Bob Mizer | Why the Wooden Indian Wouldn’t / 1969

going native

by Douglas Messerli

 

Bob Mizer (writer and director) Why the Wooden Indian Wouldn’t / 1969

 

By the late 1960s Bob Mizer was doing films that definitely might be described as porno, although many of them still maintained a lacquer of innocence simply because they involved simulated sex and the production values were so low, the acting so awful, and the humor so silly that they seemed more like home productions than the increasingly more sophisticated porn films by Peter de Rome and Wakefield Poole among others.

     His 1969 film Why the Wooden Indian Wouldn’t might almost be described as a statement against the increasing move to full sexual representation in cinema, with his proud Indian character opting out in a grand expression of coitus interruptus from the completion of an on-screen depiction the sexual act.          The night janitor (Philip Morrison) at a museum displaying a statue of a wooden Indian (Eddie Scott) is busy at work doing some light dusting. Phil grows curious about the beautiful rendition of an American Indian, commenting aloud to his beauty and carefully checking out whether what lay under the Indian’s loincloth is as beautiful has the rest of him. He is surprised to learn that everything is anatomically correct.

      Suddenly the Indian comes to life, shocking the young janitor, who seems to think at first that the miracle is related in some sense to his being a kind of Aladdin, since the Indian also offers him his immediate wish, providing him with a great deal of money and quickly moves on to dance a rain dance.

      But what Philip really wants is sex with the beautiful representation of American natural beauty, and when the Indian pulls a muscle from doing a dance he has not practiced for a very long time, the boy offers up a massage, soon with the Indian lying on the floor face down with Philip straddled on top of him, he is ready as we all recognize for full sexual penetration.

      The Indian, clearly ready to go through with the act, however, suddenly attempts to stand and return to his pedestal, fearful that if he remains in that position any longer he will return to wood. Presumably, the pun here is on the graphic metaphor of a man getting a “woody” or an erection.

      In fact, the Indian has begun to return to wood the moment the boy begins to insert his penis, and Phil is hurt in the process of attempting to enter the Indian’s ass, later pulling out a nail as proof of the source of his pain.

      Meanwhile the Indian has fully turned back to wood. All Phil can do is to continue with his chores and hope that some other night he will find the Indian “in the flesh” once more.

      The joke, obviously, is that the beautiful rendition of body as a representation of manhood is far better than taking him off his pedestal and engaging him in real sexual acts.

      Yet, the film clearly recognized that things had changed and its showing at the Los Angeles Park Theater in 1969 represented one of the first films to display full male nudity in a public forum, implying that Philip actually penetrated Eddie during the massage, despite the fact that we recognize no male-to-male action really took place.

 

Los Angeles, August 14, 2021

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August 2021).