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