MEYER MONTH – How Russ Meyer Changed the Face of American Film by Justine Smith

Massive thank you to writer and Russ Meyer fan Justine Smith for giving me permission to re-post this piece of hers on this blog as part of MEYER MONTH. The original, and lots of other fantastic writing on film, can be found on the Little White Lies website.

There was no sex in Russ Meyer’s early films. Throughout the 1950s, some filmmakers found a loophole in America’s strict censorship laws: documentary. By shooting films in nudist colonies, filmmakers were able to bring nudity to the big screen. While censor boards attempted to stifle these attempts, legally, they had very little to ground to stand on. With the opportunity of a lifetime, Meyer was about to transform the genre and change the landscape of American film forever.

During World War Two, Meyer worked as a wartime photographer, and after returning to the US he planned on starting up a career in Hollywood. He had little success, and it was only in the late-’50s that his career took a turn as the nudist colony films, often referred to as ‘naturalist’ movies, started to gain prominence. Although Meyer was initially reticent when offered to make one of these films for $24,000, he had a plan.

Combining the adolescent fantasy of x-ray glasses with the basic tenants of the naturalist film, Meyer came up with the concept for his first film, The Immoral Mr. Teas. In the film, the titular Mr. Teas acquires x-ray powers after visiting the dentist and can now see women naked. While shot in full colour, the film is relatively primitive; it features no sync-sound and is little more than a series of vignettes. Working within the scope of what was allowed in naturalist films, the nudity features no sexual touching and, despite the lechery of Mr. Teas, was relatively chaste.

While even the naturalist films were screened in underground cinemas, The Immoral Mr. Teaswas given a wider release. Its meagre budget produced a healthy profit, and independent producers raced to imitate it, spurring a new genre which came to be known as ‘nudie-cuties’. These films would feature female nudity within the scope of light-hearted comic premises and proved relatively successful, if not continually controversial. Mr. Teas would also initiate Meyer to the court system, as he had to defend the film against obscenity charges. In one Philadelphia case, a judge ruled that the film was not pornography but was ‘vulgar, pointless and in bad taste’.

After the success of The Immoral Mr. Teas, Meyer made two more nudie-cutie films, Eve and the Handyman and Wild Gals of the Naked West. With thousands of imitators, it was clear why Meyer’s films rose to the top: he had a cinematic eye, boundless imagination and an ironic sense of humour. Inspired by his fantasies, Meyer felt that what turned him on would translate to a broader audience. But he quickly grew tired of the achingly adorable genre he invented and began taking even greater risks.

Among these new films were Lorna and Mudhoney, gritty black-and-white Southern Gothic noirs that integrated nudity into the storylines. Inspired, improbably by Italian neo-realism, these are among Meyer’s most earnest efforts. Gone were the goofy antics, and the more camp aesthetics he’d refine over the decade were also absent. Both films were big successes and required Meyer to defend his projects against new obscenity charges, paving the way for other filmmakers looking to take risks in terms of nudity and sex on the big screen.

While the immediate benefactors from his success were other sexploitation filmmakers, the reality was that Meyer’s films (and their subsequent obscenity cases) were paving the way for post-Code Hollywood and the New American Wave of the 1970s that integrated sex and nudity into dramatic plots.

Meyer’s work only gained in prominence over the ensuing decade, gradually refining his style with Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Vixen! and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. While his films are not for all tastes, his travails in pushing the boundaries of sex on screen brought about significant changes, forever altering the look and feel of American film.

Justine Smith is a programmer and film critic based in Montreal, QC. She’s the screen editor of Cult MTL and programs the Underground Section for the Fantasia International Film Festival.

Russ Meyer’s ‘Vixen!’ (1968)

Vixen! is one of my favourite films by Russ Meyer, and this was the first Meyer film I wrote about for this blog over 10 years ago. I’m re-blogging this as a prelude to next year’s MEYER MONTH where I shall revisit Vixen! and write a follow up piece. Stay tuned!

Miss Meyer

Sex! Nudity! Lesbians! Incest! Fish?! Russ Meyer’s 1968 sex flick Vixen! is one of his most memorable and successful. Starring Erica Gavin in the lead role, the film went on to challenge obscenity laws in America and helped to change the landscape of sex in western film.

My love for all things Meyer started when I was ten years old, when watching late night television I stumbled upon Vixen!.Back when Channel 5 first launched and showed soft core sex films every evening (now replaced with permanent CSI re-runs…), I sat fixated on my old 80s television, amazed at what I was seeing. There on my screen was a beautiful woman with thick, gorgeous hair wearing lots of skimpy clothing and doing naughty things with both men and women! Somewhat confused, I fell in love with Vixen! there and then, the film remaining one of my favourites to this day.

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A Quickie about Russ Meyer

Miss Meyer

This was originally written as an assignment when I was studying Film and Journalism at University over 12 years ago, and was one of the first things I posted on this blog 10 years ago. As I’ve decided to re-organise this blog into more of a Russ Meyer-centric hub of information I thought I’d re-blog this as it serves as a very basic and brief overview of Meyer, whether one needs a little refresher on him or is completely new to this blog or the man himself. 

 

Russ Meyer is a lot like marmite. You either accept him at face value, appreciating his filmography for what it is, or you loathe him, and fail to see any cinematic worth in his work. Dubbed ‘The King of the Nudies’ by the Press, Meyer had a prolific career in independent cinema. Using his previous experience as a Pin Up and Army…

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MEYER MONTH – ‘Finders Keepers, Lovers Weepers!’ (1968)

Finders Keepers, Lovers Weepers isn’t your atypical Russ Meyer film. A picture that feels like a small slump in his career, Finders has none of the sleaziness, fun and venomous swipes of its predecessors Common Law Cabin and Good Morning… and Goodbye!. Nor is it as exciting and charming as its successor, the certificate challenging Vixen!. Sadly, this is a feature that feels like the director switched on autopilot and stopped caring, creating a picture that feels like a dull thriller television movie then a tantalising sexploitation escapade.

Kelly (Anne Chapman) and Paul (Paul Lockwood) are an unhappily married couple, cheating on each other and generally being miserable in each other’s company (and in typical Meyer fashion, it is the husband’s sexual inadequacy and neglect that has forced the wife into adultery). Paul owns a bar and has a mistress Claire on the side (Lavelle Roby). Anne, unbeknownst to her husband, occasionally dances at said bar when he isn’t there and shows the punters a lot more than she shows him. On this one particular night however, the two of them get caught up in a heist job, headed by a man named Cal (Duncan McLeod) and things get… well, remotely interesting?

You’d be forgiven for assuming it all sounds a bit drab, because, quite frankly, it is. Now don’t get me wrong, I am under no illusions about Russ Meyer as a filmmaker and certainly do not consider him in some mythical, underrated ‘best filmmaker of all time’ in some semi-quasi Orson Welles kind of way. But Finders is without a doubt one of his weakest films. It’s tiny cast and minimal locations just aren’t enough to pull itself out from the ghastly shadow that is a terrible script. Full of badly written one-liners and dialogue that lacks any kind of emotion, the picture essentially feels like a made-for-television movie, with some added tits. And even then, there isn’t as much breast as you would have thought for a Meyer picture. Everything feels a little, well, lacklustre and probably at the expense of the plot’s restriction to allow much else to happen.

What doesn’t help the picture is that its cast is one of the most forgettable out of all those used in Meyer’s filmography. Leading lady Anne Chapman, to bluntly put it, has none of the looks or charm of any of the other Meyer girls. Whilst it feels horrible to say she isn’t pretty, it’s just simply that there is nothing about her that makes her memorable; none of the natural good looks of Alaina Capri, the feminine caricature of beauty that Babette Bardot had or attitude that Tura Satana possessed. She certainly attempts to make the most of the main role that she has but is easily upstaged by Lavelle Roby who has a considerably smaller supporting act. Roby manages to ooze confidence, sex appeal and authority in the maximum of ten minutes screen time she is given, giving the role of brothel owner Claire much more of an impact than that of Kelly. When she turns up at the end of the picture in a cream mac and go-go boots touting a gun at the male cast, you almost wish Meyer had taken her character and made another film (Roby was cast two years later in Meyer’s first studio release Beyond the Valley of the Dolls). One can totally imagine the likes of Roby, Capri, Erica Gavin, Haji and Kitten Natividad going up against each other in some gang war-esque melodrama about their character’s sex lives.

The male cast is also just as mixed. Duncan McLeod (another cast member who would also later crop up in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls) is brilliant as the heist mastermind Cal, managing to effectively display his boredom for the job alongside his sadistic attitude to dealing with hostages. Robert Rudelson as his partner Feeny is a different kettle of fish altogether, playing the role of a complete nut job of a maniac with so much cliché that you wish he was written out of the script altogether. Sadly for the other two male cast members, Paul Lockwood and Gordon Wescourt, their fate is very similar to that of Chapman’s. With no personality or good looks and minimal acting ability, they are instantly forgettable. Even the director himself makes more of an impact in a split second cameo at the start of the film, leering over the bar’s topless dancer.

Not that the film doesn’t have its clichéd Meyer moments, with the major sex scene being a highlight amongst the directors filmography. Underwater shots of bodies bumping and grinding against each other (which I will admit are beautifully lit) during sex are inter-cut with cars smashing each other at a derby. Yes its frenetic, yes it’s fast, but it’s also Meyer adding his ‘social redeeming value’ and moralisation to the story. The sin of the act of adultery is equatable to death. Not only does the editing get Meyer’s moral message across but diminishes the intensity of the characters orgasms, making it less of a target for obscenity persecution by the censors.  It’s worth fast forwarding the film to that one scene alone, probably the most entertaining and humorous part of the whole film which is only beats the ‘chest shaving’ scene to the top spot. In this, Paul gets his chest shaved at Claire’s brothel by one of the prostitutes who recounts her Amish childhood and incestuous relationship with her brother (flashbacks to her dressed in full Amish costume included). Meyer at one of his most random and equally un-arousing moments, it’s a scene that manages to equally appear quite innocent, as if the two were having sex for the first time. Apparently this was one of the directors favourite scenes and he was practically smacking his lips whilst shooting it.

Meyer had noticed the trend at that time of films switching from playing at drive-in theaters to hardtop indoor cinemas, one way of ensuing that those ‘tough’ moral types couldn’t catch a peek at what was screening and kick up a fuss. Finders Keepers, Lovers Weepers turned out to be a huge hit and even found itself playing at legitimate cinemas by May 1969. It’s booking into Philadelphia’s first-run Randolph Theatre (replacing the MGM release of The Shoes for the Fisherman which had tanked) is a significant breakthrough for Meyer as a filmmaker as up to this point in his career his films had usually played art-house cinemas. That didn’t stop people trying to get him into trouble, even though they weren’t very successful… There were at least two incidents, one in Louisiana and one in Missouri, were the court ruled in Meyer’s favour after prints of Finders were seized for being obscene, without a prior adversary hearing determining if it actually was.

Not one of the directors best but worth a watch for his unconscious attempt at doing somewhat of a serious film, the noir feel of Finders Keepers, Lovers Weepers is one that could have been capitalised more on with a different cast and the final result eclipsed by the rest of his filmography.

MEYER MONTH – ‘Viva Foxy!’ and Edy Williams

Viva Foxy! a Russ Meyer film? No, you’re not wrong, he didn’t make it but it was one of the few film ideas that Meyer toyed with before eventually abandoning in the mid 70s. With a screenplay written by Roger Ebert, the picture was meant to star Meyer’s then-wife Edy Williams, whom he’d married after meeting on the set of 1970 release Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (Edy played hypersexual porn star Ashley St. Ives), and was set to start shooting in Hollywood on December 6th 1972. Except that it never did.

So what could we have expected from Meyer? Viva Foxy! aka Foxy (the film’s title was changed to incorporate the setting) was to be centred around the early 1920’s border war between two South American banana republics. Williams was to play the titular character of Foxy McHugh, an orphan of missionary parents who had grown up on the streets and was the power behind the two thrones. One dictator was to be modeled on Che Guevara, the other on Peter Ustinov’s Nero from Quo Vadis (one can only imagine how Meyer would have done this visually in his sometimes garish style). Williams saw McHugh as her version of Erica Gavin’s Vixen character; ‘She used men and abused them and had a ball. That’s what Foxy’s gonna be about. She’s gonna do all the things that men have done. I’ll be a female guerilla’. Meyer did photograph Edy for a Playboy pictorial which was featured in the March 1973 issue. He briefly describes his latest film Foxy which, according to Russ, will be about ‘a sexy record-company executive who gets mixed up with a number of men in outrageous situations’. Whatever the outcome would have been one can only imagine that the notoriously fame-hungry Williams would have taken the lead and run with it if her portrayal of Ashley St. Ives is anything to go by.

Russ Meyer and Edy Williams on their wedding day

Whilst the film never got made, Meyer and Williams did shoot some footage to advertise the film before any plans really took off. Russ shot the film’s trailer, which had Williams water skiing in the nude, and tagged it on to the end of his feature Black Snake which was released in 1973. One of the first directors to use this concept, there are conflicting reports as to whether the trailer was actually attached to the film or not during its original theatrical run (I’ve tried a lot of online research and not come up with a definite answer, if anyone can help…). Unfortunately this ending is not on the Arrow DVD release of Black Snake and the Arrow DVD’s are currently the most comprehensive packages of Meyer’s filmography.

What is known is that the project eventually fell through. One reason was due to difficulties in putting a deal together, despite Penthouse apparently being interested at one point and Russ stating to Hollywood Reporter in April 1973 that the trailer alone had resulted in three separate offers to completely finance the budget. This issue surprises me as Meyer was already a rich man by this time in his career. The film was conceived as a $400,000 vehicle for Williams and one of Meyer’s many talents was his ability to make a film on a budget (granted, there are a few blips in his career where he has had to be bailed out). How they couldn’t raise the money is beyond me, as is why Russ didn’t just self finance the project to begin with. It’s well-known that he liked to be in control of his entire empire and works. Another reported reason is that Meyer cancelled the film’s production amid fears that investors money would be lost on a film that could be challenged by local communities when a new ruling on obscenity was drawn up by the Supreme Court allowing local communities to self-determine what they considered to be ‘obscene’.

That said, the other reason it fell through was due to a temporary breakup between Meyer and Williams. The marriage between the two of them was a tempestuous one with many questioning at the time how the relationship had even gotten to that point. By 1973, tensions were already running high between the two with Williams angry that Meyer hadn’t given her the part of Lady Susan in Black Snake which she had assumed she was getting. Her Playboy pictorial was meant to be an attempt to pacify the situation. Their arguing continued until the day that Edy decided to leave Meyer’s house and file for divorce. It was a very messy battle and Williams is not generally looked upon by the Meyer community in a positive light.

There’s no denying that Viva Foxy! would have been an interesting film had Meyer continued with his plans and made it. Edy Williams is extremely memorable in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and it would have been nothing short of an experience to see her take on a female lead in one of Russ’s many sexploitation entries. Sometimes, the imagine dreams up ideas far more exciting than those ever given to us on a plate and this is one project where dreaming is just going to have to do.

MEYER MONTH – Russ Meyer’s ‘The Immoral Mr. Teas’ (1959)

Who would have thought that the advent of modern-day pornography, the exploitation of the female form and the first instance of really using women in film as sexual objects would arise from a little live-action cartoon-esque sex picture called The Immoral Mr. Teas (1959)? Before the release of director Russ Meyer’s first feature, extensive nudity in film was only seen in underground pornography (which had to be covertly produced and distributed, usually illegally) or in naturist pictures, where nudity was allowed under the guise of naturist films being documentaries on nudist camps and, therefore, somewhat legitimately educational. Meyer broke boundaries by making Mr. Teas the first film since early Pre-Code sound pictures to feature nudity without the pretext of naturism. Arguably the first popular and successful film of its kind, it went on to start the short-lived nudie-cutie genre and kick-started the sexploitation genre which Meyer would dominate throughout the 1960s.

The Immoral Mr. Teas is an incredibly simple picture. Mr. Teas (played by Meyer’s combat buddy Bill Teas, an alcoholic who was drunk for most of the shoot) is your average American Joe living life in suburbia. Practically ignored by everyone, Teas delivers false teeth as a job and spends most of his time eyeing up the women around  town. After having an injection of painkillers for a tooth extraction, Teas starts seeing women everywhere topless, even when the injection has worn off. That’s pretty much all there is to it. Padding out the rest of the cast are a bevy of beautiful ladies; a mixture of pin-up models and burlesque dancers that both Meyer and producer Pete DeCenzie knew and a few bought in from elsewhere. The cherry on top of the casting ice cream is the gorgeous model June Wilkinson whom Meyer knew from his photographic career. Don’t remember seeing her name in the credits? That’s because she gave Meyer an uncredited cameo… Of her breasts only.

Unsurprisingly, Meyer had difficulties when trying to distribute the film upon its completion (ten years later he would encounter more legal problems when trying to distribute Vixen!). Simply put, there had never been a film like Mr. Teas before and theatre owners were scared to show it. When the film eventually had its premiere in San Diego in 1959 it was shut down by the police only twenty minutes in. Rumour has it that DeCenzie hadn’t paid the local authorities the necessary bribe and it would be a year before him and Meyer would get the print back.

Meyer needn’t have worried at the time. The Immoral Mr. Teas was hugely successful. Re-opening in Seattle in 1960, the film played for nine months. It ran for three years in Los Angeles. Made on a budget of $24,000, the film made between an estimated $1 and $3 million. Fourteen years after it was first released, it was still making money through theatrical bookings despite more explicit films being shown in cinemas and a far greater increase in sexuality and nudity being depicted in western cinema. The picture itself spawned over 150 imitations.

Watching it now, Mr. Teas feels very innocent, almost to the point of wondering what all the fuss was about. But for 1959, Meyer was teetering on the edge of what was considered legal to show in theatres. Even filming on Kodak Eastman stock was potentially a problem for production as Kodak could refuse to develop the negatives if they deemed the content obscene in any way. Its slight innocence aside, the film is all about the art of the tease and tease it certainly does. The picture is only sixty-two minutes long and the audience has to wait a full twenty-eight minutes before seeing any hint of the nude female form. Drawing from his photographic career, Meyer successfully keeps the tease up (excuse the pun) and going for the whole feature’s duration, each woman staying attractively untouched, poised on the moment of perfection until the very end. The isn’t just a film about Mr. Teas’s naughty daydreams, they also belong to the audience and the relationship between the female models and the viewers is held throughout by the distinct lack of physical contact between Teas and any of the women. In fact he seems almost terrified of what they might do to him, at one point jumping into a river to escape being near a topless sunbather.

What’s so telling about The Immoral Mr. Teas is the number of Meyer hallmarks that are abundant in it, foreshadowing future films and sequences from his later career. It’s opening montage of cars, nature and cities would be an effect used again and again (no doubt an influence from his early career doing industrial films), most notably in Mondo Topless  (1966) and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), whilst the innuendo filled and often irrelevant narration used crops up in at least another five of his features. What is incredibly obvious in Mr. Teas and didn’t change at all throughout the rest of his career is Meyer’s natural ability to make any woman look beautiful through his lens. A talented photographer for over a decade before moving into film, Mr. Teas has often been described as a’year’s subscription to Playboy’, a moving image version of a themed photo shoot.

The only sad irony about The Immoral Mr. Teas is that the world it helped to create, Meyer found himself no longer a part of by the mid 1970s. Whilst the film birthed the beginnings of the adult film industry and helped to unleash sexual freedom on the big screen, Meyer found himself left on the sidelines when his lack of interest in including hardcore shots and the sex act itself meant that his films became overshadowed by pictures likeDeep Throat(1972). Still, I bet he never thought that a quaint little film about a man in a straw hat would be the catalyst to begin it all…

Russ Meyer’s ‘Vixen!’ (1968)

Sex! Nudity! Lesbians! Incest! Fish?! Russ Meyer’s 1968 sex flick Vixen! is one of his most memorable and successful. Starring Erica Gavin in the lead role, the film went on to challenge obscenity laws in America and helped to change the landscape of sex in Western film.

My love for all things Meyer started when I was ten years old, when watching late night television I stumbled upon Vixen!. Back when Channel 5 first launched and showed soft core sex films every evening (now replaced with permanent CSI re-runs…), I sat fixated on my old 80s television, amazed at what I was seeing. There on my screen was a beautiful woman with thick, gorgeous hair wearing lots of skimpy clothing and doing naughty things with both men and women! Somewhat confused, I fell in love with Vixen! there and then, the film remaining one of my favourites to this day.

Meyer’s film concerns the exploits of Vixen, happily married to her husband Tom (Garth Pillsbury) and living in lush Canadian woodland. In her spare time Vixen likes to have sex, and lots of it. The film starts with her playful seduction and sexual encounter with a Canadian mountain rookie. She then sleeps with her husband and has sex with a couple that comes to stay at their cabin. The climax (excuse the pun) of it all? The infamous shower scene with her brother and their subsequent romp. Meyer is even quoted as saying that this is one of the sexiest scenes he’s ever filmed.

Vixen (Erica Gavin) and Janet (Vincene Wallace)

The actual sexual scenes and their themes (lesbianism, incest), along with lots of nudity and suggestive language, were the main reasons Vixen! was so controversial upon its release in 1968. At that point the Hays Production Code was replaced with the new MPAA rating system which had just been established. Vixen! became the first American-made film to receive the X certificate, meaning no one under seventeen would be admitted to see it in cinemas. This new X-rated feature challenged obscenity laws in every state in was released in, whilst going on to earn $7 million in its first year alone. Not bad for a $72,000 budget. (Meyer would later claim Vixen! eventually netted him a cool $26 million, one of his most profitable films.)

Over the course of the next year, Vixen! ran into problems. In January 1969, one cinema manager and projectionist in Georgia were arrested and their print of the film confiscated. October of that year saw a theatre in Jacksonville, Florida busted by the vice squad and the cinema’s reels seized. The theatre owner was charged for projecting a ‘filthy and indecent picture’ by the courts. In May 1970 a Center Theater manager in North Carolina was fined $250 for showing the film. The biggest battle of them all though would be in the state of Ohio.

In September 1969 in Cincinnati, Ohio, the Guilds Art Theater saw both its prints of Vixen! seized on two consecutive days. In the November, a permanent injunction was placed against the picture in five Ohio counties on the grounds that it was obscene. July 1971 saw the ban upheld; Vixen! could be shown in cinemas if Meyer cut out all the sex scenes. Meyer refused, after all a Meyer film without any sex is hardly a Meyer film. Not surprisingly he lost the case. Vixen! has not been seen in the state of Ohio since 1969 and is still legally banned.

No sex please, we’re American… One of Vixen’s many banned clinches

It seems strange, watching the film now, to think that it is still an illegal act to screen the film in Ohio. Only three years later Last Tango In Paris and, more explicitly, Deep Throat were unleashed in American cinemas. For 1968 Vixen! was certainly a challenging picture in its sexual depictions but watched now would possibly be considered a poor soft core sex film. At the time however, Meyer was making waves in the sexploitation industry. As a filmmaker, Meyer was influenced by the laid back attitude towards sex and sexuality in European films, such as 1967s I Am Curious Yellow, and tried to create Western equivalents. There is no doubt that Meyer’s efforts and successes contributed to the eventual greater explicitness that we today are perhaps more used to.

Vixen! was not only responsible for raising the bar in cinematic representations of sexuality and physical sex but it also helped to draw in female audiences. The film is regularly referred to as the first instance in ‘couples porn’. This is thanks largely to Erica Gavin’s portrayal as the lead character. Meyer decided to go against type and settled on Gavin’s more ‘smaller’ and ‘normal’ physique. In her physicality, she is less intimidating than some earlier, and later, Meyer women and in that respect, is more identifiable for women.

It wasn’t just Gavin’s looks that made Vixen so unique and irresistible, but the potency of her beauty mixed with her behaviour. Vixen oozes sex appeal, and plenty of it. If her bedroom eyes and cheeky grin don’t win you over then her playful and dominating sexuality will. Here was a woman who loved sex, was confident and comfortable in her own (very) active sexuality and got what she wanted, when she wanted. To hammer this point home, the first sexual encounter we see Vixen have is weighed more in her sexuality, with her sexual desire far exceeding the Canadian Mountie’s ability to perform. Once he is done she gets up and leaves to get on with the rest of her day, her focus firmly and always on herself.

And this is where Meyer excelled. In order to play in drive-ins and grindhouse cinemas Meyer added one fabulous little touch to all his films to justify the nudity and sexual depiction; redeeming social value. In previous and subsequent films, many of Meyer’s women are ‘punished’ for their behaviour or desires. But not Vixen, she gets away with it, incest included. The reason? She saves America from Communism.

Vixen and her brother Judd. One of Meyer’s sexiest scenes?

Part of the film’s plot involves Vixen’s racist attitude towards her brother’s black friend Niles (played by Harrison Page). When Vixen gets going, boy does she get vicious. This gets overlooked by Meyer when a greater threat enters the characters woodland idyll – Communism. (On a side note, Meyer hated Communists and the Nazis after serving in the Second World War. Certain aspects of his feelings would reappear throughout his work, including the frequent casting of ‘Martin Boorman?’) Towards the end of the film, an Irish man called O’Bannion comes to stay with Vixen and Tom. He later confesses to being a Communist and tries to hijack a plane to fly to Cuba. He too also happens to be a racist which angers Niles. A fight breaks out in the plane which results in Niles knocking out O’Bannion and Vixen flying and landing the plane to safety, getting O’Bannion arrested on the ground. At this point Niles and Vixen come to some sort of ‘understanding’. And thus the All-American Vixen saves the day and her racist and sexually deviant escapades are all forgiven. Your typical Meyer heroine then.

Vixen! is one of Meyer’s best films. The plot is admittedly somewhat ridiculous but overall the picture has a certain charm you can’t ignore. Gavin is excellent, one of the few true natural actresses in a Meyer film. Alongside Tura Satana (Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!) and Alaina Capri (Common Law Cabin), Gavin’s acting is miles away from the forced, wooden performances of other Meyer leading ladies. She is also incredibly beautiful, her natural good looks shot wonderfully by Meyer’s camera which clearly loves her (Meyer himself describes her as ‘Radiant! Alive!!’ in his autobiography A Clean Breast which seems incredibly accurate and poignant). Sadly, Gavin would later develop and battle anorexia and anxiety upon watching herself on the big screen and lives partly as a recluse in Hollywood.

I love Vixen! now as much as I did when I first watched it all those years ago. It has had such a large and profound impact on my life ever since, with Meyer being my favourite director and my main interest being sex in cinema. However, all these years later I’m still trying to perfect Vixen’s make up and get that back-combed bouffant of a fabulous hairstyle. I’ve had no luck in finding a yellow push-up bikini either. Still, I can dream…

 

The other infamous scene. Vixen sleeps with everyone in this video except, surprisingly, the fish.

A Quickie about Russ Meyer

Russ Meyer is a lot like marmite. You either accept him at face value, appreciating his filmography for what it is, or you loathe him, and fail to see any cinematic worth in his work. Dubbed ‘The King of the Nudies’ by the Press, Meyer had a prolific career in independent cinema. Using his previous experience as a Pin Up and Army combat photographer, he established himself as one of the best and most successful sexploitation film makers. Creating films on a small budget and exploring sex in any way possible (nudity, suggestive language, scenes of sexual activity), Meyer was a key film maker in helping to bring sex and sexuality to the big screen.

Meyer’s film career started in 1959 with The Immoral Mr. Teas, a nudist comedy made to rival the other nudie cutie films that were playing in the independent/exploitation circuit. Though not the first film to show female nudity, it was the first feature film to use women purely as sexual objects. On a budget of $24,000 the film grossed over $1 million. Meyer knew he’d found a niche in cinema that he excelled in and would, in turn, be a profitable personal investment. He made two more films before the nudie cutie genre had run its course and went on to produce sexploitation films with a rougher edge.

The roughie period in Meyer’s work is a big contrast to his previous output. Filmed in black and white, the films handle darker material and play out as rape-revenge narratives. Effectively morality tales in which the bad guys eventually get their comeuppance, Meyer scored himself another first with Motorpsycho. Released in 1965, Motorpsycho’s narrative was the first to explore the idea of Vietnam veterans coming back to America suffering from mental illness and stress disorders. However, it was his last film in this period that would eventually have an influence on the public and feature-film makers alike.

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! opened to little response back in 1965 but has since gained a considerable cult following. Meyer’s premise was simple. His last film had featured three guys terrorising women; why not make a film about three women terrorising guys? Meyer cast three striking women in the films leads, notably Tura Satana in the now iconic Amazonian role of Varla. They were women out to get what they wanted, when they wanted, using everyone and anyone they could. Only ever looking out for number one, the film raised the bar in empowering roles for women on screen. With the subtle hints on lesbianism, the film unapologetically embraces strong, active feminine sexuality, showing that women could certainly rival men in all aspects of life.

The directors following films would continue to depict sexually charged women and focus on the failure of the men in their lives to satisfy their needs. Infidelity, bed swapping, outrageous flirtation, lesbianism and even the odd hint of a father lusting after his daughter; Meyer continued to exploit any angle he could in order to show more nudity and sexual behaviour. Exhibiting each new film city by city, state by state, Meyer would regularly have problems with the law. Aware of the amount of nudity and sexual freedom in European and Art House cinema coming to Western shores, Russ put out his then most shocking film.

Vixen! was released in 1968 and was an immediate hit with both the public and the law. Whilst people queued around street blocks numerous times to catch the film, Meyer faced prosecution in many states under obscenity charges. Most of its charges were overturned but to this day Vixen! is still banned in Ohio. The film was also another cinematic first for the film maker, becoming the first American made X-rated movie. The narrative follows the oversexed female lead Vixen as she seduces everyone she meets, infamously ever her brother. Whilst full of taboos, the end of the film shows Vixen bringing down an unruly communist; only Meyer could make a sex film with a social commentary on American apprehension against Eastern communism!

Two years later, the director released his first studio film with the backing of 20th Century Fox. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls debuted in 1970 with another X certificate. Originally intended as a sequel to Valley of the Dolls, the film eventually morphed into an intelligent satire on the 1960s as a decade. Parodying cultural references and cinematic techniques, clichés and genres, the film was billed as something ‘never seen before!’ Featuring a cast of buxom women, the film starts as a musical melodrama before turning into a violent exploitation flick. Beyond is well known for its ending which channels the end of the hippy decade and the Tate/LaBianca murders at the hands of the Manson Family.

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls was Meyer’s last cinematic high. His next studio picture, The Seven Minutes, was poorly received critically and commercially. Originally tied to a three picture deal with Fox, Meyer’s contract was terminated and he never made another film with studio backing again. Returning to independent filmmaking, he released Black Snake in 1972. His first foray into the blaxploitation genre, the film was not a success. Set on a plantation, the narrative follows a slave owner who manipulates both the black and white men on her estate. The film has some violent scenes and the lead actress, Anouska Hempel, is not suited in the lead role. Without the satire or humour present in Meyer’s previous work, Black Snake is a jarring and uncomfortable watch, and remains one of his weakest films.

Returning to what he knew best, Meyer made two sexploitation films in the mid 1970s, Supervixens and Up! By now the public were used to seeing more extreme sexual imagery in cinema. Last Tango in Paris and Deep Throat were released in 1972, raising the bar of screened sex in film and challenging pornography and obscenity laws. Meyer, despite being a sex film maker, was repulsed at anything hardcore and refused to incorporate this aspect into his own work. Whereas once he was ‘The King of the Nudies’, the sex film industry’s rapid evolution left Meyer out in the cold. It would be the downfall of his career.

In the late seventies, Meyer was approached by Malcolm McLaren to make a film about and starring the Sex Pistols. Work was started on the picture, titled Who Killed Bambi?, but was abandoned when it was apparent there was no funding. He made and released one more sexploitation film in 1979, Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens. A parody of his previous work and still containing nudity and simulated sex, it was visually a lot less than the images found in harder pornographic films.

Russ Meyer made one last film a few years before his death entitled Pandora Peaks, though it is sometimes considered out of canon with his other work. He enjoyed numerous screenings of his work in various festivals and universities across the globe, including a big retrospective at the British Film Institute in 1983. In his later life his major project became his autobiography, A Clean Breast, which was released in 2000 in three hardcover volumes totalling over 1200 pages. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease the same year and died four years later, aged 82, from pneumonia.