Supervixens

Part of the fun of watching a Russ Meyer movie is sitting in mind-boggling disbelief at just how sexist & deranged it is, then going with the flow as you escape into his voluptuous pre-silicone dreamworld. Misogyny isn't really the word, as you can imagine the old sleazeball worshipping these women & doing anything for them while he's filming them bouncing around.

Supervixens, however, is just plain nasty, due to the one scene in which Super-Angel (the running joke is that all the women have the Super- prefix to their names) is kicked to death & electrocuted in a bathtub by Charles Napier's impotent cop. Not funny. Doesn't help that Super-Angel's character is set up as being somehow deserving of it.

No, not funny at all, even if you're used to the Russ Meyer school of sensitivity. It belongs in a 1980's splatter film, & leaves a nasty taste in the mouth for the rest of the film, which is pretty ordinary until Charles Napier turns up again & torments Super-Angel's later re-incarnation, Supervixen, in a way that would be amusing if you could only forget his earlier scene.

See Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls instead.

Russ Meyer loves breasts, and he's a filmmaker, but it's mostly the breast thing. That doesn't mean that he's not good at what he does, which is making raucous comedies where there's a dumb, well-hung klutz (Charles Pitts, in thankfully his only significant point in his career as Clint Ramsey), the dual role of the schizo-girlfriend (SuperAngel) and later her re-incarnation as a gas station attendant (SuperVixen), and the enemy of the film, the diabolical, totally evil Harry Sledge (Charles Napier, a classic part in a long character actor career). Much of this is just silly, very silly, and strange, deranged, illogical, and probably would be seen on the surface as sexist. But looking past the fact that there are a lot of naked women who continually throw themselves at Clint, there is something more to Meyer's psychology here. It would probably be something of a big point had the film been used in Zizek's The Pervert's Guide to Cinema: it's like a classic farce- yet still a somewhat truthful farce- about male desire.

Take the fact that while Clint is on his 'journey'- running from the scene of a crime he didn't commit, which was the murder and burning down of the dig that SuperAngel was living in- he continually gets into situations where the women present want to desperately ride him till Tuesday...but then there's always another man. There's a fascinating push-and-pull (no pun intended...maybe a little) to how the men treat the women in the picture. Until Clint agrees to stay with SuperVixen and take care of the gas station does he finally seem to relax, as before with the guy in the car, the farmer, the motel owner, all had women as their next of kin or significant others that were persona non grata. Behind the hilarity that ensues as Clint gets practically raped in a hayloft by a German girl, or when a mute/deaf black chick tries to get Clint to have his way with her in a desert, there is subtext- desire is defined by property. By the time Clint gets to SuperVixen, and finds out her man ran out on her weeks ago, it's like they're suddenly whisked away to the Garden of Eden (rather, in Arizona, as is one of the funniest sections of the flick), as they run around naked in ecstasy. Freud would have a field-day.

But one must not forget the Harry Sledge character who, like Hopper in Blue Velvet or Bobby Peru in Wild at Heart, is as Zizek described a larger-than-life, absurdist figure of man's libido. Maybe it was subconscious or not, but there's a lot to do in Supervixens with the idea of potency, or impotency. Harry can't get it up, the truth of it, and it becomes a sudden turn to see Harry suddenly stomp SuperAngel (albeit, in one of the most illogical scenes I've ever seen in any movie, taunts him for five minutes while locked in a bathroom following a bad sexual experience) and burn the place down as a means of compensation, an inherent lack of drive leading to the demise of anyone around him. While this seems to go overboard in the last twenty minutes of the film, when he returns in and becomes an ultimate terror upon Clint and SuperVixen, there's probably more one could read into in terms of symbolism than your average Bunuel movie: the dynamite shooting out of a chute, the one stick next to SuperVixen's most private of private spots, and all raised to the level of delirium.

The more I thought about it after the movie ended, the more it seemed to make sense, the idea of the ID blown-up in, of all things, a Russ Meyer movie. But this will be moot to most viewers who are just looking for what it there in a Meyer movie- sex and craziness, usually at the same time. As the first of his films I've seen, it's already apparent how equally proficient and tacky he can be: he's a master at editing, and casts his actors like it's a slight step above Z-grade porn. Which, of course, adds to its hysterical attitude, as we see one of the worst male actors of the 20th century play off of girls who rarely have a dirty smile off of their faces (save for when they're taunting Sledge, or getting caught by their daddies or husbands). And because Meyer, in the Mel Brooks sense, rises below vulgarity, his picture works so well even as it shouldn't. It deserves to be shown in grindhouse theaters and be found in the dirty sections of video stores. That it's an unlikely classic to be found in either of those places is hard to deny.

Without a doubt, the first 10 minutes of Supervixens is one of the best pieces of comic film editing I've ever seen. If there's anyone who's interested in figuring out how to quick cut images with dialogue in order to create a comic effect, watch this. Most of Meyer's movies are pretty bad, but there are three that are great and this is one of them. Meyer creates a surreal American landscape, where people are all endowed with unreal sex parts, all the woman bare the title "super", and ex-nazi's are gas station owners. The movie is filled with in-your-face phallic symbols and the scene with Super Angel and the cop is absolutely hysterical. Can't wait until this is on DVD.

Russ Meyer is a truly original American filmmaker of the highest caliber. His films are filled with lightning-speed edits, larger-than-life characters, delicious women, and over-the-top acting. His movies are shining examples of wonderful exploitation. They are by no means 'high-art' and should not be judged as such. Myer masterfully puts his unique vision on the screen in all of his films, and 'SuperVixens' is a shinning example of this...

This film starts off wonderfully, for it is incredibly entertaining and highly humorous (filled with VERY sexy women, large breasts, and lots of violence of course). It maintains a pretty rudimentary story-line, but that was never something that Meyer really pursued. He is more concerned with amusing characters, gorgeous women, and sweet violence, and this movie has plenty of that. Charles Napier gives one of his best performances ever here, as a psychotic, impotent, woman-killing cop. Shari Eubanks is dynamite and a vision to behold...

My only complaint about this film is that it loses a bit of momentum after its blazing beginning. If you are into Russ Meyer you have undoubtedly seen this film- if you haven't, you must! The transfer to DVD is of a very high quality- the sound and picture and crystal clear. If you have never seen any of Meyer's films, this as good a place to start as any...

After the brutal murder of his promiscuous wife, Clint (Charles Pitts) is forced to flee a small town… Harry (Charles Napier), a wicked look-alike who committed the killing, had little trouble to put the blame for the murder on Clint…

Clint falls into a number of adventures, getting caught in the act with the mail-order wife of a farmer, having a brief affair with a chesty black mute girl, and finally coming across a diner/gas station run by a lonely but beautiful woman who turns out to be a copy of his former wife… Clint stays on at the diner to help out the woman, and falls in love… The assassin, however, passes through, discovers Clint, kidnaps his new girlfriend, and tries to kill them both…

The women in "Supervixens" are buxom, attractive, and very intelligent, whereas the men are generally sex-crazed, vicious, and uncoordinated... Meyer usually bombards his audience with erotic images—big breasts, strong desire women, and simulated lovemaking—but here he gets carried away with several sadistic scenes that are real turn-offs...