Review #1,338: 'Mudhoney' (1965)

Russ Meyer's keen eye for satire is in full swing in Mudhoney, one of the cult filmmaker's best films, as he explores the extremities on both sides of a topic he spent most of his career pondering and exploiting. Set in the one-horse town of Spooner, Missouri during the Great Depression, its inhabitants seem to spend their time between either a farm owned by kind and respectable old man Lute Wade (Stuart Lancaster) and the local brothel ran by a toothless, moonshine-brewing madame who "ain't turned a trick in fifteen years." Mudhoney bears comparison with Meyer's Lorna, made just the year before, in the way it explores themes of sexuality in an unconventional, and perhaps controversial, manner. Both films also starred Meyer favourite Lorna Maitland.

While making the journey from Michigan to California in search of work, drifter and ex-jailbird Calif McKinney (John Furlong) is approached by Eula (Rena Horten), a buxom deaf-mute girl who takes an immediate liking to the handsome young man. It is suggested Calif travels to Wade's farm to seek out a job, and seeing the ex-con's genuine desire to turn his life around, the old man employs him as an extra hand to help out around the place. Calif also meets Wade's niece Hannah (Antoinette Cristiani) and almost instantly falls in love with her. Hannah is beautiful and kind, but also emotionally beaten down by her monstrous husband and town drunk Sidney Brenshaw (Hal Hopper), who fills his time at the local brothel swigging corn-liquor, when he isn't harassing the town's female occupants with his lecherous behaviour.

Sidney is central to the film's concerns. Dressed in a dirty old suit and cowboy hat, licking his thin lips as he arrives home drunk to rape his poor wife, he is borderline comical in his monstrosity, and Hopper is fantastic in the role. His two stomping grounds - the dingy brothel and the farm he calls home - are two sides of the same coin. One represents sexual freedom, a place a man can get his rocks off without fear of judgement, and the other a breeding ground for violence, born out of Sidney's lust to gratify all of his sexual desires and prove his manhood. The town, which has little to no law and order, shows the risks of unchecked human behaviour. It ends with a lynching, and although there's no suggestion of racial tension, Mudhoney captures how resentment and anger can grow out of loneliness, resentment and sheer boredom, where one angry word from a man in a position of authority can quickly turn into a lynch mob. It's perhaps Meyer's most interesting work and, thanks mainly to Hopper, one of his most entertaining.


Directed by: Russ Meyer
Starring: Hal Hopper, Antoinette Cristiani, John Furlong, Princess Livingston, Stuart Lancaster, Rena Horten, Lorna Maitland
Country: USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,294: 'Motor Psycho' (1965)

The last of three movies directed by exploitation legend and pioneer of the 'nudie cutie' Russ Meyer in 1965, Motor Psycho is one the filmmaker's few 'normal' movies, that is one not filled to the brim with impressively-breasted babes and scrawny, sex-mad males. It instead falls into the biker gang category, one of the many branches of the 'juvenile delinquent' sub-genre which emerged as parents and the media alike voiced their concerns about the increasingly rebellious youth culture of the time. Similar in many ways to one of Meyer's other 1965 movies (and undoubtedly his most popular film), Faster Pussycat... Kill! Kill! (Mudhoney was also released that year), Motor Psycho substitutes the strong, revenge-fuelled gang of women led by the unforgettable Tura Satana for a trio of tortured men, and the result is actually pretty good.

The gang, led by demented Vietnam veteran Brahmin (Steve Oliver), have taken a liking to antagonising the locals of a small town, firstly terrorising a young, beautiful women trying to relax with her passive, hen-pecked husband, before their intentions turns even nastier. They torment veterinarian Cory Maddox (Alex Rocco, who played Moe Green in The Godfather) before raping his wife while he is away from home flirting with a voluptuous horse-breeder. He returns to find his wife battered and abused, but it is "nothing a woman isn't built for," according to the local sheriff (played by Meyer himself). Maddox decides to take matters into his own hands, gradually tracking Brahmin and his cronies as he follows their path of destruction. He comes across Ruby Bonner (Faster Pussycat's Haji), the wife of a man the gang have just murdered in cold blood, and the two partner up to end the gang's reign of terror once and for all.

Any fans of the director going into Motor Psycho hoping to see a collection of naughty vignettes featuring some of his familiar roster of beauties will likely be disappointed, although the film is another fine example of Meyer's skill with editing, cinematography and use of music. A minimal budget rarely hampered Meyer, and Motor Psycho is fast-paced and jazzy, and surprisingly features a handful of decent performances. This was one of the first times a damaged Vietnam veteran had been portrayed on screen, and Oliver has fun going way over the top as the sadistic, angry young leader. For a film dealing with rape (and Meyer takes the subject matter seriously), it is also very funny in places. Most memorable is a scene in which Maddox is bitten by a snake and demands Ruby to suck out the venom. "Suck it! Suck it!" he screams as he forces her head onto the wound. It would seem that Meyer couldn't resist a little playful innuendo. This is a competent little western revenge B-movie, often released under the more eye-catching title of Motorpsycho!.


Directed by: Russ Meyer
Starring: Alex Rocco, Haji, Steve Oliver, Holle K. Winters
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #785: 'Beyond the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens' (1979)

With his final big-screen movie, the Sergei Eisenstein of skin-flicks, Russ Meyer, festoons Beyond the Valley of The Ultra-Vixens with his usual cynical and scornful look at small-town Americana. With the birth of video-tape and audiences preferences leaning in favour of penetrative, hard-core porn, Meyer bowed out with dignity, refusing to bow down to audience demand and lower himself to such a cheap and easy form of entertainment (although he would briefly return over twenty years later with Pandora Peaks (2001)). All the Meyer traits are here - blockhead male chauvinists, sex-mad townsfolk, a grizzled narrator, women blessed in the mammary gland area - and are loosely stringed together in what makes up the 'story'.

Set in the small town of, er, Small Town, USA, our narrator, The Man From Small Town USA (Stuart Lancaster), shows us all it's wacky inhabitants. There's a well-endowed evangelical radio preacher (Ann Marie) who has sex inside of a coffin, a man-eating junk-yard owner (June Mack), and a randy dentist/marriage counsellor (Robert E. Pearson). In the centre of it all is the beautiful, big-breasted Lavonia (Kitten Natividad) and her lug-head husband Lamar (Ken Kerr). They are happy enough, only Lavonia's unquenchable thirst for sex and Lamar's preference to 'entering through the back door' means that they must find themselves before they can finally 'come together'. 

Co-written with Roger Ebert, Beyond the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens is less a story and more a collection of comic, fruity vignettes. Some of sharp, energetic and funny, others can be plodding. The satire is less sharp here than in his better movies, for instance Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) or Up! (1976), but his admiration of the female form is possibly clearer here than any of his other movies. He's often called anti-feminist, but, with Meyer, it's the women who hold all the power, outwitting and overpowering the numb-nut males, even raping one, a 14-year old boy I may add, in one scene. He certainly doesn't seem to mind though. It's often delightful and even titillating, but ultimately lacks the sharpness and daring of Meyer's best work.

Directed by: Russ Meyer

Starring: Kitten Natividad, Ken Kerr, Ann Marie, June Mack, Stuart Lancaster

Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #551: 'Lorna' (1964)

After spending the first few years of his career on traditional 'nudie cuties', director Russ Meyer made his first foray into 'real' film-making with 1964's Lorna, written by and starring James Griffith. Though his colourful visuals and sense of humour were evident in the likes of The Immoral Mr. Teas (1959) and Eve and the Handyman (1961), these films were still very much confined to being nothing more than a peep show. With Lorna, Meyer resorted to black-and-white photography, but whether this was for budgetary reasons or stylistic choice, I don't know. But the decision to shoot this way gives the film more gravitas, and the attention is moved away from the big-breasts and onto the story and script, giving birth to the auteur that is now so revered.

Beginning with the rape of a girl named Ruthie (Althea Currier), the two men responsible, Luther (Hal Hopper) and Jonah (Doc Scortt), travel to work and pick up Jim (James Rucker) on the way. Jim is married to the beautiful Lorna (Lorna Maitland), who is sexually unsatisfied by the nice-guy Jim. Luther  proceeds to tease Jim about Lorna at work, while an escaped convict (Mark Bradley) forces himself onto Lorna. Lorna is extremely turned on, and invites the convict back to the house where she feeds and washes him. Clearly, it's not the most complex of plots, but we are in familiar Meyer territory with square-jawed men, put-upon women, and a funky jazz score.

One of the most familiar traits of a Meyer film is the narrator. Commonly, the role of the narrator in his films was to play the traditional man, one that obeyed the values and traditions of the 1950's American. The idea of sexual repression was clearly something that amused Meyer, and in Lorna, he employs James Griffith to play 'the Man of God', who is littered throughout the film addressing the audience directly to camera and questioning their moral fibre. He introduces the film, and this leads to one of the best moments in the films. He stands in the middle of a wide desert road, allowing the camera to glide past him and forward into the unknown as the jazz score kicks in. It's a lovely little touch, and a clear indication that this isn't simple another nudie-cutie.

This is far from his best work, with Lorna being relatively subdued in comparison to his more wilder visions such as Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965) and especially Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), and Lorna's pandering to the violent convict may seem rather chauvinistic in comparison to the majority of Meyer's output, where the female was quite often the dominant sex. But this was only the beginning of a now widely-celebrated career, so Meyer was still very much honing his craft. His sense of humour is unmistakable however, and one of the standout scenes has the despicable Luther writing and performing a song about Lorna's adultery to Jonah. It's played out so naturally that the two start to really laugh, making the scene really quite wonderful. It's this kind of playfulness that make Meyer's output such as joy to watch.

Directed by: Russ Meyer

Starring: Lorna Maitland, Mark Bradley, James Rucker, Hal Hopper, James Griffith

Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #95: 'Eve and the Handyman' (1961)

Similar to Russ Meyer's debut feature The Immoral Mr. Teas (1959), this barely 60-minute film follows a geeky and awkward man as he gawks at all the large-breasted beauties on show. Our protagonist is, as the title suggests, a handyman, and moves from job to job where he is teased by women played by the same woman (Eve Meyer - the then-wife of Russ). He moves from coffee-shop to office block to arthouse where he just can't seem to escape those sexual temptations. All the while he is pursued by Eve (again, played by Eve Meyer), a woman who seems to be fascinated with him and his 'masculine' behaviour, making notes and seeing him as some kind of wild beast.

There are two kinds of Russ Meyer films. Firstly, there are those with a budget which allow Meyer to show off his genuinely massive talent and produce thoroughly enjoyable and incredibly stylish films such as Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965), Vixen! (1968) and his best Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls (1970). What are on the surface are softcore porn flicks, but are really inventive and laugh-out-loud funny, while often being just bizarre. His second range of films are made quickly and cheaply, and amplify his love for buxom women with huge breasts that would always make a huge profit. Eve And The Handyman is sadly one of these. Although we often get a glimpse of Meyer's sense of humour, the film is ultimately a bore. Clocking in at 65 minutes, it really did feel a hell of a lot longer. This was however only his second feature, and you have to admire a director who was the first person to bring an actual storyline to the soft-porn genre.

Directed by: Russ Meyer

Starring: Eve Meyer, Anthony-James Ryan

Country: USA

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie