Nudist Paradise
US theatrical release poster
Directed byCharles Saunders
Written byLeslie Bell
Denise Kaye
Produced byNat Miller
Frank Bevis
StarringAnita Love
Carl Conway
CinematographyHenry Hall
Edited byHelen Wiggins
Music byMaurice Pelling
Production
company
Orb International
Distributed byOrb
Release date
February 1959
Running time
72 mins
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Budget£15,000[1]

Nudist Paradise (US: Nature's Paradise) is a 1959 British film directed by Charles Saunders and starring Anita Love and Carl Conway.[2] It was the first British nudist film.[3]

Plot

Joan Stanton spends her weekends at the Spielplatz nudist camp, where she is admired by American art student Mike Malone. They become engaged and are elected to represent the club at the Naturist World Congress at Woburn Abbey. They marry and have a child.

Cast

  • Anita Love as Joan Stanton
  • Carl Conway as Mike Malone
  • Katy Cashfield as Pat Beatty
  • Dennis Carnell as Jimmy Ross
  • Celia Hewitt as interviewer
  • Emma Young as receptionist
  • Walter Randall as camp warden

Production

The film was shot on location at Britain's then leading naturist club, Spielplatz in St Albans, whose owners Charles and Dorothy Macaskie, make cameo appearances.[1]

Reception

The film was a success at the box office recouping its cost in a matter of weeks; it inspired a number of similar films set in nudist camps.[1]

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "The story, dialogue and performances are as inept as in most nudist productions, but Nudist Paradise, proudly introduced as the first British film on the subject, is at least in better physical condition than the pre-war productions we have recently seen. The sole attractions of Spielplatz appear to be a pool, a badminton court and a trampoline, each shown at exhausting length. The story is told in flashback by a woman interviewer and also by an off-screen male commentator, who at one point interviews a character in the film. Other surprises include a Miss Venus contest in which half-a-dozen girls each go through the same six poses – ranging from "Sports Girl" to "Psyche at the Bath" – one after the other; and a camp fire sing-song in which a single harmonica on the screen becomes a guitar band with a rock 'n' roll style choir on the sound track. The editing, even for this kind of film, is remarkably incompetent; and the lingering undressing and bedroom scenes and the dialogue's doubles entendres, not all of which can be entirely accidental, make the film's motives rather suspect,"[4]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Simon Sheridan, Keeping the British End Up: Four Decades of Saucy Cinema, Titan Books 2011 p. 37-38
  2. ↑ "Nudist Paradise". British Film Institute Collections Search. Retrieved 6 January 2024.
  3. ↑ Armitstead, Claire Armitstead (3 December 2012). "From utopian dreams to Soho sleaze: the naked history of British nudism". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 January 2024.
  4. ↑ "Nudist Paradise". The Monthly Film Bulletin. 26 (300): 35. 1 January 1959 – via ProQuest.


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