In Praise of Pimlico Pictures

The founder and president of Pimlico Pictures was Louis Irwin.  Irwin could never be seen without a cigar in his mouth and a racing form in his hand.  He loved to gamble on horses, hence naming his company after his favorite racecourse.  Pimlico's first release turned out to be a big hit.  The nineteen sixty-two nudist colony film, NATURRIFIC. 

NATURRIFIC wasn't the first nudist colony film by a long stretch, but it did feature many firsts for the genre.  Dodgeball, pin the tail on the nudnick and metallurgy.  Filmed at, of all places, the Lake Fannie Sun Worshiper's Club in Winter Haven, Florida.

When filming was completed and the movie was edited, it was discovered that the running time was under sixty minutes.  Director Doleman Banks, suggested to use footage from a short film that he had made a few years prior.  So, in desperation Pimlico Pictures inserted twelve-minutes of footage from an industrial film that he shot at a foundry. 

LOUIS IRWIN:  No one ever said anything about the foundry scene, ever.  No complaints.  No questions.  Nothing.  Looking at some of the broads that were in the film, the foundry scene was a welcome relief.   

Irwin would have some health issues that kept him away from the track and from producing a second film to immediately capitalize on the success of NATURRIFIC, until four years later, when he was able to pick up a completed movie that was having trouble getting play dates.

North Carolinian, Roger Courtenay, directed one movie in his life, and it was a doozy.  Actually, not just your run-of-the-mill doozy, but a super-duper doozy!  1966's THE BALLERINA AND THE GEEK is that super-duper doozy.   Basically, a Nudie-cutie with slight traces of a Roughie.

PLOT:  Judy is a, some-what chunky, Bouffant'd ballerina traveling cross country to join the Hoboken Ballet Company.  Her car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, so Judy has to Pas de chat to the nearest town for help.  Unfortunately, the nearest town turns out to be inhabited by leering gas station attendants, creepy old farmers, jealous women and smart-ass, rock throwing children. . .  Not to mention a love starved geek who resides in a nearby cave.  It's love at first sight for the shoeless, tattered overall clad geek.  Their budding relationship starts off on a rocky note when the geek kidnaps Judy and takes her back to his cave.  He then naively molests her legs and feet.  At first the Judy is afraid, but after some quality time in each other's company, Judy brings the geek with her to New Jersey as her new dance partner.  The film ends with a spinning newspaper that stops on the headline; "New York City Ballet to debut GEEK LAKE". 

Roger Courtenay was a middle-aged television news director from Ashville, NC., who invested eleven thousand dollars of his parent's retirement fund into the production of THE BALLERINA AND THE GEEK.  Filmed MOS- Mit Out Sense- on 16-millimeter Eastmancolor stock, the film doesn't wear out its welcome, being only an hour in length.  Thankfully there is plenty of geek on display and very little ballet.  THE BALLERINA AND THE GEEK had a small amount of play dates exclusively in drive-in theaters in Southern states, until being picked up by Pimlico, who were able to book dates across the rest of the country.

Next up, Pimlico released their first nudie roughie, a grimy shot in Philadelphia sleaze feast called THE OGLER! (1967).

The OGLER! in question, is a dumpy, middle-aged man spends his days drooling and fantasizing over nudie magazines in his dingy basement apartment, the Ogler then prowls the streets into the wee hours,

peeking through the windows of young ladies, all of whom choose to undress from within the frames.  The film takes a nasty turn when he starts to stalk a nude model that he recognizes from one of the magazines, breaking into her apartment.

The OGLER! is basically a silent feature, except for hearing the Ogler's thoughts.

"I don't think what I do is wrong.  Who does it hurt for me to just look at a dame?  They have no idea that I'm peeking in on them."

In some cities THE OGLER! had a brief release under the title MR. PEEPERS.

Pimlico then released RING-A-DING RELATIONS also in 1967.  A comedy that follows the love life of a ditzy phone operator.

PLOT: Janet Newsom is an attractive, but lonely telephone operator, who eavesdrops on conversations of a sexual nature.  This, of course, gets her hot to the point that she shows up at a masked swinger party in the suburbs with the intentions of letting the stifled exhibitionist trapped inside her for so long run free.  Filled with enough torpedo bras to sink a battleship and plenty of hairy backed men in black socks, RING-A-DING RELATIONS is a comical, some-what titillating time waster.

Like so many low budget exploiters, Pimlico then jumped on thriving hippie movement with a double feature of COUNTERCULTURE CREATURE COMFORTS (1968) and THE HIPPIE DIPPIE WANTON (1969).  These films add drug use to the sexual proceedings.

COUNTERCULTURE CREATURE COMFORTS, a pseudo-documentary that explores the lives and relationships of the typical hippie.  We go to a love-in, visit a commune in Big Sur, watch a body painting contest and attend an Acid rock music festival.

HIPPIE DIPPIE WANTON follows the “Free Love” exploits of a busty flower child in San Francisco. 

Around this time Irwin became a partner in a chain of profitable drive-in theaters in the mid-west, playing a lot of in-house Pimlico releases.  These movies were cranked out like sausage-all were produced on budgets lower than a low, just to have product for the theaters.  The budgets were all $10,000.  All were filmed over one weekend and every film had a running time of less than seventy minutes.

LOUIS IRWIN:  These films were made dirt cheap, so we could quickly have a return on our investment.  We did make sure that each film had something that would make it look like it had a better budget than it did.  For instance, we hired an actually crop duster and went up in his plane to film a scene and get some aerial photography.  In RED WILD AND BLUE, we stole some shots at a rodeo, and we sprung for the use of a tank in another.  We dubbed these movies the “Nasty Nine” . . . Then we filmed three more and dubbed them the “Dirty Dozen".

1. THE CROP DUSTERS WIFE - Involved the sexual escapades of a young, sex starved wife of a geriatric crop duster, who turns to other men when she does not get the proper “dusting” from her old man.

2. SWEET SALLY AND DIRTY GEORGIA - Followed two girlfriends on a weekend road trip of        sexual frivolity.

3. WEEKEND RAPIST - Showed a quiet 9-5 male worker, who rapes women for kicks on his              weekends.

4. RED, WILD AND BLUE - Plot unknown.

5. SWEET SCENT OF A DEGENERATE - Has a man buying a cologne from a flea market, every time he uses it, he turns him into a debauched lecher.

6. WILD, WILLING WANTON - Showed the out-of-control sex life of a young lady who beds          anything that breathes.

7.  THE NAME OF THE GAME IS SEX - various sex encounters among couples who swap.

8. DR. LUST AND THE LESBOS - A mad doctor invents love robots for lonely men, but the robots prefer the female form.

9. QUEEN OF ANOMALIES - Involves a woman who craves everything but “normal” sex.

10. ONCE UPON A WANTON - A young woman bites off more than she can chew.

11.  SOME LIKE IT SIZZLING - Another swinger plot.

12. MS. KNOW-IT-ALL - A woman strongly believes in Women’s Lib, until a pair of perverted dock workers get a hold of her.

The films would be moved from theater to theater in various combinations.

Every movie had a simple white on black credit title card, which flashed on screen both before and after the movie.

This was the only credit.  Regrettably, none of the “Dirty Dozen” series of films exist today.

Louis Irwin left the movie producing business at this time but kept his drive-ins theaters into the eighties when he sold them off one by one.  Louis Irwin passed away in 2008.