Russ Meyer’s Lorna (1964) revisited

Russ Meyer’s career falls into a number of well-defined phases, with each apparent change of approach actually bringing him ever closer to his mature style. Meyer had invented the nudie-cutie with The Immoral Mr Teas in 1959 but he soon grew bored, and he also felt that audiences would grow bored. So he abandoned colour for black-and-white and plunged into his redneck gothic/southern gothic phase with Lorna in 1964. Lorna has affinities with the roughies that were becoming increasingly dominant in American sexploitation movies but it would be a mistake to class it as a straightforward roughie. Like all of Meyer’s films, it belongs to a particular and distinctive sub-genre of Meyer’s own invention.

Lorna (played by the gorgeous and awesomely well-endowed Lorna Maitland) is married to Jim. Jim is a real nice guy and Lorna was madly in love with him when they got married but he’s just not very exciting in the bedroom. Not exciting enough to give Lorna the sexual pleasure she craves. Poor Jim doesn’t know anything about what turns women on and he doesn’t even know there’s a problem. He innocently assumes that since he enjoys the sex Lorna must enjoy it as well.

Meyer’s films certainly linked sex and violence and most included at lest one rape scene. That might lead one to think that Meyer was some kind of misogynist, but that’s a conclusion that could only be reached by someone who hasn’t actually watched (or at least understood) his movies. Meyer was always interested in and sympathetic to the female point of view. If only Jim had understood a bit more about women, if only he had understood that Lorna’s perfectly natural needs were not being satisfied, if only just once he had asked her what was wrong, all the subsequent disasters could have been avoided.

Because there are going to be subsequent disasters. 

Jim works at the salt mine with Luther and Jonah. Luther is foul-mouthed and dirty-minded and obsessed with sex. He likes to give the impression that he can get as many women as he wants but it’s perfectly obvious that that is true only in his daydreams. At the opening of the film, he tries it on with a girl named Ruthie. Ruthie is very drunk, but she’s not drunk enough to want to sleep with Luther. Luther reacts with rage and beats her up. This is the first appearance in film of a standard Meyer trope - sexually inadequate men who turn to violence against women. Taken on the whole the men in Meyer’s movies are not a very admirable bunch.

Luther is obsessed with Lorna. In his daydreams Lorna would prefer to be with him than be with Jim. In reality Lorna is hardly even aware of Luther’s existence. 

Then an escaped convict enters the picture. He rapes Lorna and she finally experiences the sexual bliss she craves. Lorna thinks she’s found happiness at last. When she takes him home with her it’s reasonable to assume that events are moving towards a climax that is likely to be unpleasant for all concerned.

This movie marked a major departure for Meyer. His nudie-cuties were essentially plotless collections of humour and/or sexy vignettes. Lorna has a very definite plot. It’s a simple plot, but it’s the execution that is interesting. Lorna is structured like a morality play but the fire-and-brimstone preacher who delivers stinging denunciations of immorality at various points is a sure sign that we’re not supposed to take the morality play aspect at face value. The film is more an attack on moralism than on immorality, although in true exploitation movie style it tries to have it both ways. The preacher introduces another Meyer touch - a character playing the rôle of the Greek chorus, commenting on the events of the film.

While Meyer was a quintessentially American film-maker Lorna owes quite a lot to the European art films of the period (especially Italian neorealism). But this is a European art film made in an entirely American way with an entirely American flavour.

Meyer had not yet evolved his full-blown signature style with the machine-gun editing but Lorna is still very much a Meyer film. It’s superbly shot. Meyer was a bit of a technical perfectionist. The idea that in a low-budget movie it doesn’t matter if the occasional shot is out of focus would have appalled Russ Meyer. He liked his movies to look great, and they invariably do look great. He worked quickly but his compositions are well thought out. I don’t think Meyer would have been capable of filming a poorly composed shot.

For the title rôle Meyer cast an actress named Maria Andre but he was not happy with the choice and at the last minute his wife Eve suggested a girl named Barbara Popejoy. Meyer renamed her Lorna Maitland and she’s one of the main reasons for the movie’s success. Apart from her extraordinary breasts (this is a Russ Meyer film so the subject of breasts cannot be avoided) she is perfect in every way, portraying Lorna as a mix of naïvete and seething sexual desire. 

For reasons connected wth the disposition of his estate Meyer’s films have not yet received the treatment they deserve on home video. Much lesser films have had special editions with audio commentaries and various extras and even Blu-Ray releases. For Meyer’s films we still have to rely on fairly basic DVD releases. The Region 2 release pairs Lorna with the equally interesting follow-up movie, Mudhoney, the second of Meyer’s redneck gothic films. Lorna gets a pretty good transfer.

Lorna is a nasty squalid little movie and it revels in its nastiness and squalor. It’s also stylish and absurdly entertaining. It made truckloads of money (Meyer celebrated by buying himself a brand-new Porsche). It’s one of the landmark sexploitation movies of the 60s and it’s highly recommended.