Sinderella and the Golden Bra (1964)

Sinderella and the Golden Bra is a 1964 nudie-cutie and it also belongs to a rather small sub-genre, the nudie musical.

It has what seems like a perfect setup for a nudie-cutie. It’s the Cinderella story, but when our heroine flees the masked ball she doesn’t leave behind her glass slipper but her bra. A golden bra. So in order to find the mysterious girl whom the price hopes to marry the kingdom has to be searched for a maiden possessing the physical attributes that will perfectly fill out that golden bra. It’s exactly the sort of naughty but goofy concept you want for a movie such as this. Honestly, with that setup you can’t go wrong. But surprisingly this movie does go wrong, for reasons we’ll get to in a moment.

The prince is a dreamy lad and his father feels that his son needs to be married off as soon as possible. A masked ball to which every young lady in the kingdom will be invited seems like the answer. Somewhere in this land there has to be a girl capable of arousing the prince’s interest.

The problem is that he already knows which girl he wants to marry - the one he keeps dreaming about.

The king is really much more interested in his knitting than in his son’s romantic problems. The idea of a king devoting himself to knitting is mildly amusing at first but it wears thin real fast.

Derella (Suzanne Sybele) is of course the step-sister of two awful girls, Flossy and Fanny. Both they and their mother treat Derella with contempt. Derella is beautiful but no-one has noticed.

Instead of a fairy godmother she has a fairy godfather who does the magic stuff with pumpkins to get Derella to the ball. He’s well-meaning but he’s a drunk and he’s been a failure as a fairy godfather.

Derella flees from the ball at the stroke of midnight, minus her bra. The rest of the movie follows the basic fairy tale story.

Now, as to what went wrong. Firstly, the songs are rather lacklustre. Secondly, the jokes are rather feeble. The biggest problem however is that by 1964 nudie-cutie standards it’s ridiculously tame. We get a few very brief glimpses of bare breasts. Given that the musical and comedy elements are not up to scratch the movie could still have been saved had it been made genuinely titillating. But it isn’t. And we spend the whole movie expecting that we will see Derella’s presumably impressive bust but all we get is a brief flash. Given that Suzanne Sybele isn’t much of a singer or actress you have to wonder why she was cast if she wasn’t willing to show a bit more skin.

Of course it’s probable that the print that Something Weird found is the only surviving print and it is possible that it was cut at some stage. But it gives the impression that it really was simply a very tame film.

The print is certainly in very poor condition. There’s a lot of print damage.

Sinderella and the Golden Bra is good-natured and inoffensive but doesn’t quite make it. It is mildly interesting if you’re into nudie fairy tales.

Something Weird paired this film on DVD with H.G. Lewis’s Goldilocks and the Three Bares which I am yet to watch. There are of course also the assorted short subjects you expect from Something Weird.

Some online reviews will tell you that this is one of only two known nudie musicals. That is utter nonsense. There have been quite a few, several of which are in fact extremely good.

The First Nudie Musical (1976) is inspired sexy craziness and I highly recommend it. And the 1977 Cinderella (AKA The Other Cinderella) is an example of how to do a nudie musical fairy tale properly. It’s very sexy and very crazy and the songs are a riot.