Welcome to my new short series called Hippie Hotties where I plan to talk about a hippie-era movie that stretched the limits of free love and sex by showing off some sexy nudes on the big screen. This era of experimentation led to some pretty far-out films, so let's take a look!
Alec March directs this take on Elmore Leonard's original crime novel of the same name, The Big Bounce. This film is notable for being actor Ryan O'Neal's debut movie where he plays a Vietnam veteran with a criminal record. He gets a job doing migrant labor on a fruit farm in California. He gets into a fight with one of his co-workers and hits him with a baseball bat, so he is thrown into jail. The owner of the farm bails him out and advises him to get out of dodge before the coworker he hit with a bat comes after him. That is when he meets Nancy Barker played by Leigh Taylor-Young who was actually O'Neal's wife at the time.
Nancy Barker is the farm owner's mistress and secretary, but Ryan's character starts playing with fire by falling in love with her. Leigh Taylor-Young goes topless in the movie. She skinny-dips multiple times 0 once during the day and once again at night.
Lee Grant is ALSO in the movie and we have also seen her in Shampoo. She has a one-night stand with him and wants to have a real relationship with Ryan's character, but he has his sights set on Nancy. It's not hard to see why!
This movie takes an insane turn when Nancy asks Ryan O'Neal to help her steal their boss' money. It's about this time that he realizes the beautiful, carefree girl he is crushing on is actually insane. It's another one of those movies where the girl's charming hippie antics make her instability look quirky and cool! Nancy then tries to kill him, but she kills the wrong guy. The wrong guy came over and it turned out to be the original man who was after him! Dun dun dun! So she sort of did Ryan's character a favor, but he winds up getting freaked out because it was pretty obvious that she brought a gun over to his motel room to kill HIM. She gets exonerated for her crimes and Ryan's character decides to hitchhike out of town. A driver pulls over. It's...Nancy! WHAT? WHY? He declines the ride and says that it's a nice day, so he'd rather walk. End of film!
Does Leigh look familiar to you? That might be because she has been in multiple Hippie Hotties movies so far. We saw her topless in the Peter Sellers comedy I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! and again in The Buttercup Chain. The late 60s and early 70s were filled with Leigh's nude scenes. She was taking it all off all over the place, but this might be my personal favorite film for Leigh's nude scenes. We get such a good full frontal look at her before she dives into the swimming pool in broad daylight and the fact that she goes nude again at night and we can still see so much is quite beautiful. Leigh radiates beauty and a certain carefree attitude that makes her such a necessity in these kinds of films. She seems like a very believable late 60s It Girl.
This movie was not at all well-received by critics. Not only did The New York Times ask the audience to consider doing anything other than watch this film, but the novel Inherent Vice refers to the score in this movie as arguably "the worst music track ever inflicted on a movie". Yikes. Leigh is wonderful in the film, but I'd have to agree with the critics here. Her roles in the other films we've mentioned are way better and this movie makes her look downright psychotic for reasons that are never fully explained. They use hippiedom to suggest that this air-headed flower child is actually an irrational criminal which feels like 1960s paranoia.
There was a second remake of the movie in 2004, but it doesn't have the same swingin' thrill that the 60s version has. This version stars Owen Wilson, Charlie Sheen, Morgan Freeman, and Sara Foster who shows off her bikini body and she enjoys some ass-out sunbathing. This film takes a lot more liberties and it turns the plot into a comedy with a focus on the heist. That's definitely for the best! The first film feels so melodramatic in comparison. This version of The Big Bounce is just a fun, beachy heist film!
The movie may not be great, but the nude scenes are. Watch Leigh dive into a pool naked here:
