Kirstie Allie in Blind Date (1984; from the deleted scenes). Yes, 34 years ago. Kirstie turned 68 yesterday. Marina Sirtis was also topless in the movie proper. Both women would go on to play roles in the Star Trek universe.
The director of that film, Niko Mastorakis, was good at getting actresses naked, but he was not much of a filmmaker. I would generously call his best films mediocre, and his worst film is an abomination unto heaven. That would be Island of Death, which I called in my review, “the Citizen Kane of goat-fucking films.”
Despite his anti-talent, I have always enjoyed listening to his director’s commentaries and special features. He is smart, gossipy and humorous. (As with Doctor Frankenstein, one wonders what Mastorakis might have done had he used his genius for good.) The DVD of The Naked Truth is a great rental, but skip the dumb movie and just watch the documentary, “The Films of Nicos Mastorakis: Part IV”. As always. Mastorakis comes up with some great raw and deleted footage, and some great anecdotes about the filmmaking process. His commentary is priceless because he has a rare combination in the film industry: acute intelligence, and complete candor. As Howard Cosell used to say, Mastorakis “tells it like it is”.
Some examples of the material in the documentary:
1. Footage of an unexpected helicopter crash which killed one of his stunt men.
2. A great anecdote about screen legend Jose Ferrer, who once covered up somebody else’s fuck-up by memorizing five pages of script in five minutes. Ferrer then told Mastorakis to film the rehearsal, and delivered every line perfectly. The rehearsal footage was used in the film!
3. Mastorakis’s candid assessment of another screen legend, the unpredictable Oliver Reed. Here are Mastroakis’s words, “My co-director and I had the brilliant idea to hire Oliver Reed, who had been infamous in the industry, not only for the eagle tattoo on his private parts, but also for picking fights and being constantly under the influence. Good old Ollie stood up to his reputation and our expectations. Fortunately enough, he didn’t kill anyone and he wasn’t arrested by the local police.”
4. A long story about the battle waged between Mastorakis and the MPAA over the “X” rating assigned to “In the Cold of the Night”, including the (relatively innocuous) footage that upset the censors.
