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I will not lie to you: I like naked women. I like looking at women naked, both in real life and in films. More than that, though, I like looking at famous women naked*. I used to buy Celebrity Skin magazine back when it made sense to buy a magazine. I never ended up getting a Mr. Skin membership, though, because the monthly fee was so prohibitive. Now I finally have had a chance to take a look at what Mr. Skin has to offer thanks to the site’s new book, Mr. Skin’s Skintastic Video Guide: The 501 Greatest Movies for Sex & Nudity of DVD.
Except not. Where the Mr. Skin site apparently includes photos and video clips of the nudity, the book just has DVD covers and tiny write-ups. The write-ups are done in a ‘naughty nudie magazine’ style – think sub-Russ Meyer double entendre gone mad – and they include details of which breast you’ll see from which actress… but not where. That seems to be one of the many things that make this book a cute novelty but sort of pointless – knowing that Sissy Spacek is naked in Prime Cut (breasts, butt, bush, Mr. Skin informs) is one thing, but since this is a DVD guide, why not tell me when she’s naked so I can hop to that point? Actually, this is a bad example, as Prime Cut is a wonderfully odd 70s film that you should watch from start to finish, but you get my point.
The other problem I have with the book is that many of the films feel like filler to get to 501. It’s cool that the book has films like Melvin and Howard and Graveyard Tramps, but who the heck needs a book to tell them there’s titties in Playmates of the Apes or Gladiator Eroticus? There are a number of these shitty, direct to DVD or Skinemax movies included in the book, and not only are they not fun to read about, but I find their kind of nudity bland and dull. I’d much rather find out about Helen Hunt’s disrobings than Darian Caine’s.
Still, Mr. Skin has produced an interesting little toilet reader, if not much else. Every couple of pages there’s an explanation of subgenre of films, from grindhouse to ‘naughty nurse’ pictures, and some lists of the best represented filmmakers in the top 501. And it’s convinced me to pull Mountain of the Cannibal God (Stacy Keach and Ursula Andress! 2 bucks at a garage sale!) out of my pile of unwatched DVDs and give it a shot. Plus I can’t say anything bad about a book that includes Cannibal Holocaust, although if you are watching that one for the nudity you are one fucked up puppy. Even at my most auto-erotically charged stages of adolescent I wouldn’t have listed the nudity as one of the best parts of the film. The hooks through the breasts scene in Make Them Die Slowly, however…
I’m happy to have a free copy of this book to leaf through on occasion, but without screenshots, specific time stamps of nude scenes or something a little more in-depth than a couple of snarky sentences per film, I don’t see why anyone would want to own this book.
*and thanks to my job, I have seen the private bits of a couple of actresses first hand. Thanks, CHUD!