The Naked Truth

Belle, Bare and Beautiful. The Lustful Turk. Thar She Blows. Blood Feast. The titles say it all. It’s a safe assertion that exploitation legend Dave Friedman and his longtime partner Dan Sonney pioneered the way for filmmakers like Roger Corman, Russ Meyer, Doris Wishman, and William Castle. Forty-odd years after their first collaboration, Friedman and Sonney star as the subjects of Ted Bonnit’s affectionate documentary Mau Mau Sex Sex, which screens at the Alamo Drafthouse Downtown on Saturday, Feb. 16.

Septuagenarian Friedman — who’ll be in attendance for the Drafthouse shows — is truly a larger-than-life character, with a résumé that includes a degree from Cornell University and stints as a craps dealer, a carnival operator, a speechwriter for an Alabama governor, and a publicity man for Paramount Pictures. During his time at Paramount, Friedman developed a fascination for the underbelly of the film industry. His years as a carnival operator served him in good stead when he took the short leap to exploitation movies, drawing on his instincts to push the public’s buttons.

Friedman started out under the tutelage of Kroger Babb, one of the earliest and most outrageous producer/distributors of exploitation movies. Friedman then teamed up in the late Fifties with Dan Sonney, who had cranked out a series of titillating features like The Flesh Merchant and Love Moods (starring old-time stripper Lili St. Cyr). Sonney had celluloid in his blood; his father Louis Sonney parlayed a reputation as a no-nonsense lawman into a career in exploitation movies during the silent-film era. Inspired by Russ Meyer’s 1959 The Immoral Mr. Teas, new partners Friedman and Sonney made the move in the Sixties toward the nudie and nudie-cutie genre.

By today’s sensibilities, the nudie films of the late Fifties and early Sixties seem incredibly quaint and innocent, comprised mainly of naked people playing volleyball and frolicking in the sun at nudist camps, with the camera never venturing below the waistline. “Going to a nudist colony is about as erotic as the cold storage room at Swift and Company,” notes Friedman, “so we had to salt the mines, so to speak, and hire some models.” Produced on shoestring budgets, their nudie pictures showed in grindhouse and arthouse theatres and brought in great box-office returns for the filmmakers. Of course, the mere sight of naked flesh was enough to draw the ire of various municipalities and the Catholic Legion of Decency, which only served to pique filmgoers’ interest even more.

As a producer, Friedman branched out to make several early Sixties nudie films with director Herschell Gordon Lewis. Bored with the constraints of the nudie movie, the two brainstormed for some new territory to explore, so long as it was still tasteless and sensational. Lewis suggested they make a movie with gallons and gallons of gore, and on a flight from Chicago to Alabama, the two wrote what would become 1963’s Blood Feast. Released on the drive-in circuit, Blood Feast was a monster hit, and a whole new brand of horror movie was born.

Friedman’s life has all the makings of great fiction, which is perhaps why Bonnit’s Mau Mau Sex Sex is such a hoot. His camera captures the 75-year-old Friedman and Dan Sonney (10 years his senior) talking candidly about their careers and experiences. Both still tack-sharp, they talk trash and rib each other mercilessly, but it’s obvious that their friendship remains a close one. There are also plenty of clips from various Sonney and Friedman films to flesh out the interviews.

Despite his impact on the movie business over the years, Friedman is rather offhand about his place in B-movie history. To quote: “I was too young to work and too nervous to steal, so I went into the movie business.”

This article appears in February 15 • 2002.