A friend of mine just gave me a boxed set of the second season of Bewitched. This is probably my favorite season, with Darrin and Endora actually getting along at times (see them together in the waiting room in the episode where Tabitha is born). It also has maybe my favorite transformation in the entire series, “The Catnappers,” where Endora turns a beautiful client (Toni Devlin, played by Marion Thompson) of Darrin’s into a cat. Among other things, when the client is changed back, she’s posed cat-like and sitting on Darrin’s lap. She does NOT ask how she got there. (I may try to do a screen capture on this sometime.)
However, it being a prime-time network series in the 1960s (and there were only THREE networks at that time), when she is changed, her clothes just vanish. She was wearing a pearl choker necklace at the time, which doesn’t vanish until Samantha makes it disappear, along with the client’s purse. Interestingly enough, when she is changed back, she has a different outfit on. The same thing happens with the other big female transformation on Bewitched, the Italian client (Clio Vanita, played by Nancy Kovack) turned into a chimpanzee in the two-part “Cousin Serena Strikes Again.” (I don’t like this change as much as they don’t show her transformation into or from being the chimp.)
On the other hand, on I Dream of Jeannie, a couple of beauty queens (Virginia Ann Ford and Willi Koopman as Miss Atom Bomb and Miss Galaxy) get turned into dogs in “What’s New Poodle Dog” and their outfits become canine versions of what they were. In another episode, “Who Needs a Green-Eyed Genie?” an old girlfriend (Joan Patrick as Joan Sheldon) of Tony’s is turned into a chimp (which they DID show), but still in the clothing she was wearing.
This is common enough in movies and films, at least for female characters. Male characters can change back where they’re naked, but not showing anything. I’ve long awaited a female version of The Shaggy Dog, but I don’t think we’ll ever see it, as Disney wouldn’t like saying what a female dog is called.
One annoying thing to me with the Disney movie The Princess and the Frog is that, when Tiana changes into the frog, she has clearly shrunk out of her clothes.
But (minor spoiler alert) when she turns human again at the movie’s end, she is fully clothed!
I know, again, kid’s movie. But they could’ve found a way to conceal her and keep up the continuity of the movie. (Hey, they showed Mulan bathing but kept her decent). But they probably felt that would’ve stretched things out too far time-wise.
Now, in the movie Captain Sindbad, an enjoyable film with Guy Williams (between Zorro and Lost in Space), a princess wants to be turned into a bird. To do this, the wizard performing the spell tells her to take off her clothes because he can’t “grow feathers on silk!” The movie was released in 1963, so all we saw was the princess from the shoulders up, and then a flame-obscured outline as she dwindled to her bird form. (A “flame bird” we were told, which explained the transformation.) Later, she ends up in the closed hand of the movie’s villain, and she is nude, but his fingers keep her decent. Then, it’s back to the flaming outline with the wizard waiting with a blanket for when she reverts to human.
Size changes often involve losing clothing one way or another. The earliest shrinking film I can think of, 1936’s The Devil-Doll with Lionel Barrymore and Maureen O’Sullivan, doesn’t actually show the shrinking (if I’m remembering it right), but it does show the subjects in their now over-sized clothing, sometimes with the clothes covering them. Later, they’re in doll-sized clothing. The same thing happens in 1940’s Dr. Clyclops. We don’t see the shrinking and the characters just end up in giant rags. In 1956’s Attack of the Puppet People, poor secretary Sally Reynolds waking up to find herself “dressed” in a handkerchief surrounded by gigantic objects. And 1957’s The Incredible Shrinking Man and 1981’s The Incredible Shrinking Woman go to great pains to show their title subjects in various stages of shrinking.
As for the other way, people turning into giants, it’s common to show the subjects growing out of their clothes. The Amazing Colossal Man (also 1957), Attack of the 50-Foot Woman (1958 and 1993), Village of the Giants (1965, which does a nice, cheap job of the growing scenes by tearing off the subject’s clothing while doing rear-screen projections of cameras tilting up), and 1995’s Attack of the 60-Foot Centerfolds (which doesn’t actually show the growing) all have fairly good growth scenes. And there’s a custom fetish video outfit, Media Impact Customs, which has done some nice size-change videos. Be warned, you have to pay to download them and see them. But they also do custom videos to order. Their contact info is here: https://www.clips4sale.com/studio/99097/media-impact-customs
I know, I’m basically saying, for some people (maybe a lot?) part of the appeal of transformation is seeing the transformed eventually changed back into themselves and finding that they’re naked — maybe in public.
Anyone for ENF?
And, some might enjoy the idea of being transformed BECAUSE they can move around naked, in public, among friends and family.
There’s a lot more to say on this subject and I will probably do so someday.
TransformationStation 