Blaze Starr Goes Nudist is a 1962 nudist film, produced and directed by exploitation film director Doris Wishman. The film stars legendary burlesque queen Blaze Starr and crooner Ralph Young (as “Russ Martine”). The film is also known as “Blaze Starr Goes Back to Nature,” “Blaze Starr Goes Wild,” “Blaze Starr the Original,” and “Busting Out.”

Plot

Screen siren Blaze Starr (Starr) is tired of the rigors of celebrity life. After wandering into a screening of a nudist exploitation film, she travels to Sunny Palms Lodge, a nearby nudist camp, to apply for membership. Blaze enjoys the relaxed atmosphere the camp offers and becomes friends with the camp’s director, Andy Simms (Young). Her lack of interest in her professional life quickly becomes apparent to her manager and boyfriend Tony (Berk), however, who worries that Blaze will lose her acting contract if the studio finds out she’s a nudist. As fate would have it, it turns out the studio head endorses the nudist lifestyle, and Blaze and Andy start a new romance.

Biography

Blaze Starr (born Fannie Belle Fleming; 1932 2015) was an American stripper and burlesque star. Her vivacious presence and inventive use of stage props earned her the nickname “The Hottest Blaze in Burlesque”. She was also known for her affair with Louisiana Governor Earl Kemp Long. The 1989 film Blaze is based on her memoir. Diane Arbus photographed Starr in 1964.

Her trademark routine was “the exploding couch”. As she explained in 1989, “I had finally got my gimmick, a comedy thing where I’m supposed to be getting so worked up that I stretch out on the couch, and “when I push a secret button” smoke starts coming out from like between my legs. Then a fan and a floodlight come on, and you see all these red silk streamers blowing, shaped just like flames, so it looked like the couch had just burst into fire.”

Doris Wishman-Director and Producer

Doris Wishman (1912 2002) was an American film director, screenwriter and producer. She is credited with having directed and produced at least thirty feature films during a career spanning over four decades, most notably in the sexploitation film genre.

Doris Wishman was born in New York City. She later worked as a film booker for her cousin Max Rosenberg, an independent film distributor. By her own account, Wishman began her film production career after Abrams’ death in 1958.

Wishman claimed in several interviews to have borrowed $10,000 from her sister to produce her first film. Wishman produced eight nudist films in total between 1958 and 1964, including “Blaze Starr Goes Nudist” in 1962. In 1957, a New York Appeals court ruling allowed films depicting nudism to be exhibited in movie theaters in New York State. Films about nudism became a popular genre for a few years. After the popularity of the genre began to wane, she decided to abandon nudist exploitation films and transition into the new sexploitation genre. Sexploitation is a class of independently produced, low-budget feature film that is generally associated with the 1960s, and that serves largely as a vehicle for the exhibition of non-explicit sexual situations and gratuitous nudity. Wishman began to produce and direct sex-exploitation or sexploitation features in 1964.

A cult following started to form and Wishman was honored at the New York Underground Film Festival in 1998 and appeared twice on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Filmmaker John Waters featured a clip from Deadly Weapons in his film Serial Mom. Film critic Joe Bob Briggs described Wishman as “The greatest female exploitation film director in history.” She was one of the most active women directors in the world during the 1960s and ’70s.

Blaze Starr Movies

Two of Starr’s performances, including the combustible sofa, are among the burlesque routines featured in the 1956 compilation film “Buxom Beautease,” produced and directed by Irving Klaw. Director Doris Wishman’s 1962 film “Blaze Starr Goes Nudist,” a nudie-sexploitation film, features Starr’s one lead movie role. As the title suggests, she plays herself.