The Beast That Killed Women

The Beast That Killed Women (1965)

** (out of 4)

The setting is a nudist camp in Miami where the members have a swell time spending their days walking around naked, swimming, square dancing and playing a variety of other sports. All of this happiness quickly turns to terror when a killer gorilla shows up and starts killing people.

THE BEAST THAT KILLED WOMEN is probably one of the better known releases from Something Weird Video because it qualifies as one of the worst movies ever made but also one of the most entertaining in a so-bad-it's-good kind of way. While watching this movie the first thing that came into my mind was how much it must have sucked wanting to see nudity back in the day because you would have to submit yourself to these types of movies. The next thing that came into my mind is how thin the entire plot is but this was to be expected because the only real goal here was to show nude bodies and there's no question that we get a lot of that.

Again, everything in this movie is pretty awful from the acting to the directing to the plot to the horrible score but in all honesty no one is watching this for "that" stuff. The movie contains non-stop nudity and it's often done is such childish ways that you can't help but laugh. Just check out the first real bits of nudity where the camera pretty much just stays in place while naked people walk in front of it. I guess you can say the director was an equal opportunist nudist because it's woman, man, woman and then man again. There are countless scenes of people just walking in front of the camera and the most hilarious moment comes when there's a towel on top of a wall for some reason and two women must jump in order to try and get it. Oh, then let's not forget that the women sleep on bunk beds and near the end when the gorilla is running loose this gives them a reason to get into the same bed.

Speaking of the gorilla, the man-in-a-gorilla suit routine is never scary here and in fact it's going to get more laughs than anything else. I'm not sure what actor was inside the suit but I'm curious as to what drugs were in his system because this is one wild and crazy gorilla. The outfit is obviously fake and they never try to hide this. As you can tell, there are a lot of bad things with this film but at just 60-minutes the film moves rather good and there's no question that there are enough laughs here to keep you entertained as long as you don't take it too serious.