Hideout in the Sun (1960) review
A sun-soaked crime caper revisited with Doris Wishman’s unexpected nudist classic
Doris Wishman is, in my opinion, the queen of nudist films, despite having never been one herself. As we approach winter, with shorter days and dropping temperatures, I find myself returning to the movies she produced, wrote, and directed in the genre. Hideout in the Sun, from 1960, was her first, her directorial debut, and it’s a lot of sun-soaked fun.
The story follows a pair of brothers, Duke and Steve Martin(!), played by Greg Conrad and Earl Bauer. The two hold up a local bank, getting away with a case full of money, but a hitch in their escape plan leads them to kidnapping a young woman named Dorothy, played by Dolores Carlos, who appears in some of Wishman’s other nudist films.
She winds up taking them in her massive convertible to the Hibiscus Club where they decide to lay low, only to realize soon after that they’ve been brought to a nudist club! In order to keep up appearances and avoid suspicion, Steve pretends to be Dorothy’s new husband, stripping down and joining her outside while Duke stays holed up smoking too many cigarettes and leering out the window at the nude activities taking place.
Much to his surprise, Steve falls in love with Dorothy and with the nudist lifestyle. Much to her surprise, Dorothy falls in love with Steve, and they enjoy their time together in paradise. This causes a split between the brothers, culminating in Duke being chased by the cops to the Miami Serpentarium where he meets a wicked fate.
It’s not much of a story, but it’s a lot more than Wishman’s peers put into these things, and it’s such an unusual mashup of genres, a trick she’d return to with Nude on Moon’s use of sci-fi elements. My favorite touch though, which adds to the storybook feel to the movie, is how Steve, our hero, wears a light blue suit while his more heinous brother Duke wears a black suit. It took me four watches to realize that!
Wishman, who was 47 years old when she made Hideout in the Sun, had no prior filmmaking experience, having only previously worked as a film booker for her cousin Max Rosenburg and for Joseph Levine. It was the Excelsior Pictures Vs New York Board of Regents case over distribution of 1954’s Garden of Eden, in which the New York State of Appeals ruled that onscreen nudity was not obscene, which inspired her to set out and make a nudist picture. She had booked Garden of Eden in theaters before and knew how popular it was. She was never a nudist herself, she just knew a good idea when she saw it.
Her style was fully developed here, largely due to the limitations she faced. Characters often speak from offscreen or with their backs turned for easier dubbing, there’s lots of filler footage of the Florida streets, wildlife, and nudists just hanging out, and a theme song was written by her niece Judy Kushner while most of the other music was taken from a library. Most of the women in the film were models recruited by Bunny Yeager, who was a Playboy photographer at the time. The boat the brothers were supposed to get away on is also called the Playboy, and I feel like that can’t be a coincidence.
There are a lot of birds and reptiles in this movie. We see occasional shots of passing flamingos. Our leads at one point watch a couple of parrots cuddling on a branch and we see other parrots waddling along in the grass.
The Miami Serpentarium gives the movie a chance to show off a whole slew of snakes and other reptiles while stock music plays with an incredible saxophone part. But every time I watch this movie, I find myself screaming at my screen whenever we see nudists approaching emus.
People are generally afraid of ostriches and cassowaries because we seem to instinctively understand that large flightless birds can easily murder us. Fatalities from emu attacks are rare, but I still feel like a kick with their claws would still do some terrible damage, especially if you're without any kind of protection. And yet here we have people trying to pet them! It's a miracle nobody was injured. These are brief moments, but when I think of this movie, I think of those emus, as well as the explosive finale in the Serpentarium.
The daylight years
Wishman biographer Michael Bowen provides a commentary track on the film in AGFA’s Doris Wishman: The Daylight Years box set, and he provides some interesting pieces of history. The big thing that shocked me was the reveal that Wishman never actually planned on directing this film herself, only producing it. She initially sent Larry “Lazarus” Wolk to film it, but the footage he came back with couldn’t be used due to too much full-frontal nudity being on screen, so she went back down and reshot it herself.
Bits of Wolk’s original footage are still in the final cut, however, and he does get sole director’s credit in the opening titles. But imagine how things would’ve gone if Wishman never did step up to direct! Would we have gotten any of her other films at all? It’s hard to say, but I’m grateful things transpired as they did.
Bowen also spends a lot of the early parts of the movie discussing how nudist films came to be as part of the exploitation genre, noting the Excelsior Pictures case as being similar to the case Ilsley Boone launched against the United States Postal Service in order to keep circulating his magazine Sunshine & Health.
Of course, Bowen has the somewhat cynical perspective that these films were made as more of an excuse for audiences to look at naked bodies than to actually learn about or spread the word of nudism, and he’s not really wrong. Hideout in the Sun wasn’t actually shot in a nudist club at all, which came as a surprise to learn. But it got me thinking, whenever it comes to critical analysis of these films, it’s always in the context of exploitation films in general, little more than a footnote, as well as coming from people who simply aren’t nudists at all.
That said, if it weren’t for other nudists, I would’ve never known about these movies! There’s quite a disconnect here! What I’m saying is, if any other distributor looking to release nudist movies on blu-ray is reading this: hire an actual nudist and get their perspective! I’m right here!
While it’s not my favorite, Hideout in the Sun is still a good time and does feel like it’s the most, shall we say, unhinged of Wishman’s nudist films. It has a lot to offer, and she would return to the criminal elements in the later roughies she directed in the 1960’s after the appeal of squeaky clean nudist films wore off. And again, the slow, chill, sunny vibes of these movies are comforting to me, especially in the fall and winter. The settings always feel heavenly, everyone is just having a good time.
The film is available in the aforementioned blu-ray box set the Films of Doris Wishman: the Daylight Years, which includes five of her other nudist films. It was once considered lost, until a 16mm print from Wishman’s personal collection was found, which this was transferred from. It’s not the most pristine thing, but it’s still a gorgeous looking movie. You can also watch it for free right now on Tubi, although it’s in the wrong aspect ratio, presented in widescreen instead of the true 4:3 ratio, meaning the top and bottom of the original picture is cropped. 🪐
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The ingenuity to hide the penises and pubes is like an additional character. Can’t help but chuckle.
I got a kick out of watching this, although it is exasperating to see strategically placed towels to hide penises and public areas. And what's with all the men wearing shorts in the volleyball scenes and some pool scenes? I realize it was 1960, but still there was no shortage of women's breasts, and a distinct lack of other body parts make me suspicious that this was just another silly boob movie with little to do with genuine nudists and nudism. And it was clear it was not filmed in a real nudist resort, with all the traffic in the background. So why is this a nudist classic? To me, it's classically silly with cringe-worthy acting and dialog.