Florida exploitation starts here. Well, kind of. Shot in 1958 by a 46 year-old Doris Wishman, Hideout in the Sun was the first film to directly ripoff 1954's Garden of Eden and opened the nudist floodgates.

In a way, it's almost fitting that the first Doris Wishman film opens with a lengthy montage of shuffling feet. Brothers Duke and Steve rob a bank and, when their getaway plans fall through, they find themselves hiding out in the nudist camp that Dorothy, the girl they've kidnapped, works at. Cut to a lengthy sequence where Steve learns about the joys of nudism while eating naked lunch and playing nude archery. The brothers eventually make their escape, only to wind up at Miami's Serpentarium, where Duke is killed by a cobra and Steve proclaims his love for Dorothy AND nudism. End film.

My usual points about the sexist subtext of nudist camp films aside, I love just how much this makes me think of Florida. From the barren, tourist trap-strewn state roads to the sunny Miami streets, there's no confusing the setting of this film with anywhere else. And as boring as a lot of these nudist camp films usually are, I can always appreciate just how plot-driven Doris' entries into the genre were. Making some documentary about nudist life would be the easy thing to do, but instead, she gives us a crime thriller with actual characters and an absurd, snake-filled climax that kind of has a Biblical subtext? 

Doris made this as a means of working through her grief after the death of her husband, and she was arrested during the filming of it. She's the greatest.