Russ Meyer: Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Vixens

THIS IS AN ADULT FILM

It’s also hilarious and wild. It’s like Fritz the Cat meets Hunter S. Thompson, caricatures exploring an exaggerated gallery of pornography infused with poetic prose. Stuart Lancaster provides an unrelenting narrative that takes us for a ride through Small Town America, where we peek in on the secret goings on among the locals. As it turns out, most of them are usually naked and involved in pursuit of their carnal desires.

There’s a whole list of things one might find offensive about this film, but that’s none of my business. At the core of each stereotype, there is a kernel of truth and an undeniable authenticity. The characters are vividly honest about the kinds of things that would cause puritanical types to avert their eyes. If a viewer hasn’t giggled, chortled, or guffawed by the time Dr. Lavendar turns into Raging Queen and screeches, “Vacate my closet immediately!” then wacky retro social satire probably isn’t their kind of thing.

Visually, it was a clever and captivating film of carefully composed images, simultaneously stunning and shocking. Sometimes it was like looking at art. Sometimes, the art was a big gorilla humping uberBarbie on a crazy see-thru mattress. I don’t know what else to say. It’s a long film. Make popcorn. Prepare yourself, and don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Ultra Vixen Fun Facts

  • Tagline: “Six Chicks in search of a Cluck! . . . and so hilariously funny.”
  • Roger Ebert is credited as a writer under the name R. Hyde.
  • Kitten Natividad (main char. Lavonia/Lola Langusta) appeared in 57 films during the ’70s and also won Miss Nude Universe in 1970 and 1971.
  • Russ Meyer had an extensive career in film as writer, director, producer, and actor. He also served as a US Army combat cameraman during WWII and was a well-known professional photographer. The still images in Giant are his work, as are several Playboy centerfolds, including his wife Eve in 1955.
  • IMDB entry for Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Vixens (1979).
Advertisement

The URI to TrackBack this entry is: http://cinematoast.wordpress.com/2010/05/28/russ-meyer-beneath-the-valley-of-the-ultra-vixens/trackback/

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.