I have no idea what’s in the water in Miranda, California, but wow.

Hitler himself — now Adolf Schwartz (Edward Schaaf) — lives in a Bavarian castle there, in a pentuple with The Headsperson (Candy Samples, using the name Mary Gavin; she’s also in Fantasm and Fantasm Comes Again, as well as Meyer’s Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens, playing The Very Big Blonde, which sums her up), The Ethiopian Chef (Elaine Collins, Deep Jaws), Limehouse (Su Ling, Ilsa Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks) and Paul (Robert McLane, one of the first actors to appear in a movie that accurately depicted gay lovemaking, A Very Natural Thing). After a scene where every one of his lovers abuses him, he retires to a bubble bath where he is killed by a black-gloved killer who throws a piranha in the tub.

Is this a Giallo?

No, as much as it’s a Greek tragedy just because it has Kitten Natividad as the Greek Chrous. Born Francesca Isabel Natividad in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua State, Mexico, she went from not knowing English until she was ten to being her Texas high school class president. A maid and a cook to Stella Stevens, she enlarged her bust and started dancing, eventually gaining a 44G bra size. By the second movie she made with Meyer, Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens, she’d had another breast surgery and left her husband for the auteur. She kept on dancing, doing nude photograph and eventually hardcore porn, as well as being the stripper for Sean Penn’s bachelor party before he married Madonna.

But yeah, she’s the Greek Chorus. It’s incredible.

Margo Winchester (Raven De La Croix, who designed her own costumes and did her own stunts; it’s hard to say which of Meyer’s women is the most perfect, but you can make a case for her; supposedly she was once engaged to Greg “The Hammer” Valentine) hitchikes into town and is instantly in trouble, making Sheriff Homer Johnson (Monty Bane) hot and bothered and then being insulted by local rich kid Leonard Box (Larry Dean), who she kills in self-defense, which gets her into Johnson’s bed.

To keep her busy — and out of other beds — Homer gets her a job at Alice’s (Janet Wood, Pamela from Terror at Red Wolf Inn) diner, where Alice’s husband Paul — yes, the same one who porked Hitler’s keister — also works. Paul and Margo soon make love at the edge of a lake, while the Sheriff gets head from Chesty Young Thing (Marianne Marks) and is nearly caught in bed with Pocahontas (Foxe Lae).

At this point, Margo decides to strip in public and is attacked not only by a limberjack named Rafe (Bob Schott) but every man in the place. Homer saves her, but he and Rafe murder one another.

Then, Margo reveals that she’s a secret agent, out to learn who killed Hitler. It turns out it was Alice, Eva Braun Jr., who chases our heroine through the scenic landscape, both nude, before they make up and start, well, making out. Paul shows up and shoots her — she wanted revenge for him buggering the Fuhrer, he wanted revenge because he loved the guy — and Margo ends up arresting both of them.

Shot around the summer cabin of Wilfred Bud Kues, a war buddy of Meyer’s for decades, this found Russ and Roger Ebert working together again to make a movie that has men somehow recover from axe wounds, a masked killer, overwritten dialogue in the best way and one of Meyer’s last movies that finds him going out in a way that he could be proud of.

Scanned in 4K from the original negative by Severin Films with new and archival special features curated in association with The Russ Meyer Trust, the Severin release of Russ Meyer’s Up! comes with audio commentary by film historian Elizabeth Purchell, an interview with actress Raven De La Croix and a radio commercial. You can get it from Severin.