UP! (Severin Films)

UP!
Severin Films

The Stats
Video: 1080p High Definition
Audio:  English 2.0 DTS-HD MA
Subtitles: English SDH

Buy it HERE from Diabolik

by "Doc" Hunter Bush, Staff Writer and Podcast Director

The Movie: Good

Most, if not all of writer / director Russ Meyer's films come with some kind of a necessary caveat for anyone who may not be super familiar with him; the usual polite heads-up about the kinds of subject matter Meyer dealt with and the ways in which he did so--UP! features sexual assault, and a violent, bloody finale, but is otherwise, tonally a cartoonish farce--but even with that said, this is a deeply w-i-l-d film.

UP! opens with a consensual bi-sexual romp with "Adolph Schwartz" (obviously Hitler, played by Edward Schaaf) before he is non-consensually murdered by an unknown assailant. But the movie isn't really about that. It's mostly about Sweet Little Alice (Janet Wood), her beau Paul (Robert McLane), and the busty newcomer (no pun intended) in town, Margo Winchester (Raven De La Croix). And then every so often, we are treated to a framing device wherein a nude Kitten Natividad acts as the film's Greek chorus, spouting verbose monologues chock full of literary references (and written by Meyer's pal Roger Ebert), gently reminding us of the plot's trajectory.

Meyer's Vixens trilogy (released by Severin and covered previously by me) runs the gamut from straight ahead sex romp (Vixen) to violent cartoon (SuperVixens) to prototype porno-parody (Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens), all between the years 1968 & 1979. UP! kind of hits all three in just about 80 minutes. It is, at times, enough to make one's head spin.

Tonal whiplash aside, I really enjoyed UP!. Meyer intended it to be something couples could enjoy together--the radio spot included in the special features even ends with a voice proclaiming "It's something for the ladies, too. You bet!"--so he filled it with everything he could possible squeeze into one film (and, honestly, more): attractive people, cartoonish acting, the aforementioned murder plot, Alice's small-town business drama, the Greek chorus segments, an ax-vs-chainsaw finale, and of course lots of sex and Meyer's goofy sense of humor. Example: At one point, local cop Homer (Monty Bane) and his sex partner at the moment, Limehouse (Su Ling), both get electrocuted because she grabs an empty bulb socket mid-coitus. It's a lot, but it has a breathless enthusiasm that's kind of infectious.

The Packaging: Average

This is par for the course with Severin's blu-ray packaging. The film's poster is framed by the Bosomania design Meyer came up with. Not much to write home about, but faithfully reproducing the original poster means we get some fun details like how the M and W in the "Starring Margo Winchester" (which is the character's name, btw) legend on the poster have been altered to resemble nude breasts, complete with nipples. Russ Meyer was, if nothing else, extremely on-brand.

The Video: Good

The video quality overall is quite good. The colors are extremely well-balanced and bright without frying your retinas or outshining the natural splendor of the many outdoor segments. In contrast to MotorPsycho!, Russ Meyer is utilizing a lot of wide landscape shots to showcase the beauty of his frequently nude actors in the beauty of nature. According to the interview with Raven De La Croix, Meyer would scream from his vantage point in the woods about the light beginning to wane, and that mental image just really tickles me.

Now, I should mention that there is one segment that, for whatever reason, lacks the polish of all the others. For about one minute, when Alice & Paul go to the woods for some nookie, the footage is just not as cleaned up, adjusted, or stabilized as everything before and after. It's also a little blue-tinted for whatever reason. Again, this only lasts about a minute, then goes back to the high quality of the rest of the flick.

The Audio: Average

For the most part, this sounds quite good, but as with that video hiccup I mentioned above, there were two instances (each just a few seconds) where the sound became oddly muffled. I have no idea why and there didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to when it was happening. As with the video, other than those two brief moments, everything sounded great. There's a sequence for instance, between Homer and the Chesty Young Thing (Marianne Marks) in the backseat of his cruiser where in addition to the action, and the score, there’s also a radio in the front seat picking up passing truckers' conversations and while, sonically, that seems like it could be a mess, it was actually very well balanced.

The Special Features: Average

The special features on this disc are on the slim side, especially compared to the Vixens trilogy Severin releases, but they're still enjoyable. Film historian Elizabeth Purchell, who also offers her thoughts in a commentary track on Severin's MotorPsycho! disc, is very knowledgeable about Meyer's career and has a very engaging, conversational manner that really drew me in. The Raven De La Croix interview was very informative, and I loved the aforementioned radio spot, which mimics the scene with the CB radio mentioned above, with all the relevant trucker's slang. It's very cute.

• Audio commentary with film historian Elizabeth Purchell
• No Fairy Tale... This! -- interview with actress Raven De La Croix
• Radio spot

In Summary: Grab it on sale

Russ Meyer can be a bit of a tough pill to swallow for some; I get it. He plays fast and loose with the exploitation genre conventions of the day while simultaneously being somewhat constrained by them, and if you're not familiar with those tropes, it can be somewhat bewildering. I for one, never expected a cheesecake-y romp in a small logging town to open with the sodomy and then murder of one of history's greatest monsters, but now that I've had the opportunity to reckon with it a bit, I'm very glad it exists!

A brief aside: For more Nazi-smashing film fun, allow me to recommend Ryan Silberstein's Shadow Gallery column, also on MovieJawn.

Beyond the novelty shock factor, Russ Meyer was an auteur. Severin has partnered with The Museum of Modern Art for some of these releases, and for good reason. Meyer captured moments of the culture; brief flashes of the zeitgeist, frequently while fighting against a rising tide of conservatism and censorship in the arts. He did so largely on his own, relying on the support of his casts and crews (two groups that frequently overlapped for Meyer). If anyone earned the right to make their crazy, horny, cartoonish "couples film", it's him.

MOTORPSYCHO! (Severin Films)

MotorPsycho!
Severin Films

The Stats
Video: 1080p High Definition
Audio:  English SDH
Subtitles: English CC

Buy it HERE from Diabolik

by "Doc" Hunter Bush, Staff Writer and Podcast Director

The Movie: Good 

Severin Films continue their exploration of Sexploitation maestro Russ Meyer's back catalogue with MotorPsycho! (1965), the film immediately preceding what is perhaps his most legacy-codifying film, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965). Preying on the fears of the day, Meyer, along with a cadre of collaborators, crafted a story of youth run amok.

Full Disclosure, for those unfamiliar with Meyer's work: MotorPsycho! features repeated instances of sexual assault. None of it is very graphic, but it is a focal plot point.

Three motorbike-riding beatniks led by the psychotic Brahmin (Steve Oliver) roll into town on an unmotivated pilgrimage of violence, leaving shattered lives in their wake! Now only veterinarian Cory (Alex Rocco), and the widowed Ruby (Haji) can team up to stop them! That may sound action-packed, but in fact, MotorPsycho! is a thin film, narratively. The three beatniks roll into a scene already in progress, commit at least one act of violence, and move on. Rinse and repeat. There is almost nothing by way of rhyme or reason, no outright motivation aside from some implied mental illness for Brahmin. The quest to avenge Cory's wife and Ruby's husband, respectively, which form's the film's core is likewise, very low-stakes: they give pursuit over the course of two days as the beatniks thin their own numbers until they end up in a stand-off in a quarry with Brahmin alone.

But the appeal of MotorPsycho! isn't in any narrative ingenuity. It was never made to surprise, only to shock, as was the style at the time. These kinds of films, and the cycle exploitation subgenre in a larger sense, are built for cheap titillation, maybe some salacious thrills, and ultimately an ending that lets you breathe a little easier. On that metric, MotorPsycho! is highly successful. It also holds an important place in the oeuvre of Russ Meyer--whose Severin film releases I have previously covered not once, not twice, but thrice--as the film that allegedly lit an important lightbulb in his mind: apocryphally, after completing MotorPsycho!, Meyer said "Let's do it again, but with broads." and Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! was born (and released in the same year!)

What MotorPsycho! lacks in surprises, it makes up for with perfectly calibrated genre titillation and small-scale bombast. A scene where Cory is bitten by a rattlesnake climaxes (pun intended) with him screaming at Ruby to "Suck it!" (the poison, out of his leg) and her spitting a mouthful of blood, which moves immediately on to the beatniks in the desert via a match cut of Brahmin spitting out a mouthful of canteen water. MotorPsycho! may not be Russ Meyer at his peak, but it shows him figuring out in real time how to get there.

The Packaging: Average

Severin's Russ Meyer collection might lack extras like cardboard sleeves or what-have-you, but they all utilize the same "Bosomania" design: a red frame with black and green text around the film's poster, a design Meyer came up with when he was still kicking. This has the benefit of the whole collection having a cohesive visual language and looking nice if they're all placed together on a shelf, which is something I understand the appeal of even though it isn't as make-or-break for me as it is for others.

The Video: Average

The previous Meyer films I've covered were in full color, and produced a bit further into Meyer's stylistic flow state, so there was a little more to discuss. Having said that, this restoration was overseen by The Museum of Modern Art and lacks for very little despite being in black and white and not having much flashy (for Meyer) camera tricks like Dutch angles and the like.

Sincerely, I couldn't believe the clarity, detail and depth of color present here. Though rendered entirely in black and white, you can feel the grit of the dirt in tires, and see the pale grey mountains in the distance fade in clouds of dust. Even the deepest shadows avoided the pure black of unrestored black & white film. This is the kind of finished product that reminds you that "black & white" doesn't mean "colorless".

The Audio: Average

The beatniks travel around with their own diegetic theme music, a bouncy guitar piece reminiscent of surf rock, and even in the scenes where that is playing alongside dialogue and the roar of their bikes, I never noticed any issues with the sound quality with regards to either mix or balance. Obviously something recorded on sixty year-old tech will sound like it, but there were no egregious moments for me, and the additional music, all orchestrated, sounds full and as lush as you could hope.

The Special Features: Good

These are decent special features overall. The interviews with Haji and Alex Rocco were very informative and honest, as was the commentary track. But the real treat here is the trailer. I. Love. This. Trailer. It's incredibly verbose and hyperbolic, and never lets up, even showing the film's (pun intended) explosive climax, but hidden behind the film's logo. It's genius! I've found myself growling "mmmMOTORpsychOooo!" and quoting "MotorPsychos on their murder-cycles!" in the same fashion as said in the trailer, at home, watching my roommate's cats chase each other around. It's infectious. I would upload the whole thing, all 3 minutes and 32 seconds of it, to this review just so everyone could get to experience it, but I'm pretty sure that is verboten.

• Audio commentary with film historian Elizabeth Purchell and filmmaker Zach Clark
• Desert Rats on Hondas -- Interview with actors Haji and Alex Rocco
• Trailer

In Summary: Grab it on sale

Of all the Russ Meyer films I've seen, this is the most traditional for the era, the least unique. Though it's still a solidly-built piece of a lost genre: the motorcycle film. This is the subgenre that would eventually (just four years hence) give us Easy Rider (1969), even though that film was about grander things than MotorPsycho! and many of their brethren. Think of Easy Rider as the "elevated genre film" of its day. But film history isn't a highlight reel.

It's important that so-called "lesser films" see release as often as the big, notable ones. To quote Maya Angelou. "You can't know where you are going until you know where you have been." Yes, like Easy Rider, this quote is about grander and frankly more important things, but it's no less true when applied here. Seeing the early works of an influential filmmaker is important because it shows that we all have to start somewhere. No auteurs emerge fully formed from nothing. That's an important thing to remember.

BENEATH THE VALLEY OF THE ULTRA-VIXENS (Severin)

Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens
Directed by Russ Meyer
Written by Roger Ebert, Russ Meyer
Starring Kitten Natividad, Ken Kerr, Ann Marie, Stuart Lancaster, June Mack
Running time 1 hour and 33 minutes
Rated X

Available on 4K Blu-ray now from Severin Films

by "Doc" Hunter Bush, Staff Writer and Podcast Director

Synopsis:

The final feature produced, photographed, edited, and directed by Russ Meyer is a wicked take on Our Town, co-written by Meyer and Pulitzer Prize winner Roger Ebert (Beyond the Valley of the Dolls). Russ' latter-day muse Francesca 'Kitten' Natividad stars-- along with Uschi Digard, Ann Marie, June Mack, Candy Samples, and Russ himself-- in this unwashed look at Small Town U.S.A., complete with faith healers, war criminals, bosom buddies, and the loin-girding quest for sexual salvation. Because the original elements for Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens had been stored in less-than-optimal conditions, Severin Films devoted months to the painstaking restorations of its weather-damaged negatives before scanning it in 4K and compiling over 2 hours of new and archival Special Features, all with the blessing and cooperation of The Russ Meyer Trust.

What Features Make it Special:

• Archival Audio Commentary with co-writer/producer/cinematographer/editor/director Russ Meyer
• The Latin Brünhilde - interview with actress Kitten Natividad
• Talk It Over - Ellen Adelstein interviews Russ Meyer for her Tuscon talk show in 1979
• Still Talking It Over - new interview with Ellen Adelstein
• Trailer

Why You Need to Add it to Your Media Library:

There are a lot of reasons to own Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens, just as a film. It's director Russ Meyer's last narrative feature before his de facto retirement. It's his last collaboration with Roger Ebert (who not only wrote this film, but also Up! (1976) and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) for Meyer). It's the final installment of the loosely-defined Vixens trilogy. But more than any of that, it's arguably the best one. If you've read my Disc Dispatches on previous installments Vixen (1968) and SuperVixens (1975), you may be expecting a bit of a heads up here, but there isn't much of one. Aside from some of the tropes common to sexploitation from this era (nonconsent, age-play, etc.) this is pretty easy-breezy.

The humor in this one works the best overall (it's a parody of Our Town!), the performances are right in the sweet-spot vis-à-vis cheesiness, and the sexiness is the right tone for the most part. It's well-shot, never slows down and has a running gag-- The Man From Small Town U.S.A. played by Stuart Lancaster, who just pops up and narrates. It's also the most playful, ending with a fourth wall breaking cameo from Meyer himself who, semi-heartbreakingly, announces that he intends to return with another installment that never materialized: Jaws of the Vixens!

Finally, once again, the special features assembled by the Severin team and The Russ Meyer Trust are really enlightening. I'm a sucker for basic cable interview shows, and for preserving otherwise potentially lost media, so the Talk It Over segment from Tucson in 1979 (as well as other archival interviews included on some previous discs) are fascinating to me in their own right. And as with the other Vixens trilogy releases from Severin, this one looks and sounds fantastic. Film history should be preserved, even-- or maybe especially-- when it makes us uncomfortable, and I honestly feel very blessed to live in an era when so much of it is being made available.

Long Live the Movies!

Available on 4K Blu-ray now from Severin Films

SUPERVIXENS (Severin)

SuperVixens
Directed and Written by Russ Meyer
Starring Shari Eubank, Charles Pitt, Charles Napier, Uschi Digard, John Lazar, Haji
Running time 1 hour and 46 minutes
Unrated

Available on 4K Blu-ray now from Severin Films

by "Doc" Hunter Bush, Staff Writer and Podcast Director

Synopsis:

Following the 'serious' features The Seven Minutes and Black Snake, this 1975 return to form written, photographed, edited, produced, and directed by Russ Meyer remains perhaps his most over-the-top and savagely entertaining epic of all: when a hot-blooded wife (Shari Eubank) and a psychotic cop (a startling performance from Charles Napier of The Blues Brothers fame) come together, it will ignite a cross-country odyssey of violence, vengeance, and relentless coitus. John Lazar (Beyond the Valley of the Dolls), Uschi Digard (Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens) and Haji (Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!) co-star in Russ' "super-sexy live-action Road Runner cartoon" (Empire), now restored by Severin Films in conjunction with The Russ Meyer Trust and scanned in 4K from the original negative stored at The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

What Features Make it Special:

• Archival Audio Commentary with writer/cinematographer/producer/director Russ Meyer
• Russ Meyer Versus the Porn-Busters - Mike Carroll interview with Russ Meyer
• The Return of Harry Sledge - interview with Charles Napier
• The Incredibly Strange Film Show season 1, episode 5: Russ Meyer
• Trailer
• TV spot

Why You Need to Add it to Your Media Library:

As the second installment in director Russ Meyer's loosely-defined Vixens trilogy, SuperVixens is maybe as odd a duck as the first but in a completely different way. The original Vixen (1968) dealt with race issues in a gleefully confrontational, shocking, and immature-seeming way. SuperVixens abandons race as a flashpoint to focus on violence, and that violence oscillates from incredibly brutal to openly Looney Tunes. All of which I mention as preamble so that you know what you're getting into.

Now, as to why you should own it: It's pretty great. Everything in the film that ISN'T the cheesecake makes for a pretty damn engaging, if admittedly bizarre, thriller about an obsessed cop (the great Charles Napier, who got his start in films from Russ Meyer) determined to destroy the life of a man he just doesn't like (Charles Pitt). Now, in the context of this as a softcore film, that violence is jaw-droppingly savage. Harry (Napier) beats Clint's (Pitt) wife do death in the bath, framing Clint for the murder, then tracks him across the country to try and do it again when Clint finally settles down with his new dream-woman (Shari Eubank, who also plays the wife in the beginning).

The cheesecake, for what it's worth, is also great. Everybody's attractive, the humor in the middle section works just fine, and the acting is charmingly heightened. As always, Meyer's direction is honestly really great. If you enjoy the kind of Dutch-angle, stylization-heavy shots of a director like Sam Raimi, they're present here, as is Meyer's tendency towards bright colors with dramatic lighting, and an appreciation for the beauty of nature.

The special features were also really fascinating. I was only really familiar with Russ Meyer by reputation-- I know OF some of his more famous works (Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls) but have never seen them. I knew of him mostly as the punchline from an episode of Seinfeld (s.4 e.23 "The Pilot"). But after listening to these commentaries, and watching the interviews with both Meyer and Napier, I started to not only get a better idea of Meyer as a creator, but as a person. He opted to essentially retire in '78 rather than make hardcore pornography, which held no real interest to him as a filmmaker. For someone painted by censorship groups as a smut-peddler, there's a real honor and respectability to the man.

Available on 4K Blu-ray now from Severin Films

VIXEN (Severin)

Vixen
Directed by Russ Meyer
Written by Robert Rudelson, Russ Meyer, Anthony-James Ryan
Starring Erica Gavin, Garth Pillsbury, Jon Evans, Harrison Page, Vincene Wallace, Robert Aiken
Running time 1 hour and 10 minutes
Rated X

Available on 4K Blu-ray now from Severin Films

by "Doc" Hunter Bush, Staff Writer and Podcast Director

Synopsis:

Amid the cultural chaos of 1968 and armed with a budget of only $70,000, producer/director/cinematographer Russ Meyer transcended sexploitation by crafting this "bosomacious melodrama" (Time Magazine) about racism, communism, bush pilots, draft dodgers, and one ferociously free-spirited wife named Vixen (the incredible Erica Gavin of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and Caged Heat). Despite attempts at censorship that include one of the first-ever X ratings and 23 separate U.S. prosecutions for obscenity, it became one of the year's top-grossing movies, forever transformed independent films and remains the creative template for Meyer's unapologetic vision of American cinema. Vixen is now scanned in 4K from the original negative restored by The Museum of Modern Art with over 3 hours of new and archival Special Features curated by Severin Films in conjunction with The Russ Meyer Trust.

What Features Make it Special:

• 1981 Censor Prologue (theatrical re-release)
• Archival Audio Commentary with co-writer/producer/cinematographer/co-editor/director Russ Meyer
• Audio Commentary with actress Erica Gavin
• Woman... or Animal?-- Interviews with actors Erica Gavin and Harrison Page
• David Del Valle's The Sinister Image with Russ Meyer and Yvette Vickers
• Entertainment... of Obscenity?-- Marc Edward Heuck oh the film's historic Cincinnati Censorship Battles
• Trailer

Why You Need to Add it to Your Media Library:

First, a heads-up: On its face, Vixen is a pretty by-the-books soft core film. Canadian bush pilot Tom (Garth Pillsbury) has a very promiscuous wife, Vixen (Erica Gavin) who sleeps with just about anybody who stays at their little B&B, which the connubially faithful, and willingly oblivious Tom is fine with. Where the heads-up comes in is that the titular sexpot hotwife is incredibly racist towards the only other member of her brother Judd (Jon Evans)'s two-man biker gang, Niles (Harrison Page). Ultimately, after tackling subjects such as the American politics of the era, draft-dodging, and Communism, Vixen learns to see Niles beyond just his race. BUT. Getting there is kind of rough at times and that tone does clash with the cheesecake-iness of the rest of the film.

With that out of the way: There are a lot of good reasons to buy this release. Buy it as an example of a dying art-form-- the kind of sleaze that Russ Meyer made was sociologically provocative but also chaste; his unwillingness to make XXX films lead to him mostly retiring in 1979 after censorship groups targeted his films to make an example of them. It would have been easier and more profitable for Meyer to make the switch to hardcore porn, but he just had no interest.

Buy it as a piece of film history-- Meyer received one of the only X ratings of the era, largely as a punishment. Thin the narrative arc of Vixen may be, but it is present. There is a story there aside from just the sleaze and all of it-- the sex and the subject matter are both designed to get a rise out of the audience in much the way as the films of John Waters (who is an equally outspoken fan of Meyer's work and critic of pearl-clutching censorship).

Buy it as a piece of art-- The restoration itself is absolutely gorgeous! I could NOT believe how good it looked. The film's grain is preserved, giving it the necessary tactile quality, but the lighting and colors are incredibly beautifully balanced. From a filmmaking perspective, Meyer is actually a really fun director with an eye for imagery, color, and dramatic lighting. Heck, the Museum of Modern Art assisted with this restoration! Who am I, or you then, to argue its artistic value?

Available on 4K Blu-ray now from Severin Films