saloon keeper, and they end up having a duel, which she kind of impacts.

And that is the basic story.

But what is in between all of these scenes has to make this probably if not the worst, then surely the most bizarre movie I have ever seen.

Remember a few paragraphs up when I said that the film was released in 1969 but actually looks like it was made a few years earlier?

Well, by 1969, nudity was the big "in" thing in films, and even motion pictures released by major studios had their fair share of naked women.

Well, this film seems to have been filmed when nudity in film was only the domain of underground films, those early adult films that found an audience in the mid 1950s through the mid 1960s.

In this movie, you see lots and lots of topless shots of a pulchritude not seen in anything less than a Russ Meyer skin flick.

The women drop their tops for no reason, and at a moment's notice, yet during the numerous "sex" scenes in the film, their tops are barely seen, and what is seen is more closeups of French kissing than one can see even in Paris on a hot day.

And while the women are bundled up in Victorian dress of the day, when they strip down to their skivvies, they are clearly wearing modern (for 1969) underwear.

And often while they are stripping down for no apparent reason--such as to sunbathe or to take a shower on board the pirate ship (as if none of the pirates care about such things being out to sea for months at a time), there are a few long-strung-out musical numbers, one where all the girls jiggle and shake for about 10 minutes and featuring a black bongo player who one of the women looks at longingly but does not touch, and another featuring an actress (I think) who must be female impersonator Devine's long lost sister (or brother).

In addition to all of this, we have some "mild scenes" of S&M, lesbian love, mud wrestling between two almost totally naked women, catfights, horrible British accents (or no accents at all--the woman playing Lady Godiva uses no accent other than an American accent, for instance), bad color on the screen (it often goes in and out), and some of the worst acting I have ever seen in a film.

And when long shots are shown of the ocean-going vessel that the women are on, well, it simply looks like a boat floating in a bathtub.

Yes, it is as if those involved with this travesty made up a list of everything they could fit into the film, and checked each item off when it was used. "Let's see, we used the belt whipping scene already, how about two women ripping their clothes off here, maybe later we can have two women beating each other up, with smiles on their faces to make it look authentic ... ."

And all of this lasts more than 100 minutes.

I just can't figure out the intended audience for such a movie, but I have to say, it did keep me interested, because I simply had to see how low this film would go ... and boy, did it go lower than low!

You couldn't make up this film if you wanted to, but evidently, somebody did.

Now that I have finally seen the entire film, I can say that it probably is, in its own way, a sendup of the aforementioned Russ Meyer's then quite outrageous skin flicks, but this film makes Meyer's movies look like close cousins of "Gone With the Wind."

If you know who Doris Wishman was, she was kind of a female Russ Meyer, with her movies going over the same ground as Meyer's did, but at several levels below the "standard" that Meyer created for his films.

This particular movie seems to be in the middle of Meyer and Wishman's fare--trying to be as sumptuous as Meyer's movies, but only coming out a step or two above Wishman's fare.

The ladies are lovely--even using current standards versus how women looked in 1969--and perhaps that is what keeps one from just chucking the whole thing.

The film is not pornographic by any stretch of the imagination--even by today's rating standards, it is probably an R--but it just looks so dated, even for that time, that I have to ask again who exactly was the intended audience for such a film?

And believe it or not, this film evidently is out on video, and there are a few mentions of it on the Internet, but very little in detail.

I guess you are just going to have to see this film, and judge for yourselves if this is the worst movie ever made.

I haven't quite decided yet, but I know it is definitely in the running for that honor.

So yes, I still do not generally like films of today, but there were plenty of clunkers made way back when too.

If you have a chance, and about two hours to kill, you must see this film.

I guarantee it is an experience that you will never forget--although you will try your darndest to put it out of your mind.

You can watch it on YouTube right here by clicking onto this link: https://youtu.be/89yUiuMB3ho?list=PLCy2gEj8313pMg2fcxYa2KOaz960lrqlC