This Week in Skinstory: November 15 - 21

A weekly look back at past celeb nudity happenings of note, ranging from the earliest days of famous females to today’s hottest starlets.

Get the in-depth facts and figures on skincredible events that have happened throughout skintertainment history during the week of November 15th through November 21st.

The week’s lesson in lusty cultural high points includes Angelina Jolie getting nakedly animated in Beowulf, Megan Fox leaking her hottest photos ever online, master of all things massive mammary Russ Meyer busting out Mondo Topless, skintastic filmmaker Robert Altman passing on, the rescue and restoration of the lost Australian sexploitation classics Fantasm and Fantasm Comes Again, and the publication of Fanny Hill, the erotic novel that shocked the world and still keeps readers coming.

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November 16, 2007
Angelina Jolie gets nakedly animated in Beowulf.

A-list director Robert Zemeckis is convinced that 3-D motion-capture animation is the definitive new frontier in popular filmmaking. So far Zemeckis has used this unique technology primarily for family-friendly fare such as The Polar Express (2004), Monster House (2006), and A Christmas Carol (2009).

But in 2007 Zemeckis took an Old English epic poem out of high-school literature classes and launched it into the third dimension with Beowulf, and, to usher in a more adult use of motion capture, he animated Angelina Jolie nude.

Angelina plays the shape-shifting mother of Grendel (Crispin Glover), a homicidal monstrosity who gets slain by the hero of the title (Ray Winstone).

And while technically we don’t actually see Angelina Jolie’s best bits, per se, the gold-dipped image of her unmistakably sumptuous physique that struts, wiggles, and hurls itself across the screen can only be described as, indeed, animating.


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November 17, 1966
Russ Meyer unveils Mondo Topless in theaters.

By 1966, two-fisted filmmaker Russ Meyer, the Baron of Bodacious Bosoms, had established himself as one of Playboy’s premiere centerfold photographers and the world’s foremost director of “nudie-cutie” flicks on the order of The Immoral Mr. Teas (1959), Eve and the Handyman (1961), and Wild Gals of the Naked West (1963).

He moved onto rougher stuff with Lorna (1964), Mudhoney (1965), and, one of his true masterpieces (albeit without nudity), Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965).

Mondo Topless is the link between these first stages of Meyer’s career and the surrealistic, over-the-top(less) heights he went on to scale with Vixen! (1968), Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), Supervixens! (1975), and so on.

A royal goof on the exotic documentary craze following the global success of Mondo Cane (1962), Mondo Topless showcases titanically ultra-endowed eyefuls peeling down and shaking their stupendous stuff in tune to groovy rock jams and Meyer’s uproariously insane narration.

Meyer himself puts it best in his voice-over: "Fantastic women, fantastic dances, featuring the world's loveliest buxotics. You've only dreamed there were women like these—until now! But they're real! Unbelievably real in Mondo Topless!"


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November 18, 2008
Megan Fox GQ photo outtakes explode online.

“Megan Fox Was a Teenage Lesbian!”

So declared the cover story of the September 2008 edition of GQ magazine, which was accompanied, of course, by inflammatory photos of the raven-maned ravisher at her most erotically alluring.

Well, we all thought those pics presented Megan at her sexiest, but a while after the GQ issue came and went from newsstands, extra pics from the shoot leaked online, upping the intensity of our girl's all-around Foxiness.

At the time, Megan was building our anticipation for her 2009 films Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Jennifer’s Body, neither of which succeeded in showcasing her naked.

Still, these pics count for something very, very hot in the annals of Skinstory. No matter how bad Megan continues to burn us.

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November 19, 2004
Fantasm and Fantasm Comes Again debut on DVD.

Horror fans have long rallied around fright visionary Don Coscarelli’s funeral-home-on-the-edge-of-forever cult opus Phantasm (1979), but Australian sexploitation fans in particular and drive-in-going horndogs in general have far different associations with the soundalike-titled Fantasm (1976), as well as its sequel, Fantasm Comes Again (1977).

Directed by Richard Franklin, who would go on to become “the Australian Hitchcock” via thrillers such as Patrick (1978), Road Games (1981), and even Psycho II (1983), Fantasm brings to life a series of “true” erotic letters sent in to a naughty magazine.

Fantasm Comes Again, directed by Colin Eggleston (The Long Weekend), follows the identical format but depicts a whole new avalanche of cheerful kinkiness.

Both Fantasms feature good humor, energetic titillation, and a cast of the most incendiary sexbombs of the drive-in era truly, as is said, going off.

Uschi Digard, Candy Samples, Rene Bond, Serena, Dee Dee Levitt, and Helen O’Connell appear in both installments. Cheryl “Rainbeaux” Smith turns up (and on) only in Fantasm Comes Again, but that’s just an argument as to why you must see both of these dirty Down Under gems.

For decades, the Fantasm films existed primarily as VHS bootlegs traded and bartered among collectors. Then, in 2004, the heroes at Synapse Films issued pristine prints of the movies on special edition DVDs, ensuring that this wondrous moment in Ozsploitation would live forever—naked.

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November 20, 2006
Skintastic filmmaker Robert Altman dies.

Renowned as one of the blazing mavericks of Hollywood’s “Easy Riders/Raging Bulls” era, Robert Altman prolifically carved a path in cinema history as unique and monumental as his films are layered and complex and his starlets are stunning and naked.

The first classic Altman-helmed nude scene occurs in M*A*S*H (1970), when the pranksters of the 4077th expose Sally Kellerman nude in the shower.

From there, Altman could be counted on to spike his films with celebrity nudity just as sure as he’d shoot overlapping dialogue. Consider, from Altman’s first major filmmaking period, Susannah York nude in Images (1972), Shelley Duvall nude in Thieves Like Us (1974), Gwen Welles nude in Nashville (1975), and Mia Farrow nude in A Wedding (1978).

After a mostly skinless period throughout the ’80s, Altman roared back to cinematic prominence with The Player (1992), a Hollywood satire with Cynthia Stevenson naked, and then Short Cuts (1993), one of the great celebrity nudity triumphs of all time.

In this episodic examination of contemporary Los Angeles, Lori Singer, Frances McDormand, and Madeleine Stowe each get spectacularly nude, and that's capped by bottomless Julianne Moore proving she’s a natural flame-mane by rolling out her fluffy red carpet for nearly three stupefyingly sexy, uninterrupted minutes of exposure that also include cheek peeks.

Next for Altman came Ready to Wear (1994), which climaxes with a parade of stark naked supermodels, and Dr. T and the Women (2000), where we see Farrah Fawcett nude in a public fountain and Helen Hunt nude strutting down a hallway.

After several more well-received films, Robert Altman died from complications of leukemia in New York City on November 20, 2006. He was 81.

The naked legacy he left behind, though, will live forever.




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November 21, 1748
Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland published.

To pass time in a London debtor’s prison, delightfully dirty-minded British deadbeat John Cleland used his one free hand to compose Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure.

Long noted as the first full-length pornographic novel, Fanny Hill chronicles its title character through a series of letters that chart her erotic awakening at 15, through lesbian canoodling, through her work as a prostitute, to an all-around libidinously liberated orgasm addict.

Throughout Fanny’s globe-trotting, genital-jumping adventures, the book details acts such as masturbation, anal intercourse, orgies, sadomasochism, rape fantasies, boy-boy action, and all manner of other prurient possibilities.

At the end, Fanny decides that sex can be had for the thrill of it, and not just love, and she marries a man who agrees with her philosophy.

And from that moment on, Western culture has never been the same.

Fanny Hill met early on with obscenity charges and continued to be banned, confiscated, and destroyed worldwide for the next 200-plus years.

In fact, even in the United States, the novel was only available in heavily pirated “underground” editions until the outlandishly late year of 1973!

Regardless, Russ Meyer turned Fanny Hill into movie form in 1964, and at least a dozen official adaptations have followed, including a 1968 version starring Diana Kjaer, a 1983 version starring Lisa Foster, a 1995 version with Cheryl Dempsey, and a 2007 take featuring Rebecca Night.

In addition, master eroticist Tinto Brass (Salon Kitty, Caligula) cast Deborah Caprioglio in his spin on the tale, Paprika (1991), and there are countless charming rip-offs that include The Notorious Daughter of Fanny Hill (1966), Fanny Hill Versus Lady Chatterley (1970), and Around the World with Fanny Hill (1974).

Some books are hard to read. Fanny Hill remains the one book above all others that you will read hard.