June 20: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Exploitation Auteurs!
At one point during this movie, I put my head in my hands and took the Lord’s name in vain because, well, I was actually thanking God for the fact that I lived in the same reality that produced Russ Meyer.
This is his last film — whatever it is, I guess a film will describe it — after Meyer’s Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens. From 1979 to his death in 2004, it was a time of announced and never-filmed or unfinished projects. As porn entered the video store and bedrooms, Russ — who had battle censorship for so long — was rich and lived off the sales of the movies he’d already directed. In Jimmy McDonough’s Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: The Biography of Russ Meyer, King of the Sex Film, Meyer said, “I got all the money I’ll ever need. You gotta be hungry to make a movie. I don’t have the desire, the urge.” You could call him and he’d answer the phone himself, ready to sell you a movie. He didn’t have to make Mondo Topless, Too or the color remake of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Reading about Blitzen, Vixen and Harry makes me wistful. So does The Jaws of Lorna AKA The Jaws of Vixen AKA The Bra of God, Up the Valley of the Beyond. Russ was selling old movies for $79.50, way more than other VHS, but he was the only person selling them. No more new films. No more fire, I guess.
Well, there was The Breast of Russ Meyer. Somehow, for the usual money watching Meyer, this cost $2 million dollars and went around the world to find the most incredible breasts Russ had ever seen. It seemed like a vision in his rapidly declining brain, mixing profiles of Meyer vixens who were doomed to later in life back problems, biographical moments of his Army service and even Kitten Natividad and Russ making love on screen. It was 12 hours long at one point and most of it was given to the Museum of Modern Art.
Other than some footage that aired on Johnathan Ross’ Incredible Film Show, the only way to see all this weirdness—just moments of it—is in Pandora Peaks, a movie that Russ shot throughout the 90s, keeping the actress—born Stephanie Schick—on a $9,000 a week retainer. She claims in this that she worked in a bank and had several businesses before making herself her business, expanding her measurements to 72HHH-22-36.
Russ keeps showing up to talk about his life and his past movies. Just when you think you may learn something, we’re back to Peaks dancing or a German girl named Tundi — who may have the Dr. Ruth voice you hear talking of sex throughout and who McDonough referred to as “truly freakish…a nineteen-year-old Hungarian who spoke no English and resembled a giant triangle made flesh” — as well as another cantilevered specimen named Leosha — that was a Russ word, as is gravity-defying — and Candy Samples, relating how much she likes using her breasts.
Another movie starring Meyer’s then-partner, Melissa Mounds, was supposed to be made as well. Supposedly, longtime collaborator Jim Ryan oversaw this movie. The end of Russ’ life makes me sad — him losing the only person he cared about, his dog Harry; being physically abused by Mounds; the emotional loss of friends he served in the war with. He was a man abandoned by his lawman father, who never mentioned the mental illness his mother and sister battled or his worries that he had it. Instead, he invented himself. So if this movie feels all of the place, strange and perhaps a bit too overenthused by sweater meat, know that’s how its creator wanted it. He did it his way, even when it didn’t make sense.
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