I realize that "about" is a vague term, but I mean films that use the assets of one or more macromastic female characters as a major selling point, rather than a single gag scene such as Kitten Natividad's brief roles in 80s comedies like MY TUTOR and THE WILD LIFE.

Here's the ones I was able to come up with off the top of my head:

DEADLY WEAPONS and DOUBLE AGENT 73, with Chesty Morgan probably holding the record for the largest breasts ever featured in a non-porno film.

THE GIRL CAN'T HELP IT, although, in Meyeresque terms, Jayne Mansfield wasn't much more "buxotic" than her imho more attractive tv star daughter; she just had a ribcage like a powder pigeon and benefitted from 50s style bullet bras. But of course her career was largely built on her apparent chest size.

TO THE LIMIT and SKYSCRAPER (Anna Nicole Smith, may she rest in peace)

THE LOST EMPIRE (are this Wynorski film and Meyer's UP! the only films that can actually be said to star Raven De La Croix?)

FOR YOUR BREASTS ONLY, or whatever that lame and surprisingly modest comedy that ULTRAVIXENS' Anne Marie made at some point in the 80s was called, and which I vaguely remember because we had a copy in the video store that I worked at while in grad school

I suppose Pam Grier's early starring roles count, although it almost seems like they shouldn't; Ms. Grier wasn't the actress that she'd later become, but in COFFY and FOXY BROWN she had such presence and brio (and such a gorgeous face) that she would have lit up the screen, and her movies would have still been memorable, even if she'd been built like Diana Ross.

THE OUTLAW, of course.

Hmm, probably one or more Hong Kong films starring Amy Yip.

Andy Sidaris's entire oeuvre, pretty much.

What else comes to mind?

My first thought, after THE LOST EMPIRE, is CHESTY ANDERSON, US NAVY. Nothing is really shown, but it's somewhat in the Russ Meyer spirit. I'm also thinking of Hammer's THE LOST CONTINENT, with that voluptuous actress who later became a blues shouter (her name escapes me at this moment). Of course, any of the non-Meyer films with Uschi Digart would qualify. I'm still trying to think of the British lass--is it Dana Gillespie?

That's great - is it yours? If so, I'm stealing it!

Yep, that's her. According to an interviewee in Wayne Kinsey's "Hammer Films-The Elstree Years", an on-set accident prompted the assistant director to cry "Dana's balloons have burst!!" at one point, leading to much unintentional hilarity amongst the remaining crew...

Amazingly, I have yet to see Hammer's LOST CONTINENT.

Alot of Jim Wynorski's 80s movies might qualify, especially any with Monique Gabrielle or Sybil Danning.

FEMALE CHAUVINISTS from the early 70s stars Roxanne Brewer, Uschi, Deborah McGuire, Candy Samples, etc. and obviously appeals to the Meyer crowd.

In a more lighthearted way, Lynda Carter's 'Wonder Woman' and the Indonesian superheroine in DARNA ANG PAGBABALIK both exist solely to have you wondering if their cleavage is ever going to spill over during an action scene.

DELIRIUM: PHOTO OF GIOIA with Serena Grandi is another.

I'd offer up FUEGO, which features some amazing boob acting.

Wynorski hasn't stopped. The BUSTY COPS series, THE WITCHES OF BREASTWICK, the BARE WENCH PROJECT movies, etc. are on PPV and late-night cable all the time. They're terrible, but somebody must be watching them.

Jeffery, the comparison of Jayne's chest to that of a powder pigeon is actually one I remember my uncle Robert making back in the early 70s, when I stayed with him and my grandmother in Chicago for a week. I have no idea why the subject came up, except that I vaguely remember it being something he was saying to his attractive graduate assistant as we were riding the train to the zoo. As I was 12 years old and here were two adults talking about boobs, of course it got stuck in my head.

Is FEMALE CHAUVINISTS the one where Roxanne Brewer has the topless horseback riding scene?

John, are there any non-Meyer films that feature Uschi in a major role? I'm more familiar with her suddenly busting into a single memorable scene in movies like TRUCK STOP WOMEN and KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE, rather being two of the main selling points of a film built around her mammosity.

Yeah, Dana Gillespie sure made an impression on my when I saw THE LOST CONTINENT in one of the networks' late night movie slots back when I was in junior high.

There's TAKIN' IT OFF and TAKIN' IT ALL OFF with Kitten Natividad (and in the first one, Anjelique Pettijohn).

As I said at the start of the thread, it's a kind of ambiguous distinction, saying a filme is "about" the mammosity of its leading ladies. By the point in her career that Dyanne Thorne made ILSA, SHE-WOLF OF THE S.S., I'm guessing that she wore a larger cup size than Jayne Mansfield ever did (just going by visual evidence here), and unlike Jayne, she does full-frontal nudity in the film. But while some part of the movie's "appeal" is presumably that it's about a stacked Nordic blonde, Ilsa's chest doesn't seem to be a main selling point in the way that film's cartoonish sadism is, not in the way that boobs seem the focus of films as otherwise completely different as THE GIRL CAN'T HELP IT and CHESTY ANDERSON, US NAVY.

We might want to include Woody Allen's EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX, with its giant runaway breast, for completism.

One very uncharacteristic Uschi performance is in the film SUPERCHICK (which is out on DVD). Uschi keeps her clothes on, but gets to do dialog in a few scenes). I also think I recall seeing more of her in BEAUTIES AND THE BEAST and INSIDE AMY, but perhaps she made such a strong impression that I remember her roles in those films as being more substantial than they were.

Uschi is featured in a truly rank piece of drive-in fodder from around '76, C.B. Hustlers, which is so inept, the filmmakers actually succeeded in making her look quite unattractive. I got it for $1.99 in a slimline DVD case with an even worse movie sharing the disk. [Rereading the thread, I think that Truck Stop Women, mentioned by Ian, may be another name for C.B. Hustlers; if so, never mind.]

Wynorski's Lost Empire is soooo overdue for a DVD release. I have a VHS copy of the VHS prerecord and it's seen better days -- it's such a silly movie, even my wife enjoys it and we've watched it many many times.

C.B. HUSTLERS and TRUCK STOP WOMEN are two different movies. TRUCK STOP WOMEN was directed by Mark Lester and stars Claudia Jennings and Paul Carr. C.B. HUSTLERS (which I own as part of Brentwood's REVVED 10-pack) is not very good, but it is good-natured and offers a lot of nudity. It may be the only film in which I've heard Uschi's speaking voice.

Yes, THE LOST EMPIRE is long overdue. It's one of Wynorski's best films.

. . . I think Mamie Van Doren managed to have her entire exploitation movie career based on how she looked in a sweater - take for example her role in Jack Arnold's teenage classic HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL (1958) in which she plays misunderstood Russ Tamblyn's predatory auntie who strikes various poses around the kitchen whenever her nephew drops by the house between rumbles . . .

That's true, Wade. I vaguely recall seeing or reading an interview with Mamie in the last ten years, in which she pointed out that she wasn't THAT buxom, but instead owed much of her early success to the bullet bras the studio put her in(actually, I think she called them "missile bras"). She said that showing cleavage could sometimes get you into censorship trouble, but that a really buxotic profile was something the censors couldn't object to, so that costumers did everything they could to accentuate it.

Wikipedia has this interesting titbit in their Russ Meyer entry:

"He went on record numerous times to say that Anita Ekberg was the most beautiful woman he ever photographed and that her 39DD breasts were the biggest in A-list Hollywood history, dwarfing both Jayne Mansfield and the British actress Sabrina."

And presumably "dwarfing" Mamie Van Doren's as well, judging from the nude photographs I've seen of Mamie in her prime. Mind you, the Wiki entry on Ekberg gives her upper measurement as 38D, not the 39DD cited by Meyer, but issues of hype aside, those measurements are rarely absolutes, and tend to vary with age, body weight and particular bra design.

The Wikipedia entry on Meyer also makes this interesting claim:

"It should also be noted that while he often referred to his actresses as "Junoesque" and "Amazonian", this was more in their spirit than their actual physique. He almost never cast tall, symmetrically built actresses with strong legs and large posteriors built along the lines of Jane Russell or Pam Grier. Physical balance would detract from his preferred top heavy vision where the bustline is invariably bigger than the rest of the body. So while his actresses could easily be described as voluptuous, buxom and curvaceous, it's debatable if they were as strapping, stately or statuesque as Meyer would maintain.

The tallest actress he ever cast in a lead was the 5'9, slim hipped, huge breasted Lorna Maitland (who Meyer admitted he found intimidating to work with) , all the other women he featured never topped off at taller than 5'7. When asked to choose which Italian bombshell was his favorite, Meyer ardendtly preferred Gina Lollobrigida's smaller breasted 36C-22-34 figure to that of the larger breasted (and at 5'9, four inches taller) Sophia Loren at 38C/D-24-38. Tura Satana's legendary performance as Varla in Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is the only Meyer lead that truly portrays the large, strong and aggressive Amazonian archetype in the classic sense."

The same entry also claims that the abilty to look good braless was a Meyeresque requirement, and that "gravity-defying" was one of his favorite expressions. Which explains why he never tried to work with the lowslung Chesty Morgan (not that Chesty's lethargic and luded-out "personality" on display in her Wishman films would have works for one of Meyer's much more energetic characters).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russ_Meyer

THE LOST EMPIRE was filmed in 2:35-1, so it should definitely be given a DVD release. However, I think I recall a post by Wynorski over at the Retromedia message boards, in which he stated or implied that legal reasons prevent its release. I seem to recollect that he knows where the negative is, but doesn't have access to it. If it was available, I would think that Retromedia would have released it by now. Wynorski is aware of the interest in the title.

Meyer created the illusion of Amazonian excess with his amazing camera angles.

I just introduced some friends to Mikels's The Doll Squad last night and was struck anew by how different Tura Satana looks in that film as compared to Faster Pussycat! Sure, it's 8 years later, but simply by being photographed indifferently, and in the company of other women, you realize that while her amazing proportions remain more or less intact, she's at least a head shorter than you would have expected from Pussycat.

PERVERT: THE MOVIE, obviously a Meyer homage/parody, would seem to fit in this thread. The women aren't as buxom as some of Meyer's leading ladies (note I said "some") and they have less interesting faces, but their boobs appear to be real, something refreshing in contemporary exploitation cinema. Anyone seen it?

http://www.pervertthemovie.com/

And how about EVEN HITLER HAD A GIRLFRIEND? I know nothing about it, beyond the ads in the old issues of the late lamented PSYCHOTRONIC, in which Joe-Bob Briggs blurbed it "The Citizen Kane of big titty movies."

EVEN HITLER HAD A GIRLFRIEND, which I saw about 20 years ago, had three or four cute, somewhat busty women in it. The film itself was pretty hard going, an unfunny comedy about a schlub surrounded by cute, busty women. I don't recall too much nudity in it.

There was a marvelous Australian comedy on VHS in the mid-late 1980s entitled MEGA BOOB MANOR, which had no real plot, but was filled with Meyeresque women. That one delivered in spades.

I've been able to google a few brief references to MISADVENTURE (or MISS-ADVENTURES) AT MEGA-BOOB (or MEGABOOB or MEGA BOOB) MANOR, but no real reviews and only one still, and no source for it. I'm intriqued now.

MEGA BOOB MANOR doesn't have the plot or genre sensibilities of THE LOST EMPIRE, but it's equally entertaining. It was on a strange but cheap label that had the number 18 circled, like a British rating or something. It was released stateside in NTSC, and that same label had some other risque titles as well.

I also vaguely recall another late eighties VHS in a large box that had some sort of anti-commie comedy theme, as well as a really busty, allegedly Russian blonde woman on the cover. I have no idea what the title was and I didn't recognize anyone listed in the cast, but I wish I had picked it up.

At the same time, there was a British spy comedy entitled THE BIG ZAPPER on VHS, but it was surprisingly pricey, so I didn't pick that prerecord up, either. That film, which I still haven't seen, may or may not conform to this category.

I remember seeing THE BIG ZAPPER on British TV many years ago. It was directed by a Canadian, Lindsay Shonteff, and there was a sequel, which I haven't seen, called THE SWORD FIGHT (IIRC). The star, Linda Marlowe, was attractive and relatively busty but the film had nothing in common with Meyer's work and didn't fit with the theme of this thread. It was embarassingly dated in the way that those British sex films of the early 70's tend to be.

I'm a huge fan of Meyer's work - I'd say he was in my top 5 favourite directors. I love his early monochrome films for their pseudo-art house feel and his later 70's films for their sheer over-the-top sense of fun and perversity. Unfortunately, my wife doesn't share my enthusiasm for his work... I've often thought that had he chosen to make more mainstream films he would now be regarded as a major Hollywood figure rather than a major cult figure, though conversely his attempts at more mainstream projects flopped.

I never understood why Uschi Digard didn't become more of a star, or at least have more worthwhile minor roles - she was truly amazing and remains my joint favourite Meyer starlet, along with Lorna Maitland.

So, what then are the "best" films that use breast-fetishism as a major theme or selling point? In other ones, which ones are genuinely "good" (if only a cultish or indy or grindhouse way), beyond the fact that they feature pulse-pounding party pillows? Offhand, I can think of:

Many (but not all) of Meyer's films

Fuego

The Girl Can't Help It

Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter

The Outlaw

The Lost Empire (maybe!)

Hmm, I can't immediately think of anything else, especially not anything made since the early 1980s. Don't misunderstand me; I'm not aiming high when I ask for films that are "good." Something like H.O.T.S. would count if it was genuinely funny. So would the "Catholic Schoolgirls in Trouble" segment of Kentucky Fried Movie, if it was feature length and actually able to sustain itself for that long.

Mind you, definitions are still very subjective. I'd include The Screaming Mimi, since I thinkl Anita Ekberg is sexier than Jayne Mansfield (as well as bustier), but despite her cup-size, I wouldn't call it a "breast film" in the sense that even The Girl Can't Help It is.