Supervixens

Because one Vixen film isn't enough.

Yes peeps! Russ Meyer felt he could expand the universe he himself started in 1968 with the first Vixen movie of the boobtastic saga. The year is 1975 and the sexual revolution on film is at its peak so in order to entertain properly Supervixen's story is way hotter and tittier than its rated X predecessor.

So, what is Supervixens about?

Clint Ramsey has to leave his job working at Martin Bormann's gas station and flee after his wife is murdered by psycho cop Harry Sledge, who tries to pin the murder on Clint. Crossing America, Clint gets sexually harassed on all sides by various voluptuous nymphomaniacs, and it all ends in a literally explosive climax.

Review with an eyebleed

 

Russ Meyer loves breasts, and he's a filmmaker, but it's mostly the breast thing. That doesn't mean that he's not good at what he does, which is making raucous comedies where there's a dumb, well-hung klutz (Charles Pitts, in thankfully his only significant point in his career as Clint Ramsey), the dual role of the schizo-girlfriend (SuperAngel) and later her re-incarnation as a gas station attendant (SuperVixen), and the enemy of the film, the diabolical, totally evil Harry Sledge (Charles Napier, a classic part in a long character actor career). Much of this is just silly, very silly, and strange, deranged, illogical, and probably would be seen on the surface as sexist. But looking past the fact that there are a lot of naked women who continually throw themselves at Clint, there is something more to Meyer's psychology here. It would probably be something of a big point had the film been used in Zizek's The Pervert's Guide to Cinema: it's like a classic farce- yet still a somewhat truthful farce- about male desire.

Handshakes? nah, I prefer cockshakes!!

Like my Dildo videogame console?

Take the fact that while Clint is on his 'journey'- running from the scene of a crime he didn't commit, which was the murder and burning down of the dig that SuperAngel was living in- he continually gets into situations where the women present want to desperately ride him till Tuesday...but then there's always another man. There's a fascinating push-and-pull (no pun intended...maybe a little) to how the men treat the women in the picture. Until Clint agrees to stay with SuperVixen and take care of the gas station does he finally seem to relax, as before with the guy in the car, the farmer, the motel owner, all had women as their next of kin or significant others that were persona non grata. Behind the hilarity that ensues as Clint gets practically raped in a hayloft by a German girl, or when a mute/deaf black chick tries to get Clint to have his way with her in a desert, there is subtext- desire is defined by property. By the time Clint gets to SuperVixen, and finds out her man ran out on her weeks ago, it's like they're suddenly whisked away to the Garden of Eden (rather, in Arizona, as is one of the funniest sections of the flick), as they run around naked in ecstasy. Freud would have a field-day.

Boob service, I mean room service!

hang on to the bars!

But one must not forget the Harry Sledge character who, like Hopper in Blue Velvet or Bobby Peru in Wild at Heart, is as Zizek described a larger-than-life, absurdist figure of man's libido. Maybe it was subconscious or not, but there's a lot to do in Supervixens with the idea of potency, or impotency. Harry can't get it up, the truth of it, and it becomes a sudden turn to see Harry suddenly stomp SuperAngel (albeit, in one of the most illogical scenes I've ever seen in any movie, taunts him for five minutes while locked in a bathroom following a bad sexual experience) and burn the place down as a means of compensation, an inherent lack of drive leading to the demise of anyone around him. While this seems to go overboard in the last twenty minutes of the film, when he returns in and becomes an ultimate terror upon Clint and SuperVixen, there's probably more one could read into in terms of symbolism than your average Bunuel movie: the dynamite shooting out of a chute, the one stick next to SuperVixen's most private of private spots, and all raised to the level of delirium.

Gimme that cum now fucker!

Yes! hillbilly sex!

The more I thought about it after the movie ended, the more it seemed to make sense, the idea of the ID blown-up in, of all things, a Russ Meyer movie. But this will be moot to most viewers who are just looking for what it there in a Meyer movie- sex and craziness, usually at the same time, it's already apparent how equally proficient and tacky he can be: he's a master at editing, and casts his actors like it's a slight step above Z-grade porn. Which, of course, adds to its hysterical attitude, as we see one of the worst male actors of the 20th century play off of girls who rarely have a dirty smile off of their faces (save for when they're taunting Sledge, or getting caught by their daddies or husbands). And because Meyer, in the Mel Brooks sense, rises below vulgarity, his picture works so well even as it shouldn't. It deserves to be shown in grindhouse theaters and be found in the dirty sections of video stores. That it's an unlikely classic to be found in either of those places is hard to deny. 

Freewheelin' nigga!

Dumb blonde.

Supervixen's Trivia

The first draft of the script was written during an eight day writing session at the Mauna Kea Hotel in Hawaii by Russ Meyer. It was the first feature script he wrote himself.

The exteriors were shot in Arizona and the interiors were shot in California.

The actual budget of the film was just under $100,000 can you believe it?

The lead role was originally offered to Robyn Hilton, who turned it down.

Russ Meyer originally intended to cast his wife Edy Williams in the role of SuperVixen, but they split up and he decided to use Shari Eubank (cast as SuperAngel) in the dual roles of SuperAngel and SuperVixen. This necessitated the strange plot device of SuperVixen being the reincarnation (sort of) of SuperAngel, with Eubank also playing the ghost of SuperAngel. 

Here's the movie trailer:

And, since the film was very inspiring, here the "Supervixen" song as written and performed by the amazing alt rock band Garbage: