Something Weird Video delivers the goods again for those who think "nudie," with two very strange outings in the nudie/cutie genre: 1966's Electronic Lover and 1969's The Spy Who Came. Labeled as a "Girls and Gadgets" double feature, only one of the movies really qualifies as a spy film, but both definitely fall under the category of "What the Hell?" I wrote about nudies in a previous review (please click here if you're a weirdo), so I won't get into any background on the genre again, except to say -- if this is your thing, you have big problems (come on -- you know I was only kidding). Why don't we dive right into the depravity and look at this naughty double feature, shall we?

ELECTRONIC LOVER

Electronic Lover tells the sad story of mysterious "Master," a bow and arrow carrying scientist who has developed a super-electronic camera that can transmit images back to his lab. Wielded by his servant/slave "Brother," Master commands Brother (through an earpiece receiver) to go out and find women to photograph - preferably with little or no clothes on. Then, when Master sees the women in his little nudies, he, um...well, flies solo in front of a large mirror, tormenting himself and Brother, who's made to watch. What is fact and what is fiction? Do the women that come to his lab exist? Or are they fevered dreams that torment the lonely, bad poetry-spouting Master? Sounding exactly like Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Master harangues Brother with emerging New Age 1960s psycho-babble such as, "Never give your love away!" "I know you don't understand, but I want you to understand!" and "Love doesn't exist!"

Of course, none of this psychic flagellation gets in the way of some pretty tame nudie material, including all sorts of peeping and simulated sex scenes. Finally, Master has had enough of loneliness, pain and bad acting, and commits suicide by one of his own arrows (Cupid, please hear my cry). Unfortunately, Brother isn't so lucky; he has a new master - one of the girls from Master's dreams - who orders him out into the world to peep again. You have to give credit to Electronic Lover for its simplicity, at the very least. There's no extraneous plot details, or silly comedy relief. And the goofball philosophizing (and terrible acting) of Master keeps you laughing in between the relatively chaste nudie footage.

THE SPY WHO CAME

Harry the Vice Cop likes to shake down prostitutes for information and sex. Unbeknownst to him, he's been photographed on several occasions "collecting for the Policeman's Ball," if you get my drift. Meeting up with a beautiful, totally blank girl, Harry makes love to her, only to discover that their meeting was an elaborate ruse to blackmail him. Taken back to the abandoned castle (yes, castle) where the blackmailers operate, Harry meets Mohammed, an Arab who seeks to blackmail important members of the U.N. to get their secrets. How will he accomplish this? By kidnaping girls, drugging them, and then, through Pavlovian methods, train them to be super-lovers who will "seduce the un-seduceable." And Harry's job? He's to rate the girls' performances prior to their assignments. Lucky for Harry, his cop buddies are on to the scam, including Inspector Moreau, who's from the International Police Agency. They've been following Mohammed's activities for weeks, and Harry is now, if you'll pardon the pun, their inside man. Will Harry and Inspector Moreau keep their clothes on long enough to break the nefarious spy ring?

Credit must go to The Spy Who Came for some genuine attempts at humor in script. Whereas most nudies' ideas of comedy made the Three Stooges come off like Noel Coward, there are some clever little lines throughout the film. When the chief henchwoman for the blackmailers looks Harry up and down and declares, "We've bought your 'friendship'...for a little price I must say," it's a fairly bright moment amid the technical ineptitude. A particularly funny throwaway scene is when Mohammed is showing Harry the surveillance slides of Harry's activities. By showing the slides on the wall from far away, and whipping through them very quickly, it's clear that the director would rather concentrate on the funny lines he has Mohammed say, rather than the tame nudie pictures on the wall. Comments like, "Is that American justice?" and "What a gauche room," are delivered over fleeting shots of Harry in action, and it's quite amusing, considering the usual level of attempted humor in these things. When the final slide appears, it's an Old Masters print of a bacchanalian debauch, and Mohammed upbraids the projectionist, declaring, "No more of your artistic pretensions." It's a funny moment among quite a few, and shows that the makers of The Spy Who Came had other things on their minds besides the faux bondage nudie material.

The DVD:

The Video:
The full frame black and white video images for the Girls and Gadgets Double Feature: Electronic Lover and The Spy Who Came are fairly descent considering the age of the material, and the rather dismissive attitude towards such prints at the time of their release. Scratches are there, but not as many as you're used to on these kinds of films.

The Audio:
The Dolby Digital English 2.0 mono audio soundtrack is adequate, but the original source materials had fluctuating sound, so you may strain to hear the dialogue sometimes. There are no subtitles or close captioning options.

The Extras:
As usual with Something Weird Video, there's some fun extras on the Girls and Gadgets Double Feature: Electronic Lover and The Spy Who Came. First up are some trailers for the features The Curious Dr. Humpp, Office Love-In, The Singles, and Some Like it Violent!. Next, a vintage "smoker" short (probably late 1940s to mid-1950s) called The Girl of My Dreams. Next up, a fun educational short on computing called The Philosophy of Computing (great to have this extra). Tel-Star Striptease is a twenty-five minute short of two Grade Z comedians watching strippers over a TV set. And example of their humor: "I've seen better legs on a table." And finally, a great extra with a slide show of lurid covers from sexploitation magazines, with radio and drive-in commercials for nudies playing over them.

Final Thoughts:
The Girls and Gadgets Double Feature: Electronic Lover and The Spy Who Came offers the casual freak over three hours of nudie pleasures. All joking aside, this particular collection offers some relatively harmless, campy fun, if you're so inclined, with The Spy Who Came delivering unexpected laughs. If this is your genre, buy it. If you want to be brave, and see what your Dad used to laugh about when he came home from all those bachelor parties in the 1960s, then rent the Girls and Gadgets Double Feature: Electronic Lover and The Spy Who Came.