Supervixens was something of a comeback film for legendary director Russ Meyer, who had floundered in the wake of his dalliance with mainstream Hollywood at the end of the 1960s. Whilst Beyond the Valley of the Dolls had been a box office success, mainstream critics hated the film and were appalled that 20th Century Fox was employing a ‘pornographer’ to shoot X-rated films. When his follow-up The Seven Minutes bombed, Fox were quick to give him the boot. Since then, he’d managed a lively exploitation film, Blacksnake! (a satire of slaveploitation that actually preceded the genre) but that film too hadn’t really connected with his fan base – it was short on sex and Anouska Hempel was no buxotic.
Throughout the 1960s, Meyer had led the way in the fast-growing sexploitation industry. His 1960 film The Immoral Mr Teas effectively invented the nudie film, and a few years later he’d pioneered the ‘roughie’ with black and white melodramas like Lorna, Mudhoney and Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill!, before producing more overtly sexy softcore movies like Vixen. But in the years he’s been away, the genre had expanded further – Deep Throat had opened up the market for hardcore porn.
This put Meyer in a quandary. He had no interest in hardcore, but he was aware that these films were now his competition. If he couldn’t – or wouldn’t – compete in terms of explicitness, then he would instead go all out for excess. Meyer’s final three films were his most outrageous – cartoonishly over the top, high camp and excessive, they featured more busty babes than ever and more explicit sex (which never crossed to hardcore but certainly featured more graphic close ups than he would’ve dared five years earlier). In the case of Supervixens, the film also ramped up the violence.
Supervixens chronicles the adventures of hapless ‘superstud’ Clint (Charles Pitt), who gets into a bust-up with possessive and bitchy girlfriend Super Angel (Shari Eubank), who kicks him out of their apartment, imagining infidelity. Their fight attracts the police, in the form of Harry Sledge (Meyer regular Charles Napier). Harry and Angel get together, but the cop is unable to get his (prosthetic) cock to rise to the occasion. Mocked by the man eating sex kitten, he flips out and in the film’s most notorious scene, attacks her, smashing down the bathroom door where she is sheltering, and then throws her in the bath, jumps up and down on her and tosses her electric radio into the tub for an electrifying finale.
This is one of the most extreme moments of cinematic violence of the 1970s, made more shocking because it’s unexpected in what has seemed to be a light sex comedy until this point. It was, unsurprisingly, one of the scenes cut by the British censors, who rendered the film incomprehensible. And yet it’s also cartoonishly excessive. Harry Sledge is a movie psycho par excellence and his crimes are shocking, but Meyer takes the sting out by making it more Tom and Jerry than H.G. Lewis. This, of course, just made it worse in the eyes of some people – reducing an act of shocking sexual violence to a joke. Meyer certainly felt stung by the criticism of the violence in this and his follow-up movie, Up – in his final film, Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens, the blood was blue, green or yellow – anything but red, to emphasise the unreality of it. Here though, the gore flies as Harry stomps Angel to death and we see one final shot of her battered face before she dies. It’s subversive stuff to find in a sex comedy.
Clint, of course, is blamed for the murder, and so goes on the run. Things don’t go too smoothly for him, as he finds himself getting into one scrape after another at the hands (or other parts) of assorted buxotic temptresses who are determined to have their way with him. Meyer’s films always featured sexually aggressive women who took what they wanted, and this is no exception.
Clint finally finds happiness with Super Vixen, a diner owner who is a reincarnation of Super Angel, but kind and loving where her past incarnation had been cruel. But this idyllic situation is shattered by the reappearance of Harry, determined to carry on where he left off. Before long, harry has Vixen captive in the hills, a stick of dynamite jammed between her legs, her only hope of salvation the wounded Clint.
Supervixens is Meyer spoofing himself. He emphasises the cartoonish nature of the film (it even has Roadrunner sound effects) and heightens the melodrama with knowingly ridiculous dialogue. The editing is faster, the acting more deranged – Napier is amazing as Harry, one of the great unsung monsters of 1970s cinema. He’s scary and funny, often at the same time. Shari Eubank is great too – switching from astonishingly sexy and maneating to sweet and sympathetic in her two roles. Meyer regulars Haji and Uschi Digard get supporting roles, as does softcore actress turned porn star Colleen Brennan.
Supervixens often gets overlooked compared to Meyer’s bigger cult titles like Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! – it’s X-rated, if softcore, content making it more a challenge for some audiences. But it’s definitely one of his best films, and one of the few that can be considered a borderline ‘horror’ movie.
David Flint, Horrorpedia
