Russ Meyer's

Russ Meyer's Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Vixens DVD
$29.19
Like most of cult director Russ Meyer's later films, his final ode to the superhuman bosom largely dispenses with plot in favor of episodic sexual sight-gags. The ostensible storyline, narrated by Stuart Lancaster in hilarious deadpan style, deals with the bedroom hijinx of small-town America -- in this case the fictitious community of Rio Dio, Texas. Junkyard worker Lamar Shedd (Ken Kerr) is in trouble with his sexually ravenous wife Lavonia (Francesca "Kitten" Natividad) because he can only achieve satisfaction through unconventional openings. While Lavonia proceeds to bed down the local garbageman (Pat Wright) and others with more standard tastes, Lamar is put through a series of increasingly silly "cures," including a visit to a chainsaw-wielding gay dentist (Robert Pearson). Eventually, a radio faith-healer with enormous breasts (Anne Marie) gets him back on the right track. The amazing June Mack, who looks like she stepped straight out of a Robert Crumb cartoon, is the film's highlight as Kerr's insatiable black employer, Junk Yard Sal. The usual comic fight scenes are augmented here with different colors of blood for each character, but the high-voltage action of many earlier Meyer films is absent, as he was obviously trying to keep up with the booming porn market by including as many naughty close-ups as possible.

Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: The Biography of Russ Meyer, King of the Sex Film
$14.95
Very informative with lots of details and facts, but depressing. Apparently Russ Meyer wasn't a very likeable guy. It does make me want to go back and watch all his films, though, and look out for things not noticed before that are mentioned in the book.

Russ Meyer's Faster Pussycat Kill!..kill!
$27.94
It was like it was in my mailbox before I signed off from ordering... so fast. Thanks!

Russ Meyer's Up!
$39.95
Outrageously gratuitous and excessive in every sense of the word, Russ Meyer's Up! cleverly mixes busty babes, bloody violence, blouse-busting femme fatales, and well-endowed vixens into an erotic comedy of epic proportions. The fact that the plot is a murder-mystery that no one cares to solve, a narration by Kitten Natividad is bursting with Shakespearean poetry explaining characters no one cares to profile, and unimportant timeframe titles keep popping up as each scene starts hardly matters; anyone watching Up! is clearly in it for the over-the-top exploitation and generous doses of female nudity.

Kitten Natividad is the Greek Chorus, a naked narrator who excitedly details the wide assortment of characters who frequent the various story lines. Frequently she'll recap events with slightly different clips of footage and plenty of elaborate, riddle-filled, lyrical observations. Adolf Schwartz (Edward Schaaf), a depraved Nazi warlock and S&M fetishist, is brutally murdered in his bubblebath with the deadly fish Harry the Nimrod. There are many suspects, courteously announced by Kitten, but little motive and fewer complaints. It's a baffling puzzle with only the clue of a black-leather-gloved culprit.

Meanwhile, Margo Winchester (Raven De La Croix) is viciously attacked during a morning jog, and winds up accidentally killing her rapist. When the entire event is witnessed by local policeman Homer Johnson (Monty Bane), he coerces her into a few sexual favors to overlook the killing. Later, she gets work selling hotdogs at Sweet Li'l Alice's (Janet Wood) Cafe; in short order she's also "romantically" involved with Alice's husband Paul (Robert McLane).

As with most of Russ Meyer's X-rated voluptuous hellcat extravaganzas, the extreme sexual violence, overflowing testosterone and copious mounts of salacious nudity is done in such a jaunty manner that it's undeniably humorous. It's campy, pornographic, and wallowing in a sea of carnality, but effective in its mission of unrefined eroticism and gung ho extravagance. When Alice and Margot discover their bridled, steamy bisexuality when consoling each other with a sensual hug seconds after barely escaping a traumatizing sexual incursion, it's obvious that the whole ordeal is a well-planned setup for a spicy, fleshly girls-only encounter.

The film opens with ludicrously happy music, changing over to dramatic, orchestral, country, classic rock, patriotic, swashbuckling and everything in-between, even delivering wittily-placed Beethoven. Painfully bad dubbing and poor sound effects round out notable technical aspects, although it's almost unfair to critique how the movie was made considering the reason for its creation. With a creative zipper-cam shot, oodles of random sex, a crazed ax-wielding lumberjack, bondage, lesbianism, constantly unsheathed bosoms, bottomless ecstasy and overload of chesty pulchritudinous and lots of unnecessary explanations and dialogue during the lengthy birthday-suit final chase sequence, Russ Meyer's Up! should definitely not be confused with Pixar's latest computer animated family film.

- Mike Massie