I’m struggling for a way to explain what a big deal Severin releasing this movie is to the uninitiated.

For years, I’ve worried that because it was so difficult to see the full catalogue of Russ Meyer’s movies that he’d be relegated to a director only remembered for a few images seen in books, but movies never seen.

So to me, the biggest event in film in 2024 was the fact that Severin Films, in conjunction with The Russ Meyer Trust, was bringing these films back to the public, newly scanned in 4K from the original negative stored at The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

We’re so lucky to have this.

After the dramatic films The Seven Minutes and Blacksnake were failures at the box office, Russ Meyer went back to what worked best. Sex comedies.

He said, “I’m back to big bosoms, square jaws, lotsa action and the most sensational sex you ever saw. I’m back to what I do best — erotic, comedic sex, sex, sex — and I’ll never stray again.”

He wrote this himself and claimed it was based on Horatio Alger’s tales. “They were always about a young man who was totally good, and he would always set out to gain his fortune and he would always come up against terrible people. They did everything they could to do him in, but he fought fair, you know, and he always survived and succeeded in the end. So, that’s just one facet of the thing.”

Supervixens would be the biggest commercial success Meyer had since Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, making $8.2 million on a $100,000 budget.

Clint Ramsey (Charles Pitts) works at a gas station for Martin Bormann (Henry Rowland) — Hitler’s personal secretary who ran to America and runs his small shop in the desert — and is married to SuperAngel (Shari Eubank). All she does all day is call and harass him at work when she isn’t demanding that he come back home and make love to her. When a customer — SuperLorna (Christy Hartburg) — flirts with him, SuperAngel flips out and tries to kill him with an axe. He goes to a bar where Super Haji (Haji) flirts with him as a cop named Harry Sledge (Charles Napier, playing the same character from Cherry, Harry and Raquel) tries to sleep with his wife but can’t perform, so he murders her in the bathtub. He burns down their house and sets up Clint, who runs from the law.

The rest of the movie is a series of his adventures, from being molested and mugged by Cal (John LaZar) and Super Cherry (Colleen Brennan) to being taken care of by a farmer whose wife SuperSoul (Uschi Digard) assaults him, as well as sleeping with the deaf daughter of a motel owner named SuperEula (Deborah McGuire) and finally discovering his true love, Super Angel (also Eubank). Of course, Harry shows up and wants to destroy their happiness, even if Clint only sees him as a friend. They’re all nearly blown up before the dynamite claims the villain like Wile E. Coyote.

Meyer said that the where Harry beats, stabs, stomps and drops a radio in the tub to kill Super Vixen was the most trouble he’d had with censors, other than Kitten Natividad’s full nudity in Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens. He also had to deal with watching this movie in the theater with Eubank and her father, who hated that his daughter was working with Russ Meyer. After the film ended, Eubank’s father sad he actually liked the film.

One thing that’s interesting about this movie is that it’s unafraid to show glimpses of penis unlike so many other films by Meyer (and a lot of other softcore). It’s also absolutely ridiculous and so over the top that I have no idea who can take it seriously, other than people still being upset about the murder scene. At least Super Vixen comes back as a ghost and is able to be in charge of her own sexuality, as all ends happily because of love.

The Severin Films release of Russ Meyer’s Supervixens features archival commentary by director/writer/cinematographer/editor/producer Russ Meyer, plus Russ Meyer Versus The Porn-Busters, a Mike Carroll interview with Meyer; an interview with Charles Napier; a trailer; a TV commercial and the reason I discovered Meyer in the first place, the episode of The Incredibly Strange Film Show all about his work.

You can get this from Severin.