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| Madman (Australia). Region 4, PAL. 4:3. English DD 1.0. 93 minutes |
| The Movie |
| Cover Art |
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| Credits |
Director: Russ Meyer
Starring: Kitten Natividad,
Ken Kerr, Uschi Digard, Ann Marie, Stuart Lancaster,
Michael Finn
Screenplay: Roger Ebert
Music: William Tasker
Country: USA
Year: 1979
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Russ Meyer, the 'Walt Disney of Skin Flicks'
has a grand history of two things that feature in
his films: a sardonic look at American culture,
and chicks with mammoth mammary glands. When it
came to filmmaking though, Meyer was a machine.
He was a writer, director, cinematographer, editor
and producer, whose output had him make 27 films
in a career that lasted 40 years and all of this
is without mentioning his battle photography of
World War 2. Some say that Meyer's films are
anti-feminist and misogynistic, but in actual fact,
the women of Meyer's films are always the
ones holding all the cards, always sexy, and rarely
stupid. The men in Meyer's films are the ones
who should be complaining, in general they are muscle-bound
dunderheads, incapable of making a decision without
checking with their testicles if its alright. Beneath
the Valley of the Ultravixens, co written
with Roger Ebert, is another one of Meyer's
amusing satires of Mom and Apple Pie.
Narrated by Meyer favorite, Stuart Lancaster, the
story of Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens is about a small town named Small Town USA which,
like the big cities, has secrets of its own. Even
rural people can have unfulfilled desires that interfere
with their regular day to day business. Lamarr Shedd
(Ken Kerr) and his lovely lady Lavonia (Kitten Natividad)
have a small problem with their sex life. Lamarr
likes a sexual position that Lavona finds…shall
we say, uncomfortable. Through a series of sexual
misadventures with various townsfolk, they try to
find a point where they can 'come together'…
Less a coherent storyline, than a series of soft
porn vignettes, Beneath the Valley of the
Ultravixens is Meyers parody of rural America.
It is more or less what a lot of hard core porn
eventually became… a loose storyline with
sex scenes in between (you know what I mean, the
pool guy, the delivery man, the wrong house etc
etc). Meyer still does manage to get his point of
America's hidden underbelly across, but the
women in this feature seem to overshadow any parody
he makes. That's not to say the comedy isn't
witty, or ironic, and each sex scene is comedy gold
in itself, but the subtleties of the humor over
and above the slapstick sometimes pales to the background.
The stars of this feature are his regular players
who had been in other features such as SuperVixens, Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and Mudhoney. Tragically, this was
to be Meyers last big screen feature. His eye for
parody was lost in amongst the need for the viwers
wanting more penetrative sex on screen, which Meyer
was loathe to do. Also, the advent of video tape,
and it's easy to access hard core porn turned
his soft core stuff into dinosaur almost overnight
and he actually didn't make another film for
over 20 years. |
| Video |
| This full screen, pan and scan transfer is average.
Cigar burns, artefacts… you name anything
that an older film suffers from, this does too.
It is not a shoddy picture, like some of the Something
Weird Video releases, but it isn't a brilliant
picture either. |
| Audio |
| It is a 25 year old independent film and it is
in mono. No great shakes, but that's no surprise. |
| Extra Features |
The Latin Brunhilde: Interview with Kitten
Natividad (15 minutes 18 seconds) is a fascinating
look at not just the soft core scene of the seventies,
but due to her intimate relationship with Meyer
(they were married for a time), a great insight
into the man as well. A short but interesting
piece about the woman who Russ himself describes
as 'having a bush blacker than a blacksmith's
apron'.
There is a trailer for Beneath the Valley
of the Ultravixens (1 minute 59 seconds).
Funnily enough, the trailer has a far better picture
than that of the feature and is advertised as
'a comedy for adults'.
There is a commentary by Russ Meyer which is less
a commentary on the movie as it runs, but more
a series of recollections about the people who
he made the movie with. He does reference the
movie on occasion, but this is by no means a shot
for shot styled commentary. |
| The Verdict |
This is not my favourite Meyer film, but there
is no doubt his eye for the visual metaphor still
had 20/20 vision. The parody of American culture
is present, but tragically is overshadowed by the
amount of sex in the film, which I guess is the
point….oh, and there are a lot of women with
enormous boobs in this film. This is really for
Meyer complete-ists or fans of seventies soft core
only.
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