Top Ten Three Girl Movies

 (I'm also including ones with four girls)

1) Three on a Match

2) How to Marry a Millionaire

3) Where the Boys Are

4) The Student Nurses

5) Summer School Teachers

6) Valley of the Dolls

7) Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

8) Hollywood Boulevard

9) Night Call Nurses

10) 9 to Five

The A to Z of Russ Meyer

Originally published for Filmink

Russ Meyer is the most cult-iest of cult movie directors.  Films like Faster Pussycat Kill Kill (1965), Vixen (1968) and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) still pack out revival houses. HIs work continues to inspire critical analysis and attract new fans. Artwork from his movie remains in high demand for posters and T shirts.

Here’s an A to Z about the famous auteur.

A is for Alzheimer’s Disease, which afflicted Meyer during the last years of his life prior to his death in 2004, and is a downer of a way to start this article but you can’t ignore it happened. Meyer had an incredible life – lots of sex, fame, money, laughs and a job he loved, even some critical respect. He died a wealthy man with a devoted fan base – there was no Ed Wood/DW Griffith style languishing in obscurity and poverty for old Russ. That doesn’t guarantee you’ll go out well, though, and it didn’t for Meyer, whose health declined in the mid 1990s and developed into full blown Alzheimer’s. (Mental illness ran in the family – his mother and sister wound up in psychiatric hospitals.)

B is for blaxploitation, in part out of defiance because I’m expected to write “breasts” which really are the defining feature of Meyer’s oeuvre. Meyer did want to try other sorts of films in his career – hence in 1973’s Black Snake he tried a period blaxploitation film about a slave uprising at a plantation in the colonial West Indies. The film failed – I think mostly because it had a white hero and not a black one, but Meyer thought it was due to a lack of on-screen sex and because his female lead (future London aristocrat Anouska Hempel, who reportedly tried to block the film being seen in the UK in later years) didn’t have big breasts. You can’t escape them when talking about Meyer.

C is for Charles Napier, a big strapping actor familiar from countless films and TV shows (notably Rambo First Blood Part II), who pops up in a number of Meyer movies. A couple of male actors in Meyer films went on to do other things (Napier, Motorpsycho’s Alex Rocco and Common Law Cabin’s Ken Swofford) but none of the women. It’s remarkable because many of the women in Meyer films were fabulous, eg Dolly Read, Raven De La Croix, Shari Eubank. The two who should have been stars were Erica Gavin, who gave a performance of remarkable erotic ferocity in Vixen, and especially Tura Satana from Faster Pussycat Kill Kill, who should have starred in a whole bunch of Pam Grier-style action vehicles but kind of drifted off the scene.

D is for dentist, Russ Meyer’s – who loaned his office to Meyer in the late 50s for a weekend so the filmmaker could shoot the nudie comedy film The Immortal Mr Teas (1959). The film – Meyer’s first feature (he had mostly been a photographer until then) – was raw and plotless (it contains no dialogue) but was well-shot, good-natured and featured lots of nudity, and became a box office sensation, sparking a slew of imitations, including some from Meyer himself (Eve and the Handyman (1961) and Wild Naked Gals of the West (1962)) before the bottom inevitably dropped out of the market. In Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Vixens (1979), Meyer had a dentist character, a flamboyantly gay male who tries to rape the male hero, so maybe he cooled on the profession in later years.

E is for Eve Meyer, Meyer’s second wife, associate producer, lead model, star of his second film Eve and the Handyman and overall muse. The two drifted apart personally and professionally by the early ‘70s and, like many an auteur director, Meyer was never as good once he broke up with his wife (eg George Lucas, Peter Bogdanovich). She died in a plane crash on the Canary Islands in 1977.

F is for feminism, something Meyer is occasionally accused of, mostly due to having three strong female leads in Faster Pussycat Kill Kill and making a film about female sexual desire, Vixen. But try arguing that feminism after watching Charles Napier beat, strangle, stomp and electrocute Shari Eubank to a lingering death in Supervixens (1975); or Lorna Maitland learning to love sex by being raped in Lorna (1964) and then being murdered for liking sex; or have Alex Rocco in Motorpsycho (1965) ignore looking after his recently raped wife so he can go looking for revenge and flirt with Haji; or all of the comic rape in Up! (1976) and Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Vixens. One thing is certain though – Meyer’s films with female protagonists (Faster Pussycat, Vixen, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Mondo Topless) are a hell of a lot more entertaining and hold up much better than those where the action is driven by the men (Blacksnake, Supervixens, Finders Keepers Lovers Weepers). He never seemed to learn that lesson though and kept drifting back to stories with male protagonists.

G is for GI, which Meyer was during World War Two, working as a combat cameraman. He loved the experience so much he never wanted a grown-up job, hence going into nude photography and filmmaking. Meyer never lost a “GI” vibe to his filmmaking either – he mostly shot in a rough and ready style, with small crews, filming in isolated locations and Meyer very much the leader of his “platoon”… and the tone of many of his films (large breasts, square jaws, broad comedy, violence) often seemed aimed at GIs. In some movies you can practically hear a redneck private from Missouri watching it going “haw haw haw”.

H is for homophobia, something Meyer is accused of, mostly because (spoilers) all the LGBTI characters in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls get murdered but also because of the gay caricatures in The Seven Minutes (1971), Up! (1976) and Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens, and Haji being a tragic doomed lesbian in Faster Pussycat. However, Meyer always depicts lesbian lovemaking as a positive, enjoyable thing (especially in Vixen) – indeed the climax of Cherry Harry and Raquel (1970) features two women happily going at it intercut with scenes of two men pointlessly shooting each other to death, making a surprisingly affecting point about sex being more worthwhile than violence. I am aware this doesn’t clear him of homophobia and he films everything very much through a straight male gaze (or leer), but he at least had queer characters in several of his movies when that wasn’t super common – half the male characters in Up!, for instance, are bisexual.

I is for impotence, a recurring theme in Meyer films, which frequently feature men who can’t get it up as a plot point. The subject is treated mostly comically, such as Stuart Lancaster’s impotence in Good Morning and Goodbye leading to his wife (Alaina Capri) sleeping around, or Ken Kerr in Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens only being able to get it up for anal sex causing his wife (Kitten Natividad) to sleep around. Meyer occasionally tackles the subject more seriously, as in Supervixens where impotence drives Charlies Napier to murder a taunting Shari Eubanks. Meyer did like to reuse many story ideas and themes but after watching a bunch of his movies back to back, impotence did seem to be on his mind an awful lot #justsaying.

J is for Jimmy McDonough, a writer whose biography of Meyer, Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: The Biography of Russ Meyer, King of the Sex Film, is required reading for anyone interested in the career of this unique filmmaker. There are plenty of book-long cinematic studies of Meyer – including Meyer’s own memoir, A Clean Breast – but McDonough’s book is the one that really goes behind the scenes. Meyer had a difficult upbringing (little money, no father) but a devoted mother (who married six times). Service in World War Two was the making of him as a man and a filmmaker. When he got out, he shot industrial films and worked as a photographer (he took stills of James Dean in Giant and did a lot of jobs for Playboy), before breaking out with The Immoral Mr Teas. He usually self-financed and had his fair share of failures at the box office (Wild Gals of the Naked West, Fanny Hill, Mudhoney, Faster Pussycat, The Seven Minutes, Blacksnake) but would always bounce back with a massive hit (Lorna, Motorpsycho, Vixen, Cherry Harry & Raquel, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Supervixen). He had plenty of feuds and friends and women, but in general had a grand life until the end.

K is for killer convicts. I’m drawing a long bow with this one but bear with me, it’s interesting… During his war service, Meyer heard a legend about a special squad of Allied soldiers recruited from among the inmates of military prison that was sent on a suicide mission against the Germans. He told this to E.M. Nathanson, who turned it into a novel, The Dirty Dozen, which became a famous film in 1967 – easily Meyer’s greatest contribution to cinema outside his own movies. (An aside: Meyer was obsessed with Nazis, who frequently turned up as characters in his films).

L is for Li’l Aber, a comic strip about hillbillies living in the impoverished mountain village of Dogpatch USA. This was a huge influence on Meyer’s filmmaking, with its use of broad stereotypes and tropes such as buxom women and klutzy guys. Most of his films, sexy or not, are big screen cartoons, and really should be viewed in that light.

M is for mother, Russ Meyer’s, perhaps the defining female in his life. Meyer adored his mother Lydia, who inspired his dreams and gave him support (i.e spoilt him rotten). Dad was barely around – make of that what you will, psychiatrists.

N is for names of cool bands, which Meyer movies seem to have inspired more than any other director – Mudhoney, Faster Pussycat, Motor Psycho.

O is for overseas, where Meyer never liked working. He had an unhappy experience doing Fanny Hill (1964) in West Germany, Black Snake in Barbados and Who Killed Bambi (see below) in Ireland. At heart he was a very American filmmaker – just a very specific type of America.

P is for penises, which appear in Meyer’s ‘70s films with surprising regularity for such a breast man. He’s got Charles Napier running full frontal in the desert in Cherry, Harry and Raquel and they keep popping up in Up! And Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens. Absolutely, they are outnumbered by breasts and (towards the end) vaginas but they’re in there.

Q is for questions, documentary style – asked of strippers in Mondo Topless, Meyer’s 1964 documentary about topless dancers. This intersperses a LOT of footage of topless dancing with surprisingly interesting first-person accounts of their work and life and makes one wish Meyer had made more documentaries in his career. For all his faults, he was an extremely gifted filmmaker with a flair for editing, pace and visual composition.

R is for Roger Ebert, a bespectacled film critic who is a bigger deal in the US than Australia because he was on TV for so long here. He became friends with Meyer after writing an appreciative article on the latter’s films, leading to Meyer hiring Ebert to write the fun, clever script for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Ebert stayed a critic for the rest of his life, but he occasionally took leave of absences to work with Meyer on the terrible scripts for Up! and Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens (both done under a pseudonym) as well as the abandoned Who Killed Bambi? A film was even going to be made of their relationship called Russ and Roger Go Beyond with Josh Gad playing Ebert and Will Ferrell as Meyer, but the studio decided not to proceed when the #MeToo movement hit and it was felt this mightn’t be the time for such a project set in the world of sexploitation.

S is for Sex Pistols, The who were going to make a film with Meyer in the late ‘70s (they were big Beyond the Valley of the Dolls fans!!). Sets were built, a cast assembled (Marianne Faithful was going to play Sid Vicious’ mother), Roger Ebert wrote a script, and filming started in Ireland… but a few days into shooting the money ran out and the plug was pulled. The project was re-fashioned as the Meyer-less Great Rock n Roll Swindle which features some of Meyer’s footage. Ebert’s original script is available online.

T is for Tobacco Road, a sweaty Southern melodrama, now forgotten but a big deal in Meyer’s day, inspiring countless imitations of melodramatic sagas about horny Southerners. The plays of Tennessee Williams fall into this category (albeit at the higher end) as do the films of Russ Meyer, particularly in the ‘60s – Lorna, Mudhoney, Common Law Cabin, Good Morning and Goodbye, Cherry, Harry & Raquel).

U is for Uschi Digard, a Swedish model and actor who appeared in a few Meyer films, most notably in Cherry, Harry and Raquel, where Meyer compensated for the fact that his female lead quit before all her scenes had been shot, by intercutting footage of Digard running around the desert naked to cover any plot holes. And you know something? It totally works.

V is for violence, something which featured in most of Meyer’s films even though he was better known for the sex. Sometimes the violence is extremely well done (eg Faster Pussycat), sometimes it’s extremely unpleasant (eg Supervixens), other times it overtakes the movie when you’d rather characters were having sex (eg Blacksnake, Finders Keepers Lovers Weeper are basically action movies).

W is for Williams, Edy, who Meyer met during Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and became his wife number three. He overlooked her for lead roles in The Seven Minutes (she played a support) and Blacksnake. Meyer was going to put her in a star vehicle, Foxy but it was never made. Are you surprised to hear the marriage didn’t last? You know something, Edy Williams should have played the lead in Blacksnake – it would have been more fun.

X is for X rating which Meyer alternatively battled and embraced throughout his career. Battles with censors cost him a lot of money but he made it back in the success he enjoyed.

Y is for Yvonne de Carlo, perhaps the best-known star to appear in a Meyer film – his 1971 stab at respectability, The Seven Minutes, which he made following the success of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. (Although 1930s star Miriam Hopkins was in 1964’s Fanny Hill.) I think I’m the only person in the world who likes The Seven Minutes – I find it an entertaining, fast paced courtroom drama which deals with interesting issues, which is well directed and acted. The public stayed away in droves and Meyer was spooked back into the exploitation field.

Z is for Zanuck, Richard F who brought Meyer to 20th Century Fox after the director had a huge success with Vixen, which was made for $90,000 and grossed over $9 million. The result, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, was such a hit that Fox signed Meyer to make three more films – The Seven Minutes, Everyone in the Garden (from a play by Edward Albee, which would have been awesome) and The Final Steal from a novel by Peter George. Dolls was also so controversial it helped Zanuck get the boot from Fox. Meyer only made one film in that three picture deal, The Seven Minutes, which flopped and never worked for a studio again. His last four features were financed independently.

Movie review - "Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Vixens" (1979) *

Russ Meyer's last feature and it was a hard slog to get through. It's comic sex antics in a small town - Meyer said it was his spoof of Our Town complete with a narrator (actually there's two - Meyer regular Stuart Lancaster, and a deejay played by Ann Marie.

It's a series of gags and sexual encounters, mostly revolving around an insatiable wife played by Kitten Natividad and her husband Lamar who only likes anal sex.

Natividad is like many Meyer heroines - busty, of course, and keen on sex, absolutely, but also with a girl next door niceness. She throws herself into the role and always seems to be having a good time and is the best thing about the movie about from the attractive girl who plays the dentist's nurse.

The film is pretty stupid. Roger Ebert co wrote it but there is none of the cleverness of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls - no plot, really, no interesting characters or dialogue. Meyer repeats himself - there's Martin Borrmann, Greek choruses. It's like an assembly of comedy sex scenes that an ex GI might find funny. When watching this I kept imagining rednecks chortling, going "haw haw haw".
 There are a lot of vagina insert shots and also a fair few penis inert shots. There's heaps of comic rape - I don't recall any movie that had more comic rape than this one. Natividad rapes her husband then he rapes her, then she rapes a guy who turns out to be 14. Lamar rapes the dentist's nurse and the gay dentist tries to rape him and June Mack (a hugely endowed older black woman) rapes Lamar.

There's lots of sex scenes but its all quick cuts and comically done. Like many Meyer scenes the one really consensual believable hot encounter is the lesbian one - between Natividad  and the dentist's assistant. But even that keeps being interrupted.

It was wearying.

Movie review - "Up!" (1976) **

No one's favourite Russ Meyer movie - few people seem to say much about it. I remember watching it at the cinema, and not having a good time. The tone feels slightly off - as if Meyer was trying to do something a little different but afraid to.

There are constant, constant insert shots which gets wearying - vagina, tongues, extreme close ups of arses. The sex seems to be in only a few positions and frequently in long shot - one partner stands up while other wraps legs around waist, from behind, in a creek, on rocks. There's also a bit more penis action if I'm not mistaken than other Meyer films - we see several dildos, glimpses of real ones, etc.

I didn't like this for the most part. I didn't find it funny when Raven de La Croix was raped several times and it was treated comically (one time she falls asleep and wakes up to find someone do it, another time its from a lumberjack - with Meyer making a cameo as someone cheering it on).

Then in the last 20 minutes the film clicks - it becomes this outrageous, genuinely fun cartoony comedy with people running around naked and backstories involving Eva Braun. You watch it and go "that's what the film should be like". Indeed, I went back and rewatched the first bit again to see if I could enjoy it all like that and... nope - couldn't do it.

Pleasing locations. Kitten Natividad is fun as the Greek chorus commenting on the action. Janet Wood is fantastic as Alice - really beautiful and buxom and sweet. So too is Raven as a perfect Meyer hero - I reckon they should have let the audience know earlier on that she was an undercover agent, he would have played with those tropes more.

I just hate all that rape. Critics who argue Meyer was feminist really need to see this rape-as-a-joke film.

Movie review - "Supervixens" (1975) *

After two flops Russ Meyer returned to more Vixen/Cherry Harry and Raquel territory with this sexy comedy action parody. For the most part this is carefree silly stuff, about a gas station attendant who is irresitible to all these well endowed women. I wondered if maybe Meyer was inspired by Alvin Purple though the actor cast, Charles Pitts, isn't as nerdy as Graeme Blundell.

There's plenty of treats for Meyer fans - the lead runs into some spectacular women, who are named after characters in other Meyer films with "super" in front of their title (eg SuperLorna, SuperCherry). Actors like Charles Napier, John Lazar and Stuart Lancaster return from earlier Meyer works, as well as the dude who played Vixen's husband - Lazar and Lancaster have cameos basically but Napier has a big role as the villain. There's someone playing Martin Borrmann again.

And there's some very attractive women on display. Shari Eubank is a fantastic Meyer heroine - she's got the chest, but can act pretty well (she has a double role and they are very distinct, not easy to do) and is very pretty and sweet. Uschi Digard is hilarious as a Swedish maid take off. The other girls are good.

I give the film one star for a hideous, revolting scene where Napier's character kills Eubanks' (well, one of her characters, she has a dual role). She taunts him for impotence, so he bashes her, drowns her in the bath, stomps on her - she's bleeding and lingers so he kills her off. It's a horrible, mean and awful scene. Meyer pushed the violence earlier but nothing like this. Eubanks plays a maneater but no one deserves that. I just hated it - and can't help wondering if Meyer was motivated in part by the disintegration of this marriage to Edy Williams.

Come to think of it there's a bit of anti female violence - Pitts punches Eubank and Lancaster thumps Digard.

The film also goes on too long - it's 100 minutes. You don't mind the long running time in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls because there's so much plot, but this is basically a scene of linear encounters - Pitts hooking up with various women.

The film was a hit but it's got a nasty soul. The best Meyer movies celebrated sex. This one celebrates violence.

Movie review - "Black Snake" (1973) **

Russ Meyer had his first real flop with The Seven Minutes - he went back to independent filmmaking and came up with his second real flop. I didn't really like it- too unpleasant - but there were many unpleasant films around this time that made money so maybe there's something in Meyer's claim this was a few years too late.

I think also the film had a structural problem - blaxploitation films normally had black stars, mostly male but also female. This one is about two white people really - the guy who arrives at the plantation looking for his brother, and the white girl who runs it. I think if Meyer had made the hero a black dude it would have been a hit - you could have had him being a stud with all the women, and helping inspire the slave rebellion, etc.

If Meyer didn't want to go down that road the film would have been better off with a female lead (most Meyer films are better off when they focus on the women). He talked about the backstory of the lead in an interview - this working class girl who slept her way to the top. That sounds like a fun movie. This woman being racist and whipping people running a slave plantation isn't fun.

It's a gorgeous looking film - it was shot on location in Barbados. And production values are good - with the old house, cane fields, beaches, prisons, etc. Anouska Hempel is cute and not a bad actor in the lead - Meyer complained her breasts weren't big enough. He didn't cast then wife Edy Williams in the film - you know something, Edy probably would have been more fun.

Percy Herbert adds some class to the support cast. David Werbeck is alright as the white saviour.

But it's a mean spirited film. Lots of violence and racism and whipping. Not enough sex.

Movie review - "The Seven Minutes" (1971) ***

No one seems to have many kind things to say about this Russ Meyer film, his second picture done for 20th Century Fox, and his only really "straight" picture - an attempt to dramatise Irving Wallace's best seller. It's normally a coda in his career - "oh and then he made Seven Minutes which failed so he went back to indies". But I liked it.

The script is solid and its interesting material. I've got a soft spot for courtroom dramas that tackle social issues. The screenplay puts forward both sides of the case - though Meyer makes his feelings clear by having several scenes depicting anti pornographers as fat filthy old men who hang around dancers and are hypocritical.

Wayne Launder is strong as the lead - he never had much of a career, but he's handsome, virile, a decent actor. Maybe a bit TV but he's good. Tom Selleck is in this but I didn't watch it going "I wish Selleck was playing the lead and not Launder."

Marianne McAndrew is sweet as the girl who works for him.

It's clearly Meyer trying to do something different - he takes the material seriously - but also feels very Meyer - there's actors like Charles Napier, and Edy Williams as Launder's sexpot fiancee, and the editing is rapid. There are some grotesques and one scene where Launder visits a person who is filming a porno.  And the themes - anti censorship, pro liking sex (and unfortunately a bit of homophobia and hatred of impotence) - are very Meyer.

John Carradine pops up. Ron Randell is meant to be in this too. Phil Carey is a strong antagonist. It doesn't entirely work as drama - really the personal stakes aren't that high, I'm surprised they didn't bring in Williams' tycoon dad as a character - but it was enjoyable. I'm aware few people share this opinion.

Movie reviews - "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" (1970) ****1/2

This is fantastic fun. Russ Meyer rose to the occasion of working for a big studio by making a film that looks great and is packed to the gills with stuff - more characters, more story, more everything.

Like the best Meyer films it's driven by women - I can't believe he didn't make this a hard and fast law about his movies because whenever he did it paid off in spades (eg this, Vixen, Faster Pussycat). It's a "three girls" film with the girls being in a band - they are positive, likeable and diverse (one black, one gay).

The acting is very good. Dolly Read is immensely winning as the main girl - fairly early on she cheats on her boyfriend David Gurian with Michael Blodgett, and you don't mind, in part because the boyfriend is such a drip, but also because she's a nice person.

Cyntha Myers is stunning and likable as the girl who realises she's a lesbian after falling pregnant and having an abortion. Like Read, I'm super surprised Myers didn't have more of a career, even if only as a regular on Glen A Larson TV shows.

The black characters actually have something to do - the girl, Marcia McBroom, loves her pot, her boyfriend (Harrison Page from Vixen) wants to be a lawyer, and there is a fun love triangle with a boxer.

Gurian is a whimp but handsome and his whimpness works totally for the role. Edy Williams is great fun as a man eater. Michael Blodgett is excellent as a gigolo and John Lazar is outstanding as G man.  Erica Gavin seems a lot less intense than in Vixen - she's actually not that great.

Like a lot of Meyer there's some impotence and men worried they're gay and outlandish plot. Unlike a lot of Meyer this one has gay dudes in it.

In case we get bored they throw in a plot with Phyllis Davis, as Read's aunt who is in love with Charles Napier, Duncan McLeod as a dodgy lawyer. (This feels tacked on - I think it was because the film was originally a sequel to the 1967 film, and these characters were from that one. They remain in this non-organic state. Meyer should have made Davis a blonde or red head to differentiate her from the others more).

I loved the set design, the music, the feel.The songs were catchy.

The one draw back of the film is all the queer characters are killed - I don't mind Z man, or even Gavin and Blodgett, but it's a super shame that Myers had to die, and so horribly, because she really didn't do anything wrong.

That aside its a tremendously entertaining film and a deserved classic.

Movie review - "Cherry Harry and Raquel" (1969) ***

Russ Meyer's nutty desert saga, made flush with the confidence of his success with Vixen. It's got some familiar male faces - Stuart Lancaster, who played old men a few times in Meyer films, and Charles Napier, who would go on to become a familiar face on screens.

There is a story - Napier is seeing two women (brunette Linda Ashton and blonde Larissa Ely) and involved in a crime ring. Ely in particular is a lot of fun - like many a Meyer starlet I wish we'd seen her in more things. Napier is good rugged value - he does full frontal running across the desert which was a shock. Meyer was surprisingly progressive in a lot of ways. Like the ending - it has Meyer and John Milo shooting at each other while Ashton and Ely have sex. It's a wonderfully positive message - men tend to violence and death, the women like to have sex.

Meyer had to rewrite some of the film because a lead actor didn't want to do it (Ashton?) So he threw in shots of Uschi Digard running naked around the desert. And it totally makes sense in the context of the film.

Movie review - "Finders Keepers Lovers Weepers" (1968) **

Russ Meyer really getting into his creative groove now - check out the credit sequence, intercutting dancers at a strip club with men watching and the credits on bottles. The handling is very confident.

Unfortunately after a strong beginning this isn't a very good movie. I think the idea is good - and Paul Lockwood is a strong lead. He kind of looks like a rugged Robert Pattinson - I'm surprised he didn't have more of a career. He plays the manager of a strip club who is enticed over to the house of his brothel mistress to have sex with a woman then his mistress, so the mistress can organise a robbery of his strip club. He doesn't realise that his wife is dancing at the club and is sleeping with a bar tender.

It's not an enjoyable film. It gets very violent at the end - it's a Desperate Hours scenario. The sex isn't as fun because people doing it have agendas - to distract other people mainly. Anne Chapman, who plays the wife, never looks like she's having fun. There's a scene where Lockwood appears to basically rape her. Then she dances at the club but it's more out of revenge. She sleeps with the bar tender but seems to regret it

There's none of the joy and fun and love of sex that would be found in, say, Vixen. It's a downer.

Some decent acting but the thugs. And there's a naked black woman which was a Meyer first.

Movie review - "Vixen" (1968) ***1/2

A blockbuster success for Russ Meyer - the right film at the right time, but he was also fortunate in discovering Eric Gavin whose performance in the title role really makes this fly. In the first 40 minutes Vixen has seduced a mountie, her husband, a guest, the guest's wife and her own brother. She takes a break at the end so Meyer can throw in some plot about a communist who wants to go to Cuba.

The acting is very solid. Gavin is a star and she really looks as though she loves sex and is having a good time. Vincene Wallace is very attractive too - the love scene between her and Gavin is the sexiest in Meyer films at least to me. I think other people share that opinion too - in part because Meyer actually builds up to it, plays the suspense and tension, instead of just cutting to a guy grinding away on top of a girl.

The photography is strong as always as is the editing. It's full of life.

I didn't like Vixen's racism. It got wearying. And if the film was really anti racist Vixen would have slept with the black dude.

Although set in Canada it was shot in California.

Movie review - "Good Morning... And Goodbye" (1967) ***

Not one of Meyer's most highly regarded movies but I quite enjoyed it. His vision was in full flow by this time - plenty of nudity, and dancing, and quick cuts, and women running naked through the countryside, and overheated melodramatic plot.

It's a slice of life about several people in a small town - the narration (from Jack Moran) says eleven, but I didn't feel it was that many.

I didn't really like Alaina Capri in Common Law Cabin but she's in good form here as the town man eater, unhappy with old husband Stuart Lancaster. She chases after the town stud and a young boy who is keen on the step daughter.

Lancaster can't get it up but is rejuvenated by a sorceress played by Haji - a nutty concept but one of the fun things about the film.

I wasnt that wild about the concept of the step daughter especially when she walked in on dad doing with with Capri. It's a bit all over the shop but the cast give it all. I think I enjoyed it too because I imagined that Lancaster was Capri's surrogate - the climax of the film involves him getting sexual dominance over his wife again.

Movie review - "Mondo Topless" (1966) ***

The box office disappointment of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! prompted Russ Meyer to once again change gears, and do this colour documentary about topless dancers in San Francisco. There was surprisingly little nudity in his previous four films - well he makes up for that here, which has wall to wall breasts.

There's hyper active narration, quick cuts, interesting angles - all the Meyer trademarks really except for the narrative. The action mostly consists of topless dancers dancing, well, topless - sometimes on stage but more often than not in odd places like train tracks.

Meyer's narration can be heard over it some time (at least I think it is) - other times there are interviews with the dancers. This recorded voice stuff is very interesting.

The boobs do get wearying after a while - the just keep coming. This will sound weird but they're kind of better when they're attached to some character development. I really liked the girl who zoned out and didn't think of guys to focus on her dancing. And there's Lorna Maitland talking about how she was cast in Lorna. I would have liked to have heard more from the dancer with three kids!

I would have liked a story and gotten to know some dancers better but in many ways this is a very 'pure Meyer' film.

Movie review - "Common Law Cabin" (1967) **

The Russ Meyer style which would become so famous in Vixen and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls was established with this melodrama - he'd used fevered narration, jump cuts, tilts, breasts and over the top melodrama before, but this one was in colour.

It was written by Jack Moran, who brought so much to the party in Faster Pussycat, and who has written himself basically the lead role, a guy running a crummy cabin by a lake, living with his daughter and oversexed French wife. They are visited by Ken Swofford as a corrupt detective.

I didn't enjoy it. There was too much focus on male characters, which is never good in Meyer films. Only Alaina Capri's character seems to enjoy sex - Swofford is a rapist. There is some melodrama and a high body count - it's like Lorna or Mudhoney in that way.

Rhe casting wasn't up to scratch. Babette Bardot has the figure, but is awkward and uncomfortable. Adele Rein is pretty, but it just feels kind of wrong having her as Moran's daughter. Moran was okay. Alaina Capri gets lots of chances and looks like Erica Gavin, but isn't up to it - all the way through this film I kept thinking to myself "I wish Erica Gavin was playing this role".

Ken Swofford is very professional. He's this film's Alex Rocco - a rare Meyer actor who went on and had a decent career - you'd recognise him from a million 80s TV credits. (Charles Napier would fulfil a similar role on later Meyer movies).

It looks good. I just didn't have that much fun watching it.

Movie review - "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" (1965) ****

Russ Meyer's first classic. It has many of the elements he'd delivered before - energetic handling, skilled photography, melodramatic plot - but this one is elevated. It takes the structure of Motor Psycho but crucially makes these characters the protagonist and also turns them into women. He brought back Haji from Motor Pyscho and discovered Tura Satana to play the lead ones.

Having women as the bad girls completely turns the piece on its head - because strong vicious women even now are a relative rarity on screen, it remains so fresh to see these amazons go from go go dancing, to driving around in the desert, killing a random guy, then trying to rob a man in a wheelchair.

Paul Trinka is super wet as Kirk, the nice normal son, and Susan Bernard very annoying as the whiny girl... but that adds to the film's charm. I didn't like Stuart Lancaster that much in Mudhoney but didn't mind him here as the wheelchair bound old man (the structure of this is a bit weird - there's half an hour of a plot involving a drag race in the desert and accidentally killing a guy, then the rest two thirds is about conning an old man out of money).

I think it helped Meyer himself didn't do the script, though he wrote the story. There's some very quotable lines in the dialogue.

The real ace in the hole here is the cast. Tura Santana is of course an incredible icon - exotic, mysterious, vicious. Haji is extremely good as her lesbian off sider (this is spelt out with surprising explicitness - though I guess it was a little in vogue in the 60s with The Children's Hour and The Foxes). Lori Williams isn't as well known - I guess she's blonde and isn't as buxom - but fits in very well with the others, as a kind of I'm-only-in-it-for-laughs type who can resist trying to seduce the big muscle head.

Big, outrageous melodramatic fun that has aged well.

Movie review - "Motor Psycho" (1965) **1/2

Everyone knows Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! It's less well known that that movie was a kind of sequel to this one, which actually performed better at the box office. I think that's because this is so male centric, and Russ Meyer films aren't that interesting when they're about the men.

This is about three bikers driving around the countryside causing trouble - they rape a woman who happens to be married to the local vet (Alex Rocco, quite a well known actor). Instead of looking after his wife (she's not dead) he goes off driving looking for them. He comes across Haji, who the bikers tried to kill (they killed her husband).

They probably should have killed off Rocco's wife instead of keeping her alive - because you lose sympathy with him ignoring her and flirting with Haji

There's a few scenes of pure high camp, to indicate the direction Meyer would go in - one where Haji sucks out the poison from Rocco, and it's like they have sex; another where she distracts a guy who is going to kill her by demanding he sleep with her first and she rips off her clothes. This is all good fun.

Haji is excellent value. The actors who play the killer bikers aren't bad.

The rape stuff is unpleasant. I know that's an oxymoron but the scenes where the bikers trap the girl and she's screaming - it's yuck. There's too many men - too much focus on Rocco who is more concerned with revenge than his wife.

The acting is good, the action well done, and the cinematography effective.

Movie review - "Mudhoney" (1965) **

More overheated Southern melodrama from Russ Meyer. You wonder why couldn't he find someone better looking than John Furlong to play the drifter who comes to a small town and gets the hots for his employers wife. I guess the main audience for these films cared about the women more than the men - it just would've made it more believable.

Meyer went ambitious with this one - perhaps too ambitious. He didn't like the film, though Roger Ebert did. There's an awful lot of drama and acting - too much stuff with men to be honest; the lecherous old codger and the nice old codger. There's a lot of sappiness in it - the two leads walking hand in hand as the sun goes down.

The main girl here isn't very buxom. Lorna Maitland who was in Lorna has a part but its support.

There's too much Hal Hopper, who plays the wife beating drunk. Too much Stuart Lancaster, the old guy who creepily wants Furlong to run off with his niece. (How about just talking to the niece instead of getting a man to save her?) Too much Furlong. Too much men.

We never get a sense of who Antoinette Christiani is other than "bored housewife". I know character depth wasn't a great Meyer strong point but his memorable female characters had more drive. There's an over the top finale with a death toll like Lorna but the film simply wasn't fun, at least not to me.

Movie review - "Lorna" (1964) ** (warning: spoilers)

Russ Meyer's first dramatic feature is very much in the tradition of horny Southern melodramas, eg God's Little Acre, the works of Tennessee Williams, The Long Hot Summer. The horny woman here is the title character, the buxom Lorna whose husband can't satisfy her. Then one day she's raped by a guy and enjoys it and wants the guy to hang around. The husband is teased about her wife being unfaithful, not knowing they're actually accurate. He returns home - lots of people wind up dead.

It's directed with energy and verve and looks good - even though its black and white, Meyer was skilled with the camera. The players really commit. I liked the locations, the preacher as Greek chorus, and the salt mine for those Sodom and Gomorrah parallels.

But it's not very pleasant. There's no sense of humour. I did not enjoy the rapes. To pad out the running time there's a rape at the beginning - some female character who drops out of the story. It takes a long time to get to Lorna.

Lorna Maitland is buxom, but quite a sweet, sad figure - she's not one of the man eaters Meyer would become famous for.

A few trims that this would be respectible-ish - there is some nudity but not a lot. This was interesting to watch rather than enjoyable and you can see why, when people talk about Meyer, no one really talks about this film much, except to mention it in the context of his career.

Movie review - "Wild Gals of the Naked West" (1962) *

A nudie cutie from Russ Meyer - the film's poor box office performance led to him trying a different genre, more dramatic. This was hard going. There's more nudity, but it's just a series of moments - you wouldn't call them scenes - around an old western backlot. Sometimes the woman are topless, the colour photography is fine, the women are attractive. Most of it is music over action, with occasional narration. Sometimes there's a prospector talking to the screen. He has a distinctive voice.

Movie review - "Eve and the Handyman" (1961) *

A hard slog despite the novelty of starring Russ Meyer's wife Eve, who was so crucial to his success (she later died in a plane crash). The plot has her follow a handyman around - which is nice in that the woman is the voyeur. It's nicely shot but there's not a lot of nudity or comedy and it is was hard going for me to watch, just from a boredom point of view. It doesn't even have much cleavage.