Drüber, drunter und drauf

Never before has a porn movie made sex seem so ridiculous. Up!'s over-the-top irony cuts so deep that it does not merely satirize itself nor does it stop at its genre: Up! makes sex itself seem so absurd that, after seeing this movie, one wonders why anyone's interested in it at all. The many positive sex scenes in the movie are not shot as porn so much as parodies of the notion of sex as bliss (note the quick cut aways and the scene changes (mostly in beautiful natural spots), creating a sense of hours of lapsed time while preventing any build-up of erotic aura). The many negative sex scenes in the movie never grant any empathy to the rapists, never provide any glimpse of pleasure in the rapists, and always include the victimized avenging themselves, thereby rejecting pornographic rape fantasies and demanding that the viewer do so as well (if s/he hasn't done that already) (note: this actually makes the rape scenes easier viewing than, say, the one in Boy's Don't Cry, which - ironically - is probably more exploitative).

Obviously, the movie is not easy to take. Watching it, I was full of wonder but can't say that it was enjoyable or even consistently funny. Compared to Beyond The Valley of the Dolls, this is much more sex-centered and much less of a movie. Once again, though sex-centered, the movie is not really porn in that it makes no attempt to be sexy, instead portraying sex and the culture surrounding it (porn, sexual politics, and Moral Majority-style opposition) as possibly the greatest farce of contemporary Western culture. Highly recommended for people with extremely open minds who are interested in seeing a destruction of auratic sex. For people interested in a good laugh or a good movie, you probably would want to check out something else. For people with any no-go areas, you should probably forget about this movie altogether.

Before finding fame as one half of influential film critic duo Siskel and Ebert, Roger Ebert tried his hand at screenwriting, penning several scripts for cult sexploitation director Russ Meyer: Beyond the Valley of the Dolls in 1970, Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens in 1979, and between those, wacky sexploitation comedy Up! in 1976.

Up! opens in full-on unhinged mode, with an ageing Hitler (Edward Schaaf) - hiding behind the pseudonym Adolph Schwartz - indulging in a variety of perverted sex acts conducted by well-endowed 'pilgrim' Paul (Robert McLane). Shortly after, Schwartz is murdered while in his bath-tub, the killer putting a piranha in the water. A naked Kitten Natividad, as narrator Greek Chorus, introduces several suspects, including Paul's attractive wife Alice (Janet Wood), buxom black-haired babe Margo (Raven De La Croix), local policeman Homer (Monty Bane), Asian beauty Limehouse (Su Ling), chesty gimp The Headsperson (Candy Samples), and The Ethopian Chef (Elaine Collins). Are any of these characters responsible for the Nazi's fishy demise?

With numerous big-breasted hotties, several scenes of forced sex, lots of consensual soft-core sex, frequent full-frontal female nudity, and some graphic violence towards the end (which includes an axe to the chest and a chainsaw through the stomach), Russ Meyer's movie is quite the eye-opener, a wild ride that forsakes things like narrative cohesion and logic in favour of boobs, bush, and satirical humour. It's a fairly uneven film with a plot that feels like it was written on the fly, but there is enough energy and spirit (and nudity) from all involved to ensure that, if anything, it is never boring.

To rate this Siskel and Ebert style: one and a bit thumbs Up!

Russ Meyer makes his films, when they're at their best or most brilliantly deranged, like the dream of some sexually charged sixteen year old who's seen his share of pornos and 70's era exploitation films. They're crazy visions of women with (usually) nothing lower than 36-C cups, men with third legs (wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more), and enough fornication to blow the head gasket of any puritan viewer. That being said, Meyer isn't exactly a real porno director. He makes sex films in the same way that Robert Rodriguez makes wild action or horror or kids films: as a do-it-yourself-auteur (i.e. writes, directs, produces, edits, DP's, even camera operates), he's all about getting a pulpy sensibility of what would otherwise be typical trashy material. Meyer also is gifted with a wonderfully cringe-worthy sense of humor. To give just a brief example- and maybe as one of the quintessential scenes in any exploitation flick- the scene where two completely naked women, one Eva Braun Jr with a knife and screaming maniacally about the fall of Nazism and the plight of his 'father', run after one another trying to kill each other in the woods.

So Up! is in another in a whole body of works where Meyer turns the conventions of the usual in movie-making, like a kooky member of National Lampoon, but at the same time I'm not sure it's one of his very best. It's a little scatter-shot in the story, if there is one closely to even follow with the Greek Chrous (Kitten Navidad) where in every time whatever semblance of a story is taking shape we're led off by this narrator and Meyers's editing which takes us into a strange loop of sequencing of events and images (which in and of themselves are good, but distracting). But when Up! does click, it works very well. Mostly this involves the early scenes with Adolph Schwartz (ho-ho), who gets masochistic sex from a dominatrix and a man with a huge thing, and then gets killed mysteriously in his bathtub. Then we're thrust into some backwoods group, including a shifty but well-intentioned sheriff (Monty Bane), a big, uproarious homunculus in Rafe (Bob Schott), and of course Meyer's 'harem' of girls.

It's fun, in all basic intentions, to see these girls have fun and go into exuberant glee doing their scenes, as opposed to the more degrading XXX features that get pretty boring after a while. This is where the dream facet comes in, where everything is just so surreal (the frolicking sex out in the open, wherever it is, the Nazi stuff right out of a typical exploitation flick from Europe, the double-climax that combines sex AND violence), that you just have to go along for the ride and laugh with all the craziness. What helps is Meyer's great cinematic eye- yes, great- as he shoots and edits as though every image has to be just next to perfect. While the actual content is sometimes all over the place, like with Rafe's rape scenes, where he turns into a true drunken gorilla, the actual quality of the film-making is nearly flawless. Which is to Meyers's credit, as what is in Up! could be the makings of a much more lewd and crude effort.

Hard to find (had to look deep on line) and not without little dips in real strength in the comedy, Up! demonstrates some great Meyers' product: beautiful, voluptuous, and mostly funny women (loved the one woman who's voice sounded out of femme fatale noir), total horn-dogs and beasts in men, and a bit of vicious satire to boot. More beer!

Russ Meyer's movies have always struck me as a cross between porn and the Loony Toons. (The bleedin' obvious, perhaps...) Hence I don't see why RM even bothers with his quasi-plots, because it's really just the (large) breasts and the rest that matter. UP! has that unique and wonderful 70s look, but without the fast-forward button it is almost unwatchable, because far too repetitious and uninteresting. Plus, occasionally it has nonsense that cannot possibly appeal to any healthy heterosexual male: Hitler getting raped?? Who the hell wants to watch that? The bottom line is that isn't funny (and the other bottom line is that we need nore female bottoms). But what can one expect from the "renowned" film-critic and gourmet, fat Roger Ebert? He co-scripted this crap, a fact that neatly fits in with his horrible taste in movies (and, I presume, food, too). Perhaps the Hitler-rape has something to do with Ebert's clandestine sexual inner fantasy world? The dialogue, as in nearly all RM films, is dull and fast-forward-worthy.

UP! was made in the golden age, when implants very rarely infested the bodies of luscious Russ Meyer women. RM's later produce is full of silicone, hence totally worthless. I guess he must have been just like any other hick who cannot differentiate between a beautiful pair of naturally formed breasts and a pair that looks like it's been pumped at NASA.

UP! succeeds only as a "live" large-breast calender, to be viewed with the remote control close at hand. As usual, there is a fair amount of imaginative directing and wild editing, but when there is no plot (or even worse: an Ebert "plot"), it isn't of much use.

And the Fedor Award For Movie's Best Pair Of Large Breasts goes to (after much, much deliberation)... the Asian woman in the early scenes (Su Ling).

The Fedor Award For Movie's Prettiest Face goes to... Alice (J.Wood).

I wonder if these women were forced to undergo couch-casting with Ebert?... An awful thought. Perhaps only the Hitler actor had to...

Russ Meyer does it again! Up! has something to offend anyone with any sensibilities. I have fond memories of wading through picket lines of feminists in Berkeley to see this in the theater. Meyer's perverse mix of humor, sex, and violence is at its best in this film. Not to be missed by people who....well, we know who we are, don't we?