Myra Breckinridge - Mann oder Frau?

The widow of a gay movie critic hopes to collect on her husband's inheritance, which includes a drama school in Hollywood run by her in-law, Buck Loner, a faded cowboy star. Despite 20th Century-Fox keeping this thing under-wraps for years, the notorious "Myra Breckinridge" is finally beginning to get the recognition it deserves. This Hollywood satire is indeed a misfire, but it isn't a boring one. Based on Gore Vidal's acidic book, it's an amusingly trashy, wicked and low-down look at Hollywood's loss of morals; it isn't meant to be high-brow, and Raquel Welch is ballsy and bitchy as the gal who takes on Tinsel Town. Rex Reed is her alter-ego, John Huston is perfect as Uncle Buck, Mae West is dazed but ribald as a man-hungry talent agent, and Farrah Fawcett is a sweetly stoned ingénue. Vidal (who penned one of the first screenplay drafts himself before being kicked off the project) chastised the picture but, despite some choppy editing and an uncertain direction, it's a movie perfectly in-tune with the source material. After some 30 years, the times have finally caught up with "Myra Breckinridge". **1/2 from ****

If you go into this exercise in wretched excess expecting a profound viewing experience, you'll be very upset. Part "Blazing Saddles", part "Love American Style", and part "Candy", this film is a tasteless melange of all that was mediocre about late 1960s filmmaking-- cheesy Bachrach-like score, campy costumes, inept acting, and everyone in search of a plot! That having been said, like a train wreck, it's hard to look away. Although most of the production values in this sleaze-fest are abyssmal, there are occasionally clever comic bits of archival footage inserted for (unsubtle) comic affect. Instead of sitttin' wondrin' why, babe, did they cast Raquel Welch, John Carradine, Farrah Fawcett, and egad, Rex Reed; enjoy the lovely cameo appearance by a young mustache-less Tom Selleck, and annoyingly under-the-top performance by 75 y.o. Mae West. This is what to watch when you've grown tired of singing along with "The Rocky Horror Picture Show"!

Quite how this became Hollywood's most famously reviled and ridiculed creation is almost as mysterious as how such a bizarre film was ever made in the first place.

It's the story of a gay film critic knocked unconscious in a car accident who then dreams he has undergone a sex-change operation and been recreated in Raquel Welch's image. I managed to work that much out after two viewings, the first wondering what the hell I was seeing and the second spotting the few clues to the "plotline" that exist between the scenes of insane camp and bizarre sexual acts.

Somehow, through all the confusion and early '70s delirium, I found myself enjoying it. It is a ridiculous mess, but where else are you going to see the legendary John Huston receiving a brutal Swedish massage and Raquel Welch in glorious widescreen, Technicolor Panavision wearing a strap-on and cowgirl outfit ensemble? Not in Legally Blonde, I know that much.

When I saw 'Myra Breckinridge,' the projector broke down no less than eight times throughout the films's 94-minute duration. In most cases, this would be an inexcusable annoyance for me, but in this case, I was grateful. After every ten minute stretch of this film, I felt like I needed some respite.

The only reason to see this movie, the only thing I found remotely entertaining or funny, is to see film critic Rex Reed masturbating. Years later, Reed savaged David Lynch's 'Blue Velvet' with an angry zeal and called the movie "brain-damaged garbage" and also displayed a fragile sensitivity in denouncing the sickness of Pasolini's 'Salò.' Watching him in 'Myra Breckinridge' gives new dimensions to those reviews.

Whatever the merits of 'Valley of the Dolls,' it's a genuine camp movie because it achieves that status unintentionally. It played itself straight and failed as a drama. The intent with 'Myra Breckinridge' seemed to be, from the very start, to make the next camp classic, and so the film has no dramatic level on which to fail. It cuts straight to the camp and does it horribly.

A man who wishes to become a woman wants to show the world that men are not the superior beings that they have been made out to be. To in fact do to men what men have been doing to women since the beginning of time. Is it surprising that this film is despised by so many people - especially men? The fact that this film is so threatening is a good sign that it is right on track. A handsome idiot "stud", an over-the-hill sexist cowboy wannabe and a whole stable of dumb gorgeous guys (including Tom Selleck!) show what all those fun, sexist sixties movies look like in the mirror image. For here it is the women (Myra and an elderly Mae West) who throw out the sexist innuendo and treat men like fresh meat that have little value other than what they can offer women with their bodies. The sight of an unattractive and elderly Mae West always gets the shaft by the film's critics, yet they rarely comment on the appearance of her male counterpart (played with great relish by John Huston) who also seduces (and I might add verbally abuses) women one-third his age. Hmmm. The fact that this film is so hated shows how far men still have to go before opening up their minds and really seeing the double standards that they adhere to when it comes to sex comedies. It's only when the tables are turned that one can truly perceive this - and this film does this beautifully. It is after all a satire and commentary on Hollywood (as well as on the cheesy camp classics from everyone from Roger Corman to Russ Meyer). The interspersing of classic Hollywood movies depicting this seems to have eluded many viewers since they're so used to taking such images for granted. They don't question them or even see what those classic images are really projecting.

Anyway, this is the most brilliant example of camp cinema to date. The hilarious sabotaging of scenes with reaction shots from various movie stars reflects the so-called innocence of the audience (no wonder so many people find that uncomfortable!), and the film is also choked full of famous faces parodying the very images that made them famous. It has all the camp and surreal qualities of Gore Vidal's book, and it retains most of his incredible dialogue. It is also one of the best movies about Hollywood and the jerks who work there. And last but not least, Raquel Welsh should be most proud of her performance. I cannot imagine anyone else in this role because she is not only wonderful, she completely turns the tables on the stereotypes she personified to men throughout her career. She was a wonderfully cheesy sex goddess, and here she finally has a chance to ahem, be in the driver's seat. It's all just in fun, and that's what the movie is saying. If treating women like they are just a pair of boobs is entertainment, then why can't treating men like they are just a pair of bullocks be the same?