From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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Mondo Topless is a 1966 pseudo documentary directed by Russ Meyer, featuring Babette Bardot and Lorna Maitland among others. It was Meyer's first color film following a string of black & white "roughie nudies", including Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! While a straightforward sexploitation film, the film owes some debt to the French new wave and cinéma vérité traditions, and is known to some under the titles: 'Mondo Girls' and 'Mondo Top.'

Its tagline: "Two Much For One Man...Russ Meyer's Busty Buxotic Beauties ... Titilating ... Torrid ... Untopable ... Too Much For One Man!"

The film received an X-rating from the MPAA, and was banned in Finland.

Plot

The film presents a snapshot of 60's San Francisco before shifting its focus to strippers. The strippers lives are earnestly portrayed as they reveal the day-to-day realities of sex work, talk bra sizes, relate their preferences in men, all voiced over while dancing topless to a faux "rock" soundtrack.

Documentary Traditions

The film shares some stylistic similarities with Jean-Luc Godard's collaborative effort: 'Le plus vieux métier du monde' ('The Oldest Trade in the World'). Mondo Topless, like most other Meyer films, drew much of its inspiration from the more relaxed European attitudes toward sex, and was followed by a host of imitators.

Quotes

"But enough of this palaver! Let's get the show on the road!" (aired every morning on the Opie & Anthony radio show)

"Fifty fifty where it counts!"