Wild Gals of the Naked West (1962)

A Russ Meyer film from the days when he didn't bother about things like plot, but instead focused on big breasts, Wild Gals of the Naked West (1962) is a lot of fun if you watch it while in the right mood.  While not bothered with plot, Meyer does seem to be trying to create a broad satire of the western movie genre, with many of its conventions parodied amongst the big bouncing boobs.  Opening with an old geezer in a ghost town reminiscing about the wild times and wilder women of the town's golden years, the film seems to determined to pack in as many western cliches as possible.  We have two guys perpetually engaged in gunfight, but who are such bad shots that no matter how close to each other they are, they only succeed in shooting innocent bystanders.  There are also the local 'Indians' who spend their time tying white women (big breasted white women, naturally) to stakes and trying to burn them, (except that they can never get a light), or engaging in an ever escalating war with the 'palefaces', graduating from bows and arrows to machine guns by the film's end.  The town is also plagued by practical jokers who spend their times engaging in such pranks as tipping over outhouses when someone is inside.  There's also an hotel-cum-brothel and a lawless saloon presided over by a mean spirited old timer.  

The closest thing the film has to a plot comes in about half way through, when a stranger rides into town, conservatively dressed and apparently immune to all the shenanigans going on around him.  Eventually, of course, he dons a stetson and spurs, straps on a gun and cleans the town up.  Aside from this sliver of plot, the film is essentially a series of sight gags - many of them, such as a peeping Tom peering through the crescent shaped cut out in the door of an out house being taken aback by the fact that it contains an entire modern bathroom, complete with a squaw in a bubble bath, are pretty surreal.  Most interesting are the interior sets, which go beyond minimalist, mostly consisting of details like fireplaces and pictures simply drawn on blank flats.  Doors sit in their frames, with no walls around them and things like beds are likewise reduced to hand illustrated flats.  Even the saloon piano's keyboard is simply a flat piece of wood with keys drawn on it.  All of which gives the film a pleasingly 'cartoonish' look, which harmonises perfectly with the onscreen action.  While this was doubtless dictated by Meyer's lack of budget, but also plays into his parodying of the conventions of traditional B-westerns, in this case their use of cheap, simplistic and over-familiar sets.  In style, the whole thing is reminiscent of those sixties movies and TV series built around the 'zany' antics of various pop groups, although it actually predates all of them by several years.   At heart just a cheap 'nudie' picture, Wild Gals of the Naked West at least tries to do something a bit different and pretty much succeeds in this aim, providing an hour or so of, by today's standards, pretty innocent sex comedy, with the emphasis firmly on the latter element.