Megavixens

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?

My personal favorite of Russ Meyer's films. The script, by Roger Ebert (!), is loaded with brilliant sexual dark humor. For example, the opening sequence finds an aging Adolph Hitler lookalike being whipped by a stud in a Pilgrim outfit; meanwhile, "Hitler" is tortured (erotically) by a variety of buxom ethnic babes ("Ah! Limehouse!"). Later, the Pilgrim really gives to Adolph what the rest of the world always wanted to give him - and sticks it to him good! And the ending wraps up a murder mystery by rising to outrageous absurdity. Along the way, our Greek Chorus narrator (Kitten Natividad) keeps us UP to date on the proceedings. Beautifully photographed (Meyer's best acheivement, I think). See what I call "The Indian Flip," and learn something new to do with a light socket. An absolute must for - as someone said - you know who you are...

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.

Up! (1976)

*** (out of 4)

Insane Russ Meyer flick written by Roger Ebert. A dictator (a Hitler spoof) is assassinated but who did it? That's pretty much the storyline for this film because the other 79-minutes are nothing but sex, big boobs, lumberjacks, more sex, lesbians, a fake penis and more wild and kinky sex. Pretty much everything that could possibly happen sex wise is thrown into this thing including three different rapes, which makes me wonder why Ebert went out of his way to try and get certain films banned due to their "treatment of women". The lack of plot really helps matters because in the end this is a very fun film full of laughs but it's mostly the outrageous sex scenes that make it so memorable.

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!