I haven't seen many movies by Russ Meyer, which is funny, because I've seen tons of exploitation flicks. There is something about Meyer's style that I find unwatchable.
It probably doesn't help that the first of his movies I saw as a teenager, "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls", was the worst movie I'd ever seen up until that point. It was basically a migraine made of celluloid: garish, loud, obnoxious, nonsensical and impossible to follow or care about.
I've just watched "Vixen!", and it's not as bad as that one was, which is light praise indeed. It still has the same ear-jarring soundtrack, the music and dialogue both turned up so loud as if at war with each other. The music does nothing but cause headaches. Why did Meyer think he needed a constant musical backing to his movies?
The movie is... "about" (not the right word) a woman called Vixen who lives in Canada and seduces everyone she meets, men, women, and family members included (she beds her own brother at one point). The only one she isn't interested in is a black guy who is in Canada dodging the draft for Vietnam, as he doesn't see why an oppressed minority like the one he represents should have to bleed and die for a country that oppresses him.
Why doesn't Vixen bed this guy? She's incredibly racist, and constantly subjects him to racist abuse. I didn't really understand why, but what I understood least of all is why Meyer would make the movie's heroine into a racist. He wanted to make a commentary on race politics... so why didn't he make one of the other guys a racist, rather than the heroine we're supposed to be rooting for?
The movie ends in an airplane, and I didn't know, or care, how it got there.
My favourite Meyer movie - and the only one I've seen that I liked - is "The Immoral Mr Teas". That one didn't terrorise my eardrums, and did exactly what it said it would on the tin. "Vixen!", along with seemingly many other Meyer flicks, is a sexploitation flick with weird pseudo-political posturing thrown in. Not sure what he was trying to achieve with it.
It probably doesn't help that the first of his movies I saw as a teenager, "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls", was the worst movie I'd ever seen up until that point. It was basically a migraine made of celluloid: garish, loud, obnoxious, nonsensical and impossible to follow or care about.
I've just watched "Vixen!", and it's not as bad as that one was, which is light praise indeed. It still has the same ear-jarring soundtrack, the music and dialogue both turned up so loud as if at war with each other. The music does nothing but cause headaches. Why did Meyer think he needed a constant musical backing to his movies?
The movie is... "about" (not the right word) a woman called Vixen who lives in Canada and seduces everyone she meets, men, women, and family members included (she beds her own brother at one point). The only one she isn't interested in is a black guy who is in Canada dodging the draft for Vietnam, as he doesn't see why an oppressed minority like the one he represents should have to bleed and die for a country that oppresses him.
Why doesn't Vixen bed this guy? She's incredibly racist, and constantly subjects him to racist abuse. I didn't really understand why, but what I understood least of all is why Meyer would make the movie's heroine into a racist. He wanted to make a commentary on race politics... so why didn't he make one of the other guys a racist, rather than the heroine we're supposed to be rooting for?
The movie ends in an airplane, and I didn't know, or care, how it got there.
My favourite Meyer movie - and the only one I've seen that I liked - is "The Immoral Mr Teas". That one didn't terrorise my eardrums, and did exactly what it said it would on the tin. "Vixen!", along with seemingly many other Meyer flicks, is a sexploitation flick with weird pseudo-political posturing thrown in. Not sure what he was trying to achieve with it.