Original subtitles

Buenos dias. I am your Greek chorus, your cacophony of carnality, the

of... Okay, I'm not.

Hi, my name is Elizabeth Purcell. I'm a film historian, film programmer, and

filmmaker. And I am quite excited to have this opportunity to get to talk

a film that has, frankly, fascinated me for many, many years now.

And that is Russ Meyer's 1976 film, Russ Meyer's Up.

Russ Meyer is someone who has been a huge influence on me and my own tastes

interests. He is someone who I first heard about as a precocious kid, pre

in the early years of the Internet.

So it was a long time before I was ever able to actually see any of his films.

I eventually figured out a way to use Netflix's DVD -by -mail service, pre

-streaming, this is pre -YouTube, pre -any of that.

to get a copy of Beyond the Volley of the Dolls when I was in early high

and frankly, I was changed for life.

It would be a long time before I'd be able to see any of these other films

because they were out of kind of wide distribution, but that one film alone

kind of, I don't know, it really did just change me.

He's someone who I think is, you know, not only one of the great sexploitation

filmmakers, or not even one of the great sex film directors, I think he's one of

the great filmmakers.

Period. That said, I think Up is kind of underrated.

Even Meyer, in the end, was kind of mixed on it.

When he was asked by Ed Lowry and Louis Black in a 1980 interview with Film

Comment magazine whether or not he was pleased with how the film turned out, he

said, quote, No, not particularly.

At the time I was fairly pleased, but I see a lot of reasons why it was not as

successful as Supervixens.

I'm not sure if that's really a fair comparison to make, given the fact that

Supervixens, at the time of that interview, was one of the top 100

-grossing films of all time, and was a film that had so much momentum behind

and was one that was heavily touted as being, you know, the return of Russ

Meyer, whereas this was just the new Russ Meyer movie.

That said, I do think that the mixed reputation that Up has had for decades

in large part because of the way that it's always been seen, as an open mat

transfer taken from a video master made in the 1980s.

You know, Russ Meyer was someone who very famously spared no expense when it

came to his own video releases.

At a time in the 80s when most studios were just going to interpositives or

up release prints, to do their telecines.

Russ Meyer went all the way back to the original camera negatives. He did shot

-for -shot, scene -for -scene color grading. He used the best quality blank

tape. You know, he was someone who charged a premium price for his films,

also treated them like, you know, the highest of the high class.

At the same time, though, you're only watching these on very small televisions

and not theatrically, not in the right aspect ratio, so the framing is a little

off. Seeing the film presented theatrically, even as a very beat -up,

grindhouse sort of print that was very faded, gave me a new appreciation and

understanding of the film.

There's a big difference, I think, between watching a film like this by

at home on a TV and...

being surrounded by about a hundred other people who are all, you know,

laughing their asses off and having a great time, and just seeing it blown up

big. This is, I think, one of Russ Meyer's most beautifully shot and

edited films, especially his use of wide landscapes throughout, like in that

title sequence we saw a couple of minutes ago.

There's this way that he's shooting these scenes in these extreme long

placing bodies amongst the huge expanses of the forests of northern california

where he shot this film you know in some ways it's kind of more of a landscape

movie than any of his other films um it's funny there was that uh anthology

archives retrospective back in 2014 which was called i believe russ meyer

glanscape artist uh this is probably the cliff as he came to making a glanscape

film

But he's also using frames within frames, like the large windows of

cabin later on in the film, or the sunroof of Homer's car.

And there's some really truly incredible shots throughout here, like that POV

shot of Homer's cock, of Mary and Mark's character, the chesty young thing,

unzipping his zipper.

Ruckmeyer is also someone who is always utilizing cutaways, but the way that he

is literally carving up bodies and focusing on things like...

individual breasts or Kit Natividad's pubic area or Raven Delacroix's rose

tattoo are really, really fascinating, especially when combined with the

breakneck rhythm that the editing establishes.

It's almost a sort of free associative sort of thing.

And I love the almost pop art shots of the head's person licking a nipple or

eating a banana or like pulling a ruler out of her mouth.

Amongst the many reviews of this film that I've read over the years, there's

this one bit from the Oregonians review that I just kind of want to read because

I think it sums everything up.

Quote, If anything, Up is overplotted. If anyone else had made it, it would

been five hours long with two intermissions.

Ross zips through it so rapidly that he has time for relatively extraneous

lyrical sex interludes, some lasting perhaps as long as 45 seconds.

For what it's worth, I did some messing around with the film in DaVinci Resolve

and found out this film actually has roughly about 2 ,000 cuts in a little

80 minutes.

So about 25 cuts per minute.

Compare that to, say, the 700 in Motor Psycho, which is a film that was made

about a decade before this one.

Also, to me, this film is just kind of the ultimate expression of the sort of

comic book aesthetic that Russ Meyer was going through in his later years.

He was always comparing his films to Al Cap's little Abner comics, and that's

something that's really underscored by the advertising materials for Up, none

which actually lists the names of any of the cast.

Instead, just say things like, quote, starring Margot Winchester with Adolf

Homer, Sweet Little Alice, and the Headsperson.

It's clear from going through lots of newspaper coverage and magazine coverage

of the film that a lot of people thought that Raven Delacroix's name was Margot

Winchester.

This kind of goes hand in hand with, I think, what is the film's most

controversial element, which is its use of sexualized violence.

It's a rough film.

But it's also a film that I think just cannot be taken seriously.

Especially when you see it properly presented, like in this new restoration.

You know, the details like, say, Leonard Box's comically huge cock during the

scene where he sexually assaults Margot Winchester are so absurd and so tongue

-in -cheek that you just can't take it seriously.

And I don't think any of the sexual violence in this film is eroticized.

You know, the rape scene in the stream that we're about to see is frankly

horrific. The scene later on in the film with Rafe in the cafe is also just so

cartoonish and over -the -top.

It's, you know, I don't think it's necessarily making light of rape, but at

same time it is just a comic book.

All this to say, I do think this is one of Ross Meyer's most underrated films,

and I think the one that is really ripe for rediscovery and reevaluation.

This commentary is not going to be scene specific.

If it was going to be scene specific, I would have to stop every 10 minutes to

recap what I've been talking about.

So instead, I kind of want to just tell the story of the film as best as I can

and, you know, make that be kind of a counterpoint to what's happening on

screen.

So I think in order to properly talk about Russ Myers Up, we do have to go

a bit, all the way back to the beginning of the 1970s.

Russ Meyer began that decade with one of his biggest personal and professional

successes, which was Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, which was his first film

for 20th Century Fox.

It's a film that didn't get great reviews, but did very well at the box

especially compared to Michael Sarnes' Meyer Breckenridge, which was Fox's

X -rated film from that year.

I think Beyond the Valley of the Dolls really is Russ Meyer's masterpiece. It's

the film that he, in interviews, was always saying that he was the proudest

When the BFI recently did their latest edition of their Sight and Sound

Films of All Time poll, I think I was one of the only people to include it on

their ballot, which I think says a lot. It's truly a masterpiece.

And if you're listening to this and you somehow haven't seen it, just go watch

Beyond the Bars at all.

That film led to a three -picture deal with the studio for what were to be

different adaptations.

The first was to be Peter George's 1966 crime novel, The Final Steal.

to be followed by Irving Wallace's 1969 novel The Seven Minutes, and then to be

finished with Edward Albee's 1962 play Everything in the Garden.

Meyer had wanted to follow Beyond the Valley of the Dolls up with the final

steal, but was instead pushed by the studio into doing The Seven Minutes

If you're not familiar with that film, it's...

Probably one of his most obscure. It is a courtroom drama about an obscenity

trial regarding a smutty paperback novel, which the studio had picked up as

of a deal for three of Irving Wallace's books.

It's a film that really doesn't make a whole lot of sense for him to do. I

it is literally a courtroom drama.

But it also kind of does, given his history of fighting obscenity trials,

especially his war against Charles Keating from Citizens for Decent

over Vixen.

Personally, I think The Seven Minutes is actually a very good film, but it's one

that has very, very little to no nudity.

It was a flop, and it spelled the end for Meyer's time at Fox.

He was then going to go to Warner Brothers to make an adaptation of the

novel Choice Cuts, which was much, much later adapted as the film Body Parts by

Eric Radd in 1991, but that deal wound up falling through.

Instead, Meyer returned to self -production, making an even bigger left

his next film, Black Snake, which is a racial slave drama about a revolt on the

fictional island of San Cristobal and was shot in Barbados.

This is a film that was entirely self -funded and self -distributed and

unsuccessful, despite the multiple titles and campaign that it was released

under the years.

It was initially released as Black Snake. The title is referring to a whip,

you know, something phallic. But because newspapers and exhibitors were worried

about that, it got re -released as Sweet Susie, and then later on at the end of

the 70s as both The Devil's Mistress, Duchess of Doom, and Russ Meyer's

The original Prince of Black Snake ended with a trailer for what was to be

Meyer's grand return to the sex film, which was Foxy or Viva Foxy, depending

where you read, which was to be a spiritual sequel to Vixens, starring his

-wife Edie Williams, and written by Roger Ebert.

In 1974, Roger Ebert wrote kind of a description of the film, saying that it

going to be, quote,

Sweet little Alice, I'm going to top you off right.

Like I said.

Needless to say, Foxy wasn't to be either. According to Meyer, this was

of the uncertainty over the Supreme Court's ruling in Miller v. California,

which gave local communities the authority to determine obscenity

meaning that a film that was safe and legal to show in San Francisco or New

City or more liberal areas.

could actually be prosecuted for obscenity, say, in the South or in

in Nashville.

At the same time, Meyer's marriage to Williams was quickly crumbling,

spilling into a messy divorce that would carry over into Up's press cycle.

All of this led to a lightbulb moment for Meyer, with him realizing that he'd

lost his way and he needed to get back to basics.

As he said in a 1974 interview with the Chicago Sun -Times, quote, I'm very

serious about what I do.

I got off on the wrong track in thinking I could do any other kind of film.

I'm back to doing what I do best, big bosoms and square jaws.

This is the first time I could find him using this phrase that he would begin to

recite over and over and over again for the rest of his life.

The result of this was one of his biggest successes, the aforementioned

Vixens, which is both a clearly very angry divorce movie, but also a warped

funhouse mirror greatest hits package.

See you in two weeks.

The hardcore era, of course, began in 1970 with films like Alex DiRenzi's

documentary, Pornography in Denmark, A New Approach, and Howard Ziem's Mona the

Virgin Nymph.

With, you know, quote -unquote, the real thing, now something that was being

shown openly in theaters and, for the most part, avoiding obscenity

prosecutions, why would you pay to see a softcore simulation?

Many of Meyer's contemporaries tried to hold out.

Some, like Joseph W. Sarno, kept a foot in both worlds, making incredible

hardcore films like Sleepyhead and Slippery When Wet, while also making

softcore melodramas like Abigail Leslie is Back in Town and Concessions of a

Young American Housewife, using his real name for the softcore films and a

succession of fake ones for the hardcore ones.

The only other softcore filmmaker who held out as long as Russ Meyer was

Metzger. who took his first cautious steps into integrating hardcore with his

1973 film Score, which was released under his own name, before making the

the following year with The Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann as Henry

Meyer and Metzger were the two biggest names in respectable sexploitation.

The two made very, very different kinds of films, but each had recognizable

styles and were seen as legitimate artists in a very disreputable genre.

The early 70s was also this brief era of the respectable X -rated films.

Movies like Just Shaken, Emmanuel, or Bernardo Budolucci's Last Tango in

Films that were either produced or distributed by major Hollywood studios

were explicitly about sex, but featured no explicit sexual content.

The success of these films proved to Meyer that he could still do what he did

and be successful, but he had to compensate for the lack of explicit sex

higher production values, ribald humor, and an emphasis on graphic violence.

As the poster for Up says, it's a, quote, class X, naturally.

He wouldn't show what he called the ultimate shot that the porno crowd

but by skirting this, this allowed his films to have an air of respectability

and to play in proper, classy movie theaters.

Not porno houses.

He would always say that his competition was Barbra Streisand and Robert

Redford, you know, not Harry Reams or John Holmes.

And with that, we finally get up...

to Up.

Russ Meyer's Up was made directly on the heels of the release of Supervixens.

That film had its very first screenings at colleges in February of 1975 before

going to general release in May.

Meyer went on a four -month promotional tour and then jumped directly into the

production on Up in August.

In one of his last press interviews for Supervixens, he described it as being,

quote, a rip -snorter, a crime satire with a female Dick Tracy who is on the

trail of an aging Adolf Hitler.

As far out a picture as I've done.

Oh, sure, there'll be more bosoms and square jaws.

It wouldn't be a Russ Meyer film without that.

If you look closely, you can actually see on that issue of the Zeit that Adolf

Schwartz is reading in his Bodicemer.

It's actually dated August 8th, 1975.

According to Meyer's memoir, A Clean Breast, The Life and Love of Russ Meyer,

the initial idea for the film was to be both a tribute and a vehicle for his

good friend, Henry Rolland.

and the character that he often played, Martin Bormann, head of the Nazi Party

Chancellery and private secretary to Adolf Hitler, who disappeared at the end

World War II and was once famously thought to be living somewhere in South

America.

Roland made his first appearance as Bormann in Beyond the Bios of Dolls as Z

-Man's butler before going on to own a gas station in Supervixens.

and be serviced by radio evangelist Euphala Roop, played by Anne -Marie, at

beginning of Beneath the Valley of the Ultra -Vixens.

According to the book, the conversation was something like this.

Quote, Why not put Marty in a more familiar environment?

Like, say, a Neuschwanstein Bavarian castle with a fresh rind wrinkle.

Like awarding the old boy some sort of love life.

Oh, I got it.

The trials and tribulations of a randy slash debauched Nazi queen.

Rowland, of course, declined the role, thus the chance to Adolf Schwartz, who

should be noted is actually the credited author of A Clean Breast, Adolf Albion

Schwartz, with Albion, of course, being Meyer's middle name.

Rowland did offer to dub the voice instead, and a combination of English

German dialogue was written by associate producer Uschi Dygard.

Finding an Adolf was harder than expected.

Meyer wound up running an ad in Daily Variety saying something to the effect

quote, Are you Adolf Hitler?

50 to 60 years of age?

German speaking?

Dot, dot, dot.

Comedic ability?

Question mark?

They wound up finding Ed Schaaf, a character actor who was supposedly at

time a part -time golf caddy.

For whatever reason, this is the only film that Meyer himself wrote that he

the pseudonym for, B.

Callum, which he says was a reference to the pseudonymous B. Traven, author of

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

A person named Buster Callum, a .k .a. Russ Meyer, actually appeared in some ad

mats for Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Vixens with a photo of Russ Meyer.

But more on that a little bit later.

So Meyer wrote the entire script himself.

Supervixens was the very first film that he wrote entirely by himself, and this

was his second.

The only exception is that Kit Natividad's narration as the Greek

written by his good friend Roger Ebert under the name Reinhold Tim.

And it's paraphrased from a whole big wide swath of literary sources from

Shakespeare's Macbeth, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's A Musician's Tale, Sir

Arthur Conan Doyle's Hound of the Baskervilles.

There's some of the poetry of Hilda Doolittle in there. You can spend hours

trying to pick apart the extremely purple prose of the Greek chorus.

And that opening sequence that we saw with Adolf Schwartz is where we get into

what really sets this film apart in Meyer's filmography, I think, which is

depictions of queer sexuality and its full frontal male nudity.

And those are both... I think, individually big, big things, so let's

those separately.

That opening sequence, which featured Paul topping Adolf and Gwendolyn topping

sweet little Alice, is basically the entire first reel of the film. It is a

quarter of the runtime.

That title card at the very beginning, No Fairy Tale, this, is actually meant

be a double entendre, though I think that's generally lost on people

You know, the film is not a fairy tale, despite it having a Bavarian castle

that's supposed to be situated somewhere in Northern California.

And it's also not a fairy tale, meaning it's not gay.

According to A Clean Brass, this was meant to serve as a means for Meyer to

assure his regular audience that he wasn't, quote -unquote, abandoning them.

And there's something that he really points out there in the memoir, which is

that the title card is lavender -colored.

Lavender is, of course, historically a code word for gayness.

and one that Miro himself would use in Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Vixens

with the gay dentist -slash -marriage counselor Asa Lavender, who, in keeping

with that film's gimmick of different colors of blood kind of depicting the

inner personality of all the different characters, bleeds lavender -colored

blood.

Also, according to the film's press book, the addition of the Gwendolyn and

Alice sex scene there was actually just in case people were turned off by the

gay sex.

To quote, To avoid the assumption, in some circles, that Russ Meyer has

slipped a cog, sweet little Alice and Gwendolyn are quickly displayed in a

spirited woodsy encounter.

The synopsis in that press book has truly some of the greatest lines I've

read. And I don't want to get too off track, but I do kind of have to read a

of these.

These incredible descriptions like, quote, overwrought, aching ass.

Grand Coulee's Louis Gate Orgasm.

36 positions plus four known only to the emperor.

And my favorite, which is kind of a long one, which is, quote, Just for the sake

of sex, Paul and Alice hide to river and stream, forest and glade for some

athletic conviviality. They don't disappoint, displaying a prowess seldom

There is no question with regard to Paul's ACDC nor Alice's ability to

and score in any sexual Olympic decathlon.

Russ Meyer actually did do an interview with the advocate for this film, and

it's maybe one of the most interesting of the many, many interviews of his that

I've run over the years.

The advocate is, of course, basically the gay paper of record. It is the gay

York Times. It was founded before the Stonewall riots, and they were never

really fans of Meyer's work. Just to kind of quote two headlines of reviews.

Beyond dolls, how to make worse out of bad, and actually one of my favorites,

seven minutes last two god -awful hours.

Meyer always projected himself in interviews as this red -blooded he -man,

here he's maybe a little bit more measured.

He says, quote, It would be pretty difficult for me to play a homosexual

between two men straight because I know nothing of it. I'm not at all oriented

in that area or in that direction.

If anything, I would lampoon it or make sport of it, even to the extent of

ridiculing it.

I'm being honest, straightforward.

I don't know anything about it. It doesn't appeal to me.

I'm not in opposition by any means.

If somebody wants to, it's their thing.

But as far as me trying to be one who can express whatever I do in a film, I

turned on in a film. I am turned on by what I do.

I have to be.

I can't say by any stretch of the imagination that two men making it would

me on.

If anything, I'd probably find it highly amusing, which does come through, I

think, in Up.

According to that same interview, Meyer mentioned receiving criticism from gay

critics while on the film's press tour, saying, quote,

It's funny. I think in a very unintentional kind of roundabout way,

does play into some of the tropes of queer filmmaking from the 70s.

The 1970s are, of course, the era of gay liberation.

This is in the wake of the Stonewall riots in 1969, kind of the dawning of a

consciousness, of gay activism, of queer people finally standing up and fighting

for their rights.

And also trying to...

put together and build images that could be disseminated across the world and to

create positive representation.

And one way you see this reflected in queer cinema from the 70s was this kind

association of queerness and queer sexuality as being natural and positive

good. There's a very important documentary from 1977 called Word Is

of Some of Our Lives.

And that film basically is just interviews with 26 gay men and lesbians

talking about, you know, their adolescence and their upbringing and

out and their relationships and their lives. And, you know, this is what it's

like to be gay and being gay is good and natural.

And the way that the filmmakers try to underscore this visually is by

interviewing some of these people out in nature.

In a lot of these films from this era, you see, you know, queer sexuality and

queerness being depicted in nature because queerness is...

natural.

One of the stars of this film, Robert McClain, who we'll be talking about in

just a little bit, who plays Paul, actually did star in one of the very

gay independent films, which was called A Very Natural Thing.

Unlike these critics from the time, I don't think Meyer is making some sort of

grand statement on how ugly gay sex is by having Adolf Schwartz being in this

dungeon.

I think it's just kind of commenting and parodying S &M culture, really.

You know, it's funny. I think the sexuality of the characters in this film

really fascinating, especially Paul.

He reminds me of a character that you'd see in a Joe Gage film.

Joe Gage, a .k .a. Tim Kincaid, one of the biggest and most influential gay

filmmakers of the 1970s and 80s.

The filmmaker who made this series of road movies.

that kind of created this archetype called the gauge man.

And gauge men were easygoing, they were blue -collar, they were people who could

make it with both men and women and didn't really care about labels.

In interviews and in the synopsis in the press book, Meyer always underlines

that Paul was supposed to be strictly bisexual and not gay.

Yet at the end it's revealed that Alice kills, or at least castrates Adolf,

because Paul can't get it up after their sessions.

All of the women in the film are functionally bisexual, though Margot

feigns interest in Alice at the end as a means of self -preservation.

Yet, apart from Paul and Adolf, none of the men are.

In the end, neither Adolf or Paul are positive, sympathetic representations of

queerness. Yet at the same time, none of the characters in this film are

sympathetic.

Especially all the men. The men are terrible in this movie. They're all

rapists or gay.

But going off of that, I think the other reason why this film is very notable in

Meyer's filmography is that it's his first to really feature full frontal

nudity. The notorious scene between Harry the Cop and Super Angel and Super

Vixens was the very first.

And Meyer claimed that his intention for doing this and making this movie in

general was to target the female audience.

And this was his way of doing so.

Meyer, in an interview with the Daily Trojan, said, quote, women are very much

into frontal male nudity.

It's been reflected in the reception magazines like Playgirl have received.

I know that I've always had girls that have been really well endowed in my

films, and that probably is a little tough for a lot of women to handle.

But now, with this new film with all the men with giant appendages, I've denied

the women long enough.

It's a strange strategy given how much sexual assault there is in this film,

I think it's a really fascinating evolution for Meyer, and one that's very

canny.

In the hardcore world, there was this concept of what was called couples

These were more melodramatic and romantic hardcore films with high

values that were made as a means of trying to learn couples and women, you

not just men.

These are movies that men could take their girlfriends to without having to

them along.

I think kind of the best example of this is Chuck Vincent's early 80s film In

Love, which kind of has to be seen to be believed. It's one of the most over

-the -top melodramatic.

hardcore romances I've ever seen.

At the time, I think Meyer's female audience by and large would have

been women who were going to see the films with their boyfriends or husbands,

but he wanted to make a movie that would be an easier sell for the men to get

them to come along with them.

Funnily enough, once Faster Pussycat Kill Kill had its revival in the 90s,

kind of shifted and that was the movie with the strong female audience.

Meyer was also always very, very cagey about the use of prosthetics in this

film. In the advocate interview, he says, quote, Leonard Box has got a huge

cock, and so does Bob McClain.

We put a big white dildo on the black chick with a Buck Rogers space belt that

she carried around in a violin case.

The giant wraith, we had like an 18 -inch member we put on him because he

300 pounds to begin with.

And in a clean breath, Meyer claims that McClain had a, quote, limber member big

as a fat baby's arm.

At the end of the film, Sweet Little Alice points out that it's supposedly 11

inches, but if you look at Robert McLean's two prior films, the 1970

sexploitation film Barbara and that aforementioned 1974 film A Very Natural

Thing, both feature very prominent full frontal male nudity, very easily

disproving that.

The prosthetics would make a reappearance of Beneath the Valley of

Vixens, but nowhere near to the extent as they are here.

Again, I think the video master that people have been watching for the past

years has really diminished the effectiveness of this new little

Or should I say, new big gimmick?

In that interview from The Advocate, Meyer talks about how proud he was of

specific moment in the film which you can't really see when you're watching

old master.

Quote, Leonard Box is about to pummel Margot Winchester's own with this giant

member. He turns to the right and then to the left and all the women go,

Ugh. Leonard Vox had a huge cock.

I had an aide on the set, feminine, who got him up at the right time so that

when he turned, it was weathervane -like.

See what I mean about him trying to downplay the use of prosthetics and

you know, saying that he had a fluffer on set? Which, again, this isn't a

hardcore film. There would be no need for actual erections or anything like

that. But he's trying to sell this idea and really, in this very canny way,

try to get both the gay and female audience out to see this film.

I think one of the other things that's interesting about this film is how it

both reflects and also kind of predates the whole CB radio craze that was

beginning to hit America at the time.

This was in part initiated by the novelty country song Convoy by C .W.

which was a fictional character created by Bill Freeze and Chip Davis.

which was released in November of 1975 and became a number one hit on both the

country and the pop charts.

Up was actually way ahead of the curve here. Again, the film was shot in August

of 1975, so it predates the actual song.

Charles Napier, one of Meyer's closest friends, who was the star -slash

of Super Vixens, had actually been a correspondent for the trucker magazine

Overdrive for years.

A lot of press says that he actually was a trucker, but according to him, he

just traveled the country doing stuff for the magazine. He wasn't actually

taking loads around the country.

Hollywood didn't really start cashing in on this little trend until 1977 with

the release of Jonathan Demme's Citizens Band, which starred Charles Napier,

Smoking the Bandit, Breaker Breaker, the hardcore film Breaker Beauties.

And then it really peaked in 1978 with the release of Sam Peckinpah's

of the song Convoy.

The only film to really predate Up was the Mitchell Brothers' hardcore quickie

CB Mamas, which was released in April of 1976, so about six months before Up.

But after, you know, Meyer had publicly made it known what the film was actually

going to be about, so maybe they're actually ripping him off.

Up would later be reissued with a new campaign in 1978 to play up this

association. The film was kind of sort of retitled Up Smokey, though if you

at the admin, it says Russ Myers Up starring Monty Bane as Smokey.

The Up and the Smokey are in the same font, right next to each other, so I

tell if the title was supposed to be Up Smokey or just Up starring Monty Bane as

Smokey.

Unlike Meyer's other later films, which take place in an almost fantasy version

of Small Town USA, the setting for Up is actually, for the most part, very

realistic and correct.

Well, minus the castle.

In an interview with the Boston Phoenix during the Super Vixens press tour,

Meyer said that his script always grew out of the locations that he chose to

center them around.

He said, quote, I'm going to try some more outrageous sex insofar as locations

are concerned.

I've never been in a raging waterfall.

Or in the back of a police car, you know.

Or a cop stops a gal right in the middle of town and she performs cunnilingus on

him while he's writing out her ticket.

Yeah, I don't know why he said cunnilingus on him.

There was a fic on that in the article.

So, of course, Adolf Schwartz's castle was not in California. It was actually

the Neuschwanstein Castle in the Bavarian Alps, which was built to be

Ludwig II of Bavaria's private home.

But he died before construction could finish, so it opened to the public in

1886. It was later used as the model for the Sleeping Beauty Castle at

Disneyland.

Homer Johnson, early on in the film when he's first introduced, says that he's

the only trooper, quote, from Garberville to Myers Flat.

And the film actually is set and shot literally between those two towns, in

Miranda, Phillipsville, and Salmon Creek.

Consider this a warning.

Let go, you greedy cunt!

This was the exact same area in Northern California, up by the Oregon border,

where Meyer had shot Vixen almost a decade earlier.

That film was largely shot inside of a farmhouse owned by Meyer's childhood

friend, Wilford Bud Hughes.

It's been said many times that the cabin that was used for Homer's house in Up

was that exact same farmhouse, but the two look very, very different to me.

I don't know if there was a renovation that happened, but Bud Hughes does get a

location manager credit for this film.

Around the same time that Up was being made, Vixen star Erica Gavin had begun

making negative statements about Meyer in the press, and I kind of wonder if

this deliberate return back to Miranda, California, to the scene, if you will,

was his way of processing or confronting that.

Around this time, Gavin did an interview with cult movies author Danny Perry for

Velvet Light Trap magazine, which was titled Erica Gavin from Vixen's

Vindication.

And in this interview, she said, quote, I really think, if he reads this, he's

going to freak, that the only reason that Vixen made it was because of me.

And, quote, Vixen is really a put -down of women.

It says that all women want is sex, that they're never satisfied, and that

they'll go anywhere to find it.

It shows that women have no loyalty, no sensitivity in sexual relationships.

Erica Gavin has recently said that she only made these comments because of the

feminist movement was making her feel guilty for her involvement in the film.

She and Meyer later buried the hatchet and reconnected and became friends

So, you know, it's... Strangely, he would just suddenly decide to come back

this one location to make a whole other film that is in some ways similar, but

also very, very different. I mean, the whole plot of Vixen hinges around the

fact that the film is supposed to be taking place in Canada, yet the whole

of Up is that it specifically is taking place in Miranda, California.

Speaking of, much of the locations were wrangled by Miranda's postmaster and so

-called unofficial mayor, Wilbur and Cluck, who got a supervising producer

credit.

Alice's Cafe in the film is now the Avenue Cafe. It's still open and it's

actually Bigfoot themed.

This whole sequence that we've been watching for the past couple of minutes

Homer's encounter with the chesty young thing outside of this filling station as

Paul watches from the cafe.

is maybe actually one of my favorites in the entire film, because I think it is

such a showcase for Meyer's expert use of these real -life locations.

Unlike Super Vixens, which was largely shot in the desert of Arizona, or

the Valley of the Ultra Vixens, which was largely shot inside of his house,

is a film that is all about kind of the real world.

You know, there was that quote, where he's talking about how the screenplays

kind of are generated by the locations.

And you can kind of imagine him going on a scouting trip to Miranda and seeing

this cafe and seeing the repair shop across the street and constructing it in

his mind how this is all going to play out.

One of the taglines for this movie when it was released was that it was Russ

Meyer's personal fantasies. And you can kind of get the idea that he's just

like... coming up with this as he's existing in these spaces.

None of these are on set. This is all real -world places.

It's so different for him during this era of his career.

Actually, if you rewind back to that extreme long shot that's at the

of the sequence and then open up Miranda, California in Google Maps, it

remarkably still similar to how it looks in the film.

I'll get to it more in just a second, but I kind of wonder if this whole film

was almost...

intended to be something of like a tourist ad for Miranda, California.

If you really listen to the dialogue, all the characters are naming locations.

There's a part later where Margot talks about wanting to go to Salmon Creek.

There's that line from Homer talking about Garberville and Myers Slatt. This

a film that is so specific to this one little geographic location. It's not in

this kind of nebulous fantasy world.

Alice's Cafe 2, which we see later in the film, was the Sawblade Tavern, the

exterior, and the interior was a barn somewhere else in the area.

Both of these cafes were located down the Avenue of the Giants, and outside

Sawblade was the Giant of the Avenue, which is an enormous chainsaw sculpture

the tavern's proprietor, Mel Byrd.

It was created in 1973, completely with a chainsaw from one redwood log, and the

sign on the base says, quote, A memorial to the loggers, woodsmen, and pioneers

who conquered this savage but peaceful land.

The Sawblade also had a logging museum for his private collection of, like,

ephemera and memorabilia.

The Sawblade Tavern closed a long time ago, but the building is still standing.

The giant disappeared at some point, but was replaced with a new statue pointing

at the abandoned building.

One wonders if the whole idea for the cafe becoming so successful that they

opened a second one was something that was inspired by the locations.

It's literally a five -minute drive from the Avenue Cafe to the Sawblade Tavern.

A lot of locals were used for these scenes as extras, and I came across some

anonymous comments and blog posts from regional blogs, and I just want to read

couple of these because I do think they're kind of funny.

Quote. After it was done, Russ gave the Phillipsville Fire Department the

premiere as a fundraiser.

It happened at the Garberville Theater, and I found myself behind several blue

-haired elderly women.

When the movie got going, I nearly died of embarrassment, and the rest of the

fire crew were shrinking in their seats.

Hard to do when you're Neil Logan, our chief at the time.

The amazing thing is that no one walked out, and Daryl Beasley howled with

laughter down the front while his sweet little wife, Ruth, cowered in horror.

When it was over, we counted our money.

rolled our eyes, and never talked about it again.

Someone else said, I supplied the colored lights for the film because we

only 115 -volt light bulbs in Garberville at the time.

They were in our big Christmas tree.

We took them out and loaned them to the movie company.

It was all great fun for Garberville until we got to see the movie.

Oopsie!

And it should be noted that the Phillipsville Fire Department was

next door to the Sawblade Tavern, so I'm assuming that's...

Some firefighters who were in that scene near the end of the film and the gang

rapes.

Other parts of the film were shot noon in Georgia.

I think this is probably where the Harry the Nimrod death of Adolf Schwartz

scene was shot.

In one interview, Meyer talked about how they had to go down to Georgia to find

that piranha that they used in the film.

He said, quote, We found one down at noon in Georgia.

We found some on the west coast earlier, but they weren't hungry.

We only got this one to eat by stratagem.

I don't know what's wrong with piranhas these days.

For what it's worth, I think this trip to Georgia is likely the inspiration for

the character names in Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens.

The names like Zebulon, Flavonia, Flovilla, these are actually the names

cities in Georgia.

Not bad.

As with Supervixens before it, Up is very heavily referential of Meyer's past

work. And of course there's a few direct lines of dialogue that get repeated in

this film.

Paul repeats Ashley St. Ives' line from Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, I'd like

to strap you on sometime, to Margot, which is something that she said that

used before.

And of course near the end of the film, sweet little Alice repeats Superwoman's

prepare to taste the black sperm of my vengeance line.

And of course... Vixen's wireframe bed also makes a brief appearance at the end

of the film.

But beyond all that, I think the film really does have a striking similarity

Meyer's earlier Cherry, Harry, and Raquel, which was his follow -up to

It's ostensibly a drama about marijuana smuggling in a border town, but it's

actually mostly about the bisexual girlfriend of a sheriff, Harry, who's

by Charles Napier, who is attracted to another woman, much to his disapproval.

The advertising for that film played up the bisexuality. The tagline was Cherry,

Harry, and Raquel, dot, dot, dot, menage a trois, exclamation point, despite

never actually featuring a menage a trois.

Up, to me, in some ways feels like an update of that film for the more

permissive 70s, with both Paul and sweet little Alice openly making it with

people of the same and other gender in a seemingly happy open relationship that

we find out at the end actually isn't so happy.

Cherry, Harry, and Raquel had a tortured production.

Linda Ashton, who played Harry's girlfriend Cherry, actually walked off

forcing Meyer to have to rewrite the film and then salvage it during post

-production.

His solution was to bring in Ushi Digard as a new character named Sol, who

appears in a series of non -sequitur inserts.

She does things like jumping up and down on a bed in the nude, or pouring milk

in her cleavage, or, you know, just... being a telephone operator on a railroad

track in the middle of the desert.

In a way, I think this kind of echoes and presages the addition of the Greek

chorus to Up.

Much like how Zygarde became one of Meyer's closest associates after

in that film, to the extent that she's actually credited as an associate

producer on this one, this film would also mark Meyer's introduction to Kitten

at TV Dad.

And that gets us to the cast of the film.

One other notable thing about this film is that, aside from some cameos from

friends and crew like Fred Owens, this is an entirely new cast for Meyer, which

is the first time he had done that in, you know, I think actually since

Black Snake.

In that interview with the Daily Trojan that I referenced earlier, he said,

quote, It's like being with another broad.

You need new people to work with all the time because you've explored every

crack and every crevice of a woman's body with the camera.

There's no reason I should use that same woman again.

I don't want to sound corny, but it's a little like a love affair with the

camera. You discover, intrude, expose, unwrap, and investigate.

If you're turned on yourself, then it's going to affect a pretty large mass of

your audience.

Unlike supervixens or ultra -vixens, The cast of this film isn't largely drawn

from the sex film world or from Meyer's own stock company.

While no one here broke out and became a named star, most did go on to have

careers in the genre and TV film world.

And most have, well, at least at the time that I'm recording this, have never

publicly spoken about their work on the film. So let's run through some of the

cast to the best that I can.

We have Raven Delacroix as Margo Winchester, who was the eldest of eight

children and grew up in the Bronx.

She's someone who has a truly insane, incredible, unbelievable life story,

including breaking into a prison once to hook up with her biker lover.

She was discovered by talent scout Samantha Mansour, who was working for

Poi III from Vox while eating a spinach salad with a friend at Joe Allen's in

West Hollywood.

And at the time, she was a receptionist for Far Out Productions, which was home

to the band War.

If you go back to the scene in Adolph Schwartz's Botet Simmer, you will

see that close -up of the War album cover, which I think is a cheeky bit of

product placement.

Raven has said that Meyer told her that he had seen some 400 women for the part

and basically wanted her on the spot.

And he actually didn't ask her to strip nude before casting her.

Which in many ways I think is a good thing and shows Russ Meyer as, like, a

pretty decent person.

But at the same time was something that gave her kind of some worry because she

had that rose tattoo, which she got as a birthday gift for her second husband,

and was worried that it was going to affect her participation in the film.

Instead, Meyer fell in love with it and wrote new dialogue and really, really

fixates on it really hard later on.

Raven later went on to have bit parts over the next couple of years, but

focused on her touring burlesque show.

Her next major film role was in Jim Wynorski's The Lost Empire in 1984,

she was the associate producer, costume designer, animal handler, and did her

own stunts for.

I talked about him a little bit before, but you also have Robert McClane as

Paul, who for me is perhaps the most notable actor in this film.

He was someone who came up in the off -off -Broadway theater scene in New

He had a very prominent nude role starring as The Creature in Andy

1972 play Cocteau, which did receive coverage in After Dark magazine.

A few years earlier, he made his film debut in Walter Burns' 1970 truly

underground sexploitation film Barbara, which was an adaptation of a notorious

and frankly really, really gross novel by Frank Newman that was published by

Grove Press.

Barbara is a film that was lost for decades. It was barely released. It was

released really on the cusp of kind of the beginning of hardcore, and by the

time it came out in the, I believe, fall of 1970, there was just truly no market

for it, and no one wanted it.

And it's funny.

You know, thinking about it now, I think it does have a lot of similarities to

Up, especially its depictions of sex.

Barbara is a film that features basically every conceivable kind of sex.

straight sex, gay sex, lesbian sex.

There's a scene where a guy gets fucked by a dog.

There's... Truly, truly deranged stuff in that. And it's the same kind of

strange mechanical sexual gymnastics that you see all throughout this film.

Barbara was lost for decades. It never had a home video release. It was barely

released to begin with until Vinegar Syndrome found it and restored it and re

-released it in 2023.

So now you can now see Barbara and I think it's worth checking out.

The year after Barbara was released, Robert McClane would make an appearance

adult film Legends of Vincent's homoerotic road trip movie Blue Summer,

few years later start opposite one of the leads of that movie in Christopher

Pariseau Larkin's A Very Natural Thing.

Again, this is a landmark film that has sadly largely been forgotten.

It is one of the very first gay independent films. It was nationally

through New Line Cinema.

It is a film that I think has not gotten a fair shake, much like Rothmeier's Up.

And I think it's a film that really holds up well.

He'd moved to L .A. in 1975 to pursue acting full -time and actually did do an

interview with The Advocate, I believe one issue before they ran that Ross

interview. And he said, quote, Since it's risky to play a homosexual, people

suggested that my first film, after A Very Natural Thing, should be of a

heterosexual. So the next picture I do, it turns out to be a Ross Meyer film.

How heterosexual can you get?

Russ is now a cult figure.

They have Meyer retrospectives at Harvard and Yale.

Working with him was the best work experience I've ever had in my life

he has the relaxation of a man who has made many films.

He has a real consideration for actors.

He understands them.

And in talking about that opening scene with Adolf Schwartz, he said, quote, I

was very concerned about the other actors' skin.

His film acting career sadly flatlined after Up, so he moved to Vermont to get

degree in psychiatric social work at Goddard College before moving back in

where he began working in different roles at a number of organizations.

He was a marriage and family counselor at a hospital.

He worked at a substance abuse facility.

He finally became a staff worker at the AIDS Project of Los Angeles.

During this time, he also became heavily involved in the city's queer theater

scene, forming a queer theater workshop in 1982 for, quote, fun.

profit, self -exploration, meeting people at an affordable price.

That same year, he premiered Mask and On My Way to Where I Am, which was an

autobiographical play in which he plays an older version of himself watching an

actor playing him at 21.

In 1985, he started a volunteer program to drive HIV and AIDS patients to

appointments and errands and participated in the landmark Gay Men's

at UCLA.

He presented a paper entitled The Artist in HIV Infection at the International

AIDS Conference in Amsterdam in 1991, before sadly passing away the following

year.

We then have Kit Natividad as the Greek chorus.

She was born in Mexico, the eldest of nine children.

Her family moved to Texas when she was 10, later moved to Los Angeles and had a

spate of jobs, including as a house cleaner for Stella Stevens, before

a go -go dancer.

She was extremely successful at this, eventually winning the Miss Nude

pageant in 1974.

And here's how she met Meyer, in her own words, from her great burlesque

exposition bio, quote, I had a girlfriend named Sherry Eubanks, a star

Russ Meyer's greatest hits, Super Vixens.

Sherry and I worked at the Classic Cat on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, and

told Russ that because of my big tits, I would be a great Russ Meyer girl.

As it happened, he was looking for a girl to narrate his new film Up.

When we met at the club, I found him quite attractive and turned on the charm

full tilt, landing me the part.

Though Russ Meyer films are typically tangled in story, Up was perhaps his

weirdest film.

I'll skip over the plot, which had something to do with Hitler's daughter

sadomasochism. The film starts with me perched in a tree, nude.

A dubbed voice announces me as the film's guide, the incarnation of the

cutting back to me every 10 minutes, often with close -ups on my breasts and

other parts of my anatomy so I could explain what was going on.

Russ was very tough on me, and after the endless takes, I was exhausted and

sometimes in tears.

But when I realized that his perfectionism brought out qualities I

had, I learned to trust his directions.

Released in October 1976, Up was not as successful as Super Vixens.

Six months into filming, I left George and moved in with Russ, embarking on an

affair that lasted 12 years.

As I said earlier, the Greek chorus was something that was not in the film's

original screenplay.

Meyer didn't have the idea until he was already editing the film.

Kitten would eventually go on to become the star of Beneath the Valley of the

Ultra Vixens, playing the double role of Livonia Shed and her alter ego, Lola

Langusta.

While she was dubbed in the film, though Meyer in the press kind of denied this,

she did take lessons to remove her accent for Ultra Vixens, and then said

it never came back.

Then we have Monty Bane as Homer Johnson, who would go on to become a

prolific character actor, often playing cops, most notably in Nick Garris'

Sleepwalkers, in which he gets stabbed to death with an ear of corn, and Janet

Wood as sweet little Alice, who has also had a long career in film and TV, most

notably making appearances in films like Fangs, a .k .a. Holy Wednesday, and The

Centerfold Girls before this film, and then appearing in the lost queer film

Mafia on the Bounty after.

He only has one scene in the film, but I think he's also someone who's kind of

fascinating to me, and that's Larry Dean, who plays Leonard Fox, who was

Texas, grew up in Idaho, sang gospel before switching to country and moving

Los Angeles, where he founded his band, Larry Dean and the Shooters.

Though accredited anywhere in the film or in the press materials, the two

original songs featured throughout the film are actually by him, and these are,

as far as I can remember, the only two original songs in any of the later Meyer

films.

Unfortunately, the film had no mention anywhere on his now -defunct website,

apparently he was kind of shocked when he saw the final product.

He later moved to Nashville and became a staff songwriter for a country music

publishing company and actually began recording in the late 1980s,

songs to Deep Impact, Blue Desert, and Drowning Mona.

The only other major character is Bob Schott, who plays Rafe, who is having

his...

centerpiece scene here, who's also a very prolific character actor, mostly in

action films, appearing in Gymkhana, Force 5, and Serio 8's Santiago's Future

Hunters.

Though they get very, very little screen time and only at the beginning of the

film, the three other people that we see in Adolf Schwartz's dungeon, the

Ethiopian chef, Limehouse, and the headsperson, are also, I think, very

fascinating.

As the Ethiopian chef, we have Elaine Collins, a .k .a. Georgia Jackson, who

only appeared in a handful of films. I would say Deep Jaws is probably the

closest thing to Up, but was a very prolific cheesecake model.

She did at least one photo set with Candy Samples, who appears in this film

the head person under the name Mary Gavin, a name that she'd been using on

off for some time.

As kind of a side note, Russ Meyer made a cameo appearance in Bob Finn's 1984

film All the Way In.

which was a candy samples vehicle that was widely billed as being her very

hardcore film.

This would probably be the closest that Russ Meyer ever actually got to being

involved in hardcore.

In kind of a perverse twist, that same year also saw the release of a hardcore

film called Lady Lust, which was a vehicle for Russ Meyer's ex -wife and

the Violets of Dolls and Seven Minutes star Edie Williams.

It was very widely advertised as being her first hardcore film, but she doesn't

actually have sex in it.

And then the third person from this trio is Sue Lane, who plays Limehouse, who,

much like Elaine Collins, was a very popular still model.

She did do a bunch of interviews for porno magazines, but the interviews are

over -the -top and kind of insane that it's hard to tell if they're actually

real or if they're just kind of the so -called redeeming social value.

In her own words, she says that she's, quote, A mysterious oriental woman who

lives on a crocodile -infested island and makes love on clean beaches and

waters.

So, let's dive into the actual release of the film.

Up was originally set for release in late spring 1976, according to the back

a press book put together for a re -release of many of Meyer's older films.

This was part of what he called his modular mix -and -match principle.

which meant that he was offering films like Super Vixens, Vixen, Cherry, Harry,

and Raquel, and Finders, Keepers, Lovers, Weepers, renamed FKLW, as

interchangeable options for double bills.

As a bit of a side note, I will say that I think part of Meyer's genius is his

canny understanding of marketing and film exploitation.

He was willing to go as far as completely retitling his films to build

campaigns around them.

I don't think people realize that Mudhoney was originally released as Rope

Flesh, or Common Law Cabin was originally released as How Much Loving

Normal Couple Need?

And then, of course, there's the never -ending saga of Black Snake becoming

Sweet Susie, becoming Rossmeyer's slaves, becoming the Devil's Mistress,

of Doom.

And that Duchess of Doom campaign is actually really funny.

taking a photo of Ushi Daigard, originally meant for that Cherry Harry

Raquel reissue, and superimposing a skull on top of her face.

She has nothing to do with the movie, but her image is being used to promote

The back of that press book that announces the spring 1976 release of Up

gives a little bit of a hint that I love, which says, quote, dot, dot, dot,

this time Ol' Russ has got something big for the ladies, too, with three

exclamation points.

While most film press books were three to four pages, the one for Up was a full

11 pages.

It includes a frankly insane amount of different ad maps with no fewer than 10

different taglines. So I'm just going to go ahead and read them out.

If you don't see Up, you'll feel down.

There's always something big about a Russ Meyer movie.

Assault with a deadly bosom.

Two -timers, cop, joints, and wild, wild women.

It's a cop movie.

It's a honey bucket of sex.

Laugh your cheeks off, and then the less risque, laugh your buns off.

It's a sex whack from Hollywood and your old bosom buddy.

And Homer, just don't lift anything heavy.

The ad math also included a smattering of pull quotes, including one that

garnered some press attention, which was, quote, Meyer's first bang -up

Martin Borman, Divite.

There was actually an item in Variety about this, because this ad ran in the

York Times for one day before being pulled, but continued running in the

News and Post for however many weeks that the film was in release.

As I mentioned way back at the beginning of this commentary, one of the ad mats

for Beneath the Valley at the Ultra Vixens features a photo of Meyer as

Callum, the writer of Russ Meyer's op, with a pull quote.

The press book for Up also includes little cut -out ranger hats that could

placed over the penis shape in the film's logo if the local newspaper

And looking through many, many ads for this film in newspapers, it seems that a

lot of them actually did.

Meyer had actually previously done this for Supervixens and would go on to do so

with Ultravixens.

As with Supervixens, Meyer had a unique way of releasing the film.

He self -distributed through his company, Signal 166, which was named

army company.

But rather than go direct to exhibitors, he sub -licensed the film to various

regional distributors, while also touring the country and doing press.

He pre -booked about $400 ,000 in guarantees from theaters before the film

ever actually released, but spent $52 ,000 on pre -opening and opening week

advertising in New York alone.

He and Raven embarked on a three -month tour of 35 cities around the country,

with Raven specifically there to speak to women's groups and go on TV and radio

shows to defend the film from feminists.

This tour began in Houston and Dallas, where the film opened on October 8,

and continued to Chicago, Washington, D .C., Philadelphia, and New York, where

the film opened in six theaters on October 27.

At the time, Maryland was the only state in the country that has an active film

censorship board, and the film was banned.

I can't find any record of it ever playing there theatrically, and Ultra

didn't come there until 1982, so a full three years after its initial release.

Funnily enough, Super Vixens, which I think in many ways is kind of a rougher

movie than Up, did not get banned, did not have any cuts, was totally fine.

This film got pretty mixed reviews as you would probably expect for a film

this. A lot of the criticism had to do with the violence, not even the sexual

violence, but the actual violence in the scene that we're watching right now.

One thing that Russ Meyer always liked to bring up in interviews around this

time was Judas Christ from New York Magazine's response to the film, and I'm

just going to go ahead and read this real quick.

Quote, Judas Christ ran out of the screening room, screaming her head off

showing of Up, and you know what?

That was great because I really touched her.

grabbed her, and I think she behaved in a very unprofessional way.

She's supposed to be an objective film critic, but the point is, I impressed

her.

Meyer, from that 1980 film comment interview with Ed Lowry and Louis Black,

said, quote, I found that in the picture up, there was a lot of objection to the

violence. I always felt that they would take it in the manner that I presented

it, that if a man got a double -bitted axe buried in his chest, he could still

wrench it out, run 100 yards, and kill a giant with a chainsaw.

But they just took it very seriously.

So what I've done is to kind of ape the violence that I've had before and it

seems to get a good reaction.

Again, I can understand the uncomfortableness of the sexual violence

film, but I don't understand the objection to the gore.

It's so cartoonish. It's so silly.

It feels like something out of an actual cartoon strip.

I think the way that I described this film to someone fairly recently was that

it's kind of like a Tijuana Bible version of a little Abner comic.

And I think that fits this theme that we're watching right here, which is what

all the controversy was surrounding.

Wraith almost kind of resembles that famous pornographic cartoon from the

Ever Ready, Hard On, and Buried Treasure.

It's so goofy, it's so silly, and it's, I think, very playful.

And, you know, it's...

Unfortunate, because I think Supervixens is the movie that has the most

uncomfortable violence in the entire Russ Meyer oeuvre.

That film has this very, very lengthy sequence in which Charles Napier's

character Harry, who is this sexually impotent evil cop, basically, you know,

physically and sexually assaults the main character played by Sherry Eubanks

over the course of like 10 to 15 minutes. And it's just...

brutal violence it's so so nasty and so mean spirited and again

i think he's doing that on purpose you're supposed to feel uncomfortable

it the violence in this film to me is playful it's silly the sexual violence

uncomfortable but it's also not being eroticized much like the violence in

vixen isn't really being eroticized

Up was released as Super Up and The Delirious Erotic Adventures of Special

Margot in Italy, where it was initially refused certification.

It was also released as Megavixens in Germany and France, and was actually a

huge box office hit in Germany.

Go figure.

Kind of makes sense, I guess.

As the film was rolling out... Russ Meyer and Roger Ebert continued working

the sequel to Beyond the Valley of the Dolls that they've been wanting to make

for years.

The script that they'd written went through a whole series of titles,

Son of Beyond, Beyond Beyond, Escape from the Beyond, and my favorite, Russ

Meyer's Beyond Taste.

According to a 1974 piece by Roger Ebert, quote, Its characters will

dimly disguised versions of famous millionaires and pop singers, as well as

Adolf Hitler and a certain Dr.

Pretorius, who has a scheme for assuring eternal life through regular injections

of liquid from the pituitary glands of female beavers.

They shopped it around at 20th Century Fox and AIP, but neither wanted to be

involved, and it wound up being too expensive for Meyer to do himself.

By the beginning of the following year, Meyer was already on to his next film.

The first draft of what would become Beneath the Valley of the Ultra -Vixens

dated January 1977 and is credited to Holly Martins, which was Roger Ebert

taking the name of Joseph Cotton's character from The Third Man, and Meyer

Callum.

That script had revisions through June 20, 1977, and it was... To the best of

knowledge, first publicized in that February 1977 advocate interview that

been quoting from throughout this commentary, where it was revealed to be

Beyond the Valley of the Vixen.

Meyer described it as, quote, Everybody

has their chance of straightening him out until finally, at the end,

after he overcomes the powerful Gus, the truck driver who's been satisfying his

wife, He straightens himself out and can screw in the conventional way.

I think it's a good idea. I get a little religion in there. You know, evangelist

saving souls.

I have Junkyard Sal.

I have an Edgar Buchanan type who's a dentist and a marriage counselor.

It's southern, really deep south.

Ultra Vixens wouldn't be released until the beginning of 1979 because something

else came up first.

Myers' long -awaited return to 20th Century Fox with what was to be the Sex

Pistols movie.

titled at different times as Anarchy in the UK or Who Killed Bambi?

The film was kind of the brainchild of Malcolm McLaren, who was famously the

mastermind of the Sex Pistols, or at least that's what he wanted you to

Russ Meyer actually was not his first choice for a filmmaker.

He initially approached Peter Cook, one half of the comedy duo Derek and Clive

with Dudley Moore, who then passed it on to Don Boyd, director of East of

Elephant Rock, who then wound up passing when Malcolm McLaren wouldn't give him

complete creative control.

McLaren then approached Ken Loach and Stephen Frears.

They both passed on it, and eventually they struck on the idea of bringing in

Russ Meyer, because the band were fans of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, and

because McLaren had some connections at Fox.

In a way, the film was to be something of a gender -swapped version of Beyond

the Valley of the Dolls. One character was to be an aging rock star named MJ,

clearly a play on Mick Jagger, who rides around the countryside killing deer and

dumping them on people's doorsteps.

shocking and traumatizing and young girl.

At the end of the film, she would shoot and kill Johnny Rotten, dressed as MJ

during a Sex Pistols concert, taking revenge for killing Bambi.

Essentially, Russ Meyer was using the Sex Pistols to make a Russ Meyer movie,

and Malcolm McLaren was using Russ Meyer to make a Sex Pistols movie, and the

two visions never completely messed together.

Roger Ebert twisted...

mclaren's original concept in the movie and pumped up the sex and violence in a

really really extreme way which scared mclaren especially as he was trying to

get the band signed and get their album released both in the u .s and the uk the

production was a nightmare i can't really get into it in the last 10

this film but things were so far along that the cast had been hired the sets

been built the shooting schedule was locked

And Meyer and the crew went up to Wales for three days of shooting, which

included the titular death of Bambi.

And this footage led to something of a war of the words between Meyer and the

director of the film that would eventually come out, the great rock and

swindle, Julian Temple, that played out in the pages of Variety.

Temple's film had nothing in common with Who Killed Bambi, but there is one

very, very Russ Meyer element in it.

An appearance by Martin Borman himself.

not played by Henry Rolland, but by James Jeter, during the sequence in

Pistols guitarist Steve Jones goes to Brazil to visit notorious great train

robbery fugitive Ronnie Biggs.

Martin Borman is actually depicted as playing bass during the musical sequence

for the song No One is Innocent, a punk prayer by Ronnie Biggs.

Roger Ebert both posted a very detailed account of the making of the film and a

draft of the screenplay on his blog about...

decade or 15 years ago, and it's highly, highly, highly recommended reading.

It's very, very entertaining, and it's a really interesting what -if.

With that project in ruins, Meyer then returned to Beneath the Valley of the

Ultra -Vixens, and to me, in a way, that film feels like something of a retreat.

You know, it's back to the deserts of small -town America of super -vixens,

with the anal obsession of Up.

but in a very strictly heterosexual context.

The major difference between that film and Up is the complete absence of hard

violence, something that Meyer took to heart after all the criticisms that he

received for Supervixens and Up.

In the press, he said that he loved violence, but he was too greedy, so he

going to do it strictly for commercial reasons.

The initial press ad for the film from Variety states, Warning, this film does

not portray eye gougings, chainsaw massacres, beatings, axing, knifings,

shootings, stomping, nor any other type of nasty, unsavory violence, but rather

blithesomely protuberant, beautiful women and block -headed, muscular men.

Together, performing incredible, laugh -provoking, tasteful, inventive, gravity

-defying, mind -boggling, sinew -rending variations on the best and only game in

any town. And it's funnier than Little Abner, Flash Gordon, and The Peanuts.

together. Period.

Ladies, bring your husband.

Men, bring your wife. Or someone with a sense of humor.

And that wound up being Meyer's final film until the release of Pandora Peak

2000, just a few years before his death.

As with Black Snake and Foxy before it, Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Vixens

ends with a teaser for a film called The Jaws of Vixen, which eventually morphed

into his 12 -plus hour Brust of Rossmeyer, which he at one time

press as being an exploration of the, quote, incongruity of juxtaposing

and sex.

By the time he eventually abandoned the project in the 90s, It had

grown to be some 20 to 30 plus hours long, in a way becoming the exploitation

version of experimental filmmaker Gregory J. Markopoulos' Inianos, which

80 hour long recontextualized re -edit of that filmmaker's entire filmography.

Along the way, Meyer had so many other projects that were announced but never

happened. The Jaws of Vixen turned into The Jaws of Lorna, which turned into...

Blixen, Vixen, and Harry, which turned into the Bra of God, which turned into

all these other things.

And while I, as a fan, wish that all these projects did happen, that Who

Bambi was made, that the Jaws of Vixen and the Jaws of Lorna and Blitzen,

and Harry, and especially the Breast of Brassmire, you know, came to completion

and were released, there is something so satisfying and so perfect

about the arc.

of Meyer's career.

You know, after a film like Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Vixens, where

exactly do you go?

As we get to the last couple of minutes of the film, I guess just to wrap up, I

do think it is a shame that this film has been overshadowed by Super Vixens

Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Vixens over the years.

I can see why people find this film more appealing, but to me, this is the most

visually and narratively distinct of the three.

It is just bursting with so many ideas, and it's so beautifully shot in a way

that his other films aren't.

I think Super Vixens and Ultra Vixens are both very similar stylistically and

aesthetically, but this one, it's completely different than any of his

films. Even Vixen, which of course it kind of echoes in sharing the same

locations, is mostly a film that's shot inside, whereas this film is almost

entirely outdoors.

I was kind of joking earlier about the film being kind of a tourist commercial

for Miranda, California, but I think there is maybe a little bit of truth to

that. It is almost Edenic, especially compared to the courtrooms,

the slave plantations in the desert that fill his other films from the 1970s.

It's also a film that reflects the time in which it was made in a way that none

of his other films from this period do.

As I've said throughout the commentary, I think one of Meyer's greatest talents

was his shrewd sense of marketing and exploitation.

Like, say, not including any graphic violence and ultra -vixens as a response

this film.

And I'm sure that these elements that I find fascinating, like the seedy radio

fad, or the queer element, or the full -frontal male nudity...

or even Gwendolyn's love of quote -unquote marital aids and the SM gear

the headsperson were inserted into the narrative strictly for maximizing

commercial appeal, they give it a really incredible historical value.

This is one of the very few sexploitation films of any era to so

integrate the entire spectrum of sexuality.

Gay sex.

lesbian sex, straight sex, and I think for Russ Meyer to do that was remarkably

brave. And I do think that the negative reaction that the film often gets is

because it doesn't gel with his largely very heterosexual target demo.

Though of course he's always had a big gay fan base, including filmmaker John

Waters.

As I said at the top two, I think one thing that really makes this film stand

out is that it is his tightest film since Cherry, Harry, and Raquel.

At 80 minutes, it just flies by.

In one later interview about The Breath of Russ Meyer, he describes his cutting

for that film as being so rapid -fire that it'll either, to paraphrase, give

a hard -on or give you nightmares.

And I think in a way that also applies to this film.

As someone who has some experience with physical film editing, I can't even

begin to imagine how long it must have taken to edit something like this.

Especially in the second epilogue that we're going to be seeing in about a

minute or two, which is probably one of the more frenzied montages of his entire

filmography, and which I think I should note, according to his memoir, A Clean

Breath, does feature Kit Natividad actually having an on -screen orgasm.

courtesy of Ken Care, his assistant on this film, who would go on to become the

star of Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Vixens.

So this is the closest Meyer probably ever got to actual hardcore, even if you

don't actually see anything.

The plot of Up is supremely strange, but that's what I find so appealing about

it. Unlike Super and Ultra Vixens, which are very vignette -driven and kind of

aimless, The way that this is so tightly wound together is kind of hypnotizing,

and the numerous sex scenes, probably the most of any of Meyer's films, are so

beautifully shot that I think it's actually secretly his sweetest film.

Which is maybe something that's a little weird to say about a movie that

features axings, chainsaw attacks, and two sexual assault scenes.

It's really exciting to me that this film is now going to be seen in a more

proper way for the first time in 40 years.

I do think there's something really special about it, and I'm curious to see

or how it will be re -evaluated after all of these years.

I think that kind of wraps it all up for me.

I'm Elizabeth Purcell.

film historian, programmer, and filmmaker, and I hope you found this

track to be informative and entertaining.

Also, just so you know, I've been sitting naked high atop a tree this

time.

Schmuck! I gave you orders never to play that record again!

Jawohl, Martin.