The script was credited by Meyer and Roger Ebert but according to Meyer it was mostly Ebert’s work. Ebert was involved in the writing of several of Meyer’s later films.
For me Peak Meyer is from 1964 to 1968, with Lorna, Mudhoney, Vixen and Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! being his greatest movies. His final trio of movies, Supervixens, Up! and Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens push his vision beyond the limits of sanity and good taste.
Any Meyer movie is going to have insane amounts of inspired visual insanity and energy and this movie has plenty of both.
Meyer has some interesting things to say on the commentary track. This was his final film, not because his movies were no longer popular, but because it was no longer possible to get distribution. Multiplexes would not show his movies.
1979 was a time of flux as far as exploitation movies were concerned. Hardcore had destroyed the softcore grindhouse market. The mainstream market was off-limits. Home video had not yet emerged. Within a few years the direct-to-video market would have been perfect for Meyer’s purposes but by that time he had lost interest.
The setting for this movie is a small town called Smalltown. Lamar Shedd (Ken Kerr) and his wife Lavonia (Kitten Natividad) are having marital problems. Lavonia is disgusted by Lamar’s obsession with anal sex. She looks for gratification elsewhere, in the arms of garbage collector Mr Peterbuilt. As does Lamar looks elsewhere as well. Lavinia also moonlights as stripper Lola Langusta.
Lamar and Lavonia seek help from a marriage counsellor, but he turns out to want to do to Lamar what Lamar wants to do with Lavonia.
Perhaps spiritual guidance can help. Local radio evangelist Eufaula Roop (Anne Marie) is sure she can teach Lamar to pleasure a woman the way Lavonia wants to be pleasured.
Insofar as there’s any semblance of a plot is that in their own mad ways Lamar and Lavonia are trying to save their marriage. But mostly the plot is just a succession of wild crazy vignettes.
The acting is what you expect in a Meyer film - exaggerated to the point of parody and then pushed even further.
The movie’s biggest asset is Kitten Natividad. Apart from her amazing body, her breathtaking lack of inhibition and her manic energy she’s also genuinely funny.
The key to appreciating Meyer’s films, especially his 70s films, is to see them as sexed-up ultra-violent riffs on the classic Looney Tunes cartoons. His films have the same self-awareness, the same tendency to self-consciously draw attention to their own artificiality and filmic-ness, the same wild absurdity, the same manic energy, they treat violence in the same way (exaggerating it to such absurd lengths that it becomes hilarious rather than disturbing), the same wild surreal touches and the same anarchic qualities.
Meyer takes this stylistic approach and adds the machine-gun editing style he first perfected in Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! And by this time he was utilising an onscreen narrator (in this case Stuart Lancaster) to provide a running commentary, adding even more to the artificiality. Offhand I can’t think of another American filmmakers whose embrace of deliberate artificiality was so total and so radical.
This is softcore but Meyer is pushing the limits of softcore quite a bit here. The nudity is very explicit and the sex scenes get quite graphic.
No matter where you fall on the ideological spectrum you will be able to find something here to shock and offend you. But if you do get offended just remember that Meyer has set you up for it - he is yanking your chain. He is baiting you. If you take the bait then that’s on you.
Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens is a bizarre roller-coaster ride of sex and silliness. They don’t make movies like this any more. Highly recommended.
Severin’s Blu-Ray release is an enormous improvement on the old out-of-print DVD release.
No comments:
Post a Comment