Nudes on Credit (1961?), comments written by Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

and

Brigitta (1967), comments written by Tuna

It's a Nick Phillips film festival!

Nudes on Credit (1961?)

There is little information about this film available on the internet, and almost no accurate information. The DVD box doesn't offer much more help. For example:

1. Down in the credits, the DVD box lists the director as Don Rolos. A google search for ol' Don produces no hits at all. Nada. Zip. Zilch. The ol' goose egg. Elsewhere on the box, in the plot summary, the same DVD names future grindhouse director Nick Phillips as the director. IMDb says that Don Rolos and Nick Phillips are both aliases for a man named Nick Millard.
2. Just about every internet source, including IMDb, lists the date as 2003. I reckon that is a misunderstanding based upon the DVD release date. Strip club comic Hermie Rose must have been long dead by 2003, as evidenced by this picture of him in 1949! His last correctly dated IMDb credit is a small (and uncredited) part in Sinatra's Pal Joey in 1957. His last credited part was in 1953.
3. I date Nudes on Credit from the 1961-65 era, based on these three images (click to see larger ones):

• The left image shows a guy reading the daily racing form. It mentions a race featuring "Chief of Chiefs", a horse which was very well known in 1961. Chief of Chiefs beat the legendary Kelso in the 1961 Washington Park Handicap, and also won the 1961 Carter Handicap and finished first in the Toboggan Handicap, but was disqualified.
• The center image shows the beginning of a London to San Francisco flight on a DC-7 (a propeller plane). Jets were flying all major transatlantic and transcontinental routes by 1964. It has American Airlines markings, which means the scene wasn't really filmed in London at all (American Airlines first flew there in 1982), but that correctly dates the movie before 1966, when American retired its last DC-7. The dates cannot be explained by the use of older stock footage, since the scene actually includes the principal actors from the film.
• The right image is a 1959 Cadillac. That was actually the most recent car I could spot in the streets.
• There was one other item which might be useful for dating the film. A Powell Street Line cable car went by, and the fare was fifteen cents. Unfortunately, I couldn't use the internet to determine the exact period when the fare was exactly 15 cents. (It began in 1951, but I couldn't pinpoint an ending date).

Knowing the cast doesn't help much in pinning down the right date.

• Joey Benson has three IMDb credits between 1966 and 1972. The directors of those films were David L Hewitt (career 1961-78) and Al Adamson (career 1965-78)
• As I mentioned, the nightclub and burlesque comic Hermie Rose has an IMDb filmography as well, but it does not overlap Benson's chronologically. He was in four films between 1951 and 1957. Rose's IMDB filmography ended nine years before Benson's began. In fact, Rose's career does not overlap the careers of either of those directors listed above, nor Nick Phillips/Millard/Rolos.
• The female star, Lisa Palmer, was not listed in the IMDb at all before this movie was released.

I was never able to figure out the original name of this film, but several internet sources suggest that the real helmsman was a future grindhouse director named Nick Phillips. I guess that could be, but this film seems to exist outside the time span of Nick's career, such as it was, which extended from 1967-1974.

Here is the official plot summary from the DVD box. It is accurate except for its dubious claims that the film includes action and comedy.

When two con men, Archie and Hermie, find an attaché case containing several mysterious documents and credit cards, they have no idea that the case belongs to a murdered spy and contains secret plans for Russian world conquest! While the KGB launches a search for the briefcase, Archie becomes smitten with a curvy blond named Magnolia, and Archie and Hermie follow her to America. Will Archie be able to save the free world and find true love? From cult Director Nick Phillips, NUDES ON CREDIT is a burlesque-style action comedy.

For reasons now lost to the ages, the screenwriter chose to begin the story in London, despite the fact that all the London scenes with our heroes obviously took place in America, and one of the London alleys had a mysterious identical twin in San Francisco. (There were some stock footage shots of London). Nobody in the film could speak with an English accent, so every single "Londoner" acted wordlessly. The hotel clerk, for example, looked at a credit card, then turned around to grab a key to hand to our heroes. Same deal with a hooker and a waiter. The only attempt at an English accent occurred in the flight announcements at the London Airport, but this sounded exactly like Dan Aykroyd doing Leonard Pinth-Garnell.

I have to say I was completely convinced that it was London, however. The special effects did it. The telephone to the left won me over. The only thing Spielberg would have done better is to make the little hand-written piece of paper say "not San Francisco" instead of "London".

 

NUDITY REPORT for Nudes on Credit

none

Actually, speaking of accents, nobody in the cast could speak with a Russian accent or a Kentucky accent either, but that didn't stop them from trying, so the entire project has the feel of one of those cheap, corny Saturday Morning live-action TV shows from the mid 70s, like The Ghost Busters or Far-Out Space Nuts, shows which were trying to break the cartoon monopoly on kid's programming by bringing back the feel of 50s kiddie shows. Those two shows starred Larry Storch and Bob Denver, both of whom would have fit seamlessly into the cast of Nudes on Credit, as would the Bowery Boys, Shemp Howard,  and Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom.

Brigitta (1967)

This film, at least, was really directed by Nick Phillips.

Brigitta (1967) is a Nick Phillips B&W grindhouse masterpiece. It stars Elke Cole in the title role, but she kept her clothes on. She is newly arrived in Munich, fresh from the country, and is lonely. She meets mister perfect, has the best sex of her life with him, and then discovers that he is more interested in a floozie who performs at a strip club. Later, she catches him with a hooker, so she decides that she will recruit her best friend, a lazy hair dresser, and that the two of them will become prostitutes. Between tricks, they like watching porno films, especially one with two lesbians. Her friend eventually catches a social disease, and passes it on to Brigitta's old boyfriend as a revenge.

There is no information about this classic at all, and none of the three women who got naked and showed anything were even credited. Rather than record dialogue, they simply had a narrator. This is a great example of the 60's grindhouse offerings, and the transfer is surprisingly good. Both lesbians and the unknown show everything.