The Unkissed Bride

Plot

Newlyweds Ted (Kirk) and Margie Hastings (Helm) go on honeymoon at the hotel of Margie's uncle, Jacques Phillipe (Bergerac).

Nervous about the prospect of having sex, Margie picks up a copy of Mother Goose and begins reading from it, causing Ted to faint.

Dr. Richards (D'Hondt), a psychiatrist, deduces that Ted has a "Mother Goose complex" and treats him with an LSD spray while he sleeps. This causes him to hallucinate and mix up reality with fairy tales.

Cast

Production

Producer Jack H Harris was invited to the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas to see what he later described as "a musical interpretation of Mother Goose stories and nursery rhymes with a naughty twist." He said he "couldn't see filming this show to have a theatrical purpose, but I worked on the idea with Richard Clair."

The film was about a young man who was rendered impotent on hearing any reference to Mother Goose stories and nursery rhymes. Harris wanted to make the film and add it to the released schedule for their distribution company. He financed the film with a cash investment from a telemarketing company in return for a 40% interest in the film.

The film was shot in late 1965. The women's costumes came from designer Guy Tassel and the men's from Botany 500. Harris says the investor backed out of paying, resulting in Harris deciding to direct himself to save money. His wife Muriel and her partner Jim Bechtold designed and dressed the sets with borrowed set pieces. The crew consisted of only six people. Harris said he told them "it wasn't a question of how many days of shooting. It was a question of how many hours of shooting we could afford."

Harris says shooting took ten days and editing and post production sixty days. "It looked like a million dollar movie...[with] sexy humour and... decent performances," claimed Harris.

Release

The film was originally released as Mother Goose-a-Go-Go. Harris says this title proved hard to pronounce and difficult to put on a marquee. An exhibitor joked that "The Unscrewed Bride" would be an ideal title, prompting Harris to re-title it The Unkissed Bride. He says the film "enjoyed a passable companion feature gross theatrically, eventually becoming a semi-string VHS title" but admitted it was "a program picture that was not a big winner."