Russ Meyer’s Vixen!

Hah!  As if this disc attraction needs to be promoted… Severin Films is the boutique label that won the right to distribute the Russ Meyer ‘Vixen Trilogy.’  ^*  The Meyer estate had held out for seemingly forever, looking for a company that would cooperate with their demands. Earlier DVDs were all sourced from the same full-frame 1980 NTSC transfers for VHS, and the remastering job had to be done ‘just so.’

This review only covers the first ‘Vixen’ film, the show that launched the legendary Russ Meyer into mainstream fame. The second and third installments  SuperVixens and  Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Vixens are separate editions in either Blu-ray or 4K Ultra HD. Once that product is in the pipeline, Severin will most likely begin trading on the NY stock exchange.

The legendary Russ Meyer was a WW2 combat cameraman, said to have taken the famous shots of George S. Patton debarking on a Sicilian beach. Industrial photo work led to a thriving career as a glamour photographer, raising ‘girlie pix’ to a high level of quality and becoming one of the first photogs in the new magazine Playboy. But Meyer was a frustrated moviemaker. When it became possible to advertise movies with nudity (but no sex & no contact) he made a fortune with The Immoral Mr. Teas, a voyeuristic fantasy that transferred his discreet nudes to the big screen. He continued with more so-called ‘nudie-cuties,’ went to 35mm and more elaborate storytelling with Lorna, and spread out with a comic faux-documentaries, overheated semi-‘roughie’ melodramas, and the cult attraction Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

Vixen!, or Russ Meyer’s Vixen! made the biggest splash of all in 1968, just as the Production Code was being revamped with a ratings system. Softcore pictures like Meyer’s would no longer need to dodge local obscenity crackdowns. Vixen! concentrated on comedy and non-stop, spectacular sex scenes. There’s nothing subtle about Meyer’s un-reformed, untamed approach to rowdy adult fare. The nude images avoid genitalia, but luxuriate in bare flesh and simulated sex. Shakespeare said that All the World Is a Stage, and Russ could have added that all Players are Exhibitionist Nymphomaniacs. He indulged his personal taste in entertainment: enthusiastic sex with women with spectacular bodies. The sex may be crazy, but it isn’t shameful; most every scene sees lead actress Erica Gavin angling to bed somebody. Meyer described his show as a cartoon, with every character motivation and desire purposely overstated. People speak as if reading from dialogue balloons.

The storyline is anything but subtle. Vixen (Erica Gavin) is married to the Canadian bush pilot Tom Palmer (Garth Pillsbury) but takes every opportunity to have sex with Tom’s clients and anybody else not nailed down. That includes an enthusiastic Mountie (Peter Carpenter), Tom’s client Dave King (Robert Aiken) and Dave’s wife Janet (Vincene Wallace). Tom is oblivious to Vixen’s activities and her constant pleadings for marital sex. The irrepressible Vixen showers with her own brother Jud (Jon Evans) — and sleeps with him — but cruelly baits Jud’s pal Niles (Harrison Page), an American black who has fled the draft. Vixen’s verbal abuse is so bad, that with Jud’s encouragement, Niles almost rapes her. ‘The plot thickens’ when Tom’s second client O’Banion (Michael Donovan O’Donnell) gets Niles and Vixen into Tom’s plane and pulls a gun. He reveals himself to be a hijacker … and a Communist!

It’s not clear which film is the best place to begin watching Meyer’s work. His movies range from peek-a-boo innocence to later exercises in tastelessness. But Vixen! is a good place to start. It was apparently a rite of passage for college kids in 1968. With Meyer’s glowing cinematography, the players all look squeaky clean. The softcore sex is no more explicit than what is now window dressing on 90% of cable shows. The difference is that Russ Meyer’s breast fixation all but pops off the screen.

Meyer may be his generation’s King Leer, but his enthusiastic softcore sex romp escapes the sordidness that seeps into downmarket skin movies. Meyer and his wife / co-producer Eve Meyer found actresses that thrived on performing nude in erotic situations. Nobody would imagine for a minute that Erica Gavin is being exploited.

Meyer keeps things lively and funny. Audiences responded to the outrageousness of it all, and to the unexpected provocations in Robert Rudelson’s screenplay. Vixen and Niles exchange race-charged insults and threats that would be scary in a different context; here they’re disarmingly absurd. The characters are fleshy exaggerations who act in crazy ways — Jud is aggressively honorable one minute and the next minute he’s getting it on with Sis in the shower. Few in the audience could say that scene didn’t shake them up.

Roger Ebert was only a few months into his tenure as a Chicago film critic, just as critics like Pauline Kael and Rex Reed were becoming culture celebrities in their own right. Ebert could argue the aesthetics of Robert Bresson or Yasujiro Ozu, but he also saw something liberating in Vixen!  He applauded Russ Meyer’s strategy to defuse potential censorship. During the hostage situation on Tom’s private plane, the Irish Communist O’Banion and the recklessly outspoken Vixen engage in a ridiculous political debate. It’s as if Meyer were covering all bases — with all that ‘redeeming social content’ the Supreme Court would have to sanction Vixen! on First Amendment free-speech grounds.

The surprise is that Meyer is such a natural director. We expect the perfectly lighted and composed images, but not the trim and efficient storytelling sense. Few if any ‘low budg’ sins are present. He doesn’t pad scenes with filler shots of extended entrances or vehicles on roads. His three or four-man crews must have had as much energy as Meyer himself. The sync dialogue is well-recorded. Meyer had access to privacy on land in Vancouver, a wooded area so photogenic that our mind never runs to thoughts of mosquitos.

The actors come off as reasonably talented. Forget memories of Doris Wishman players with sallow skin and visible bruises; these are the healthiest-looking people imaginable. They are directed to ‘play straight’ but at an ironic pitch several degress above normal.

Erica Gavin has the body but also a bright assertive personality. She’s an aggessively oversexed beauty with a disarming smile and an air of self-assurance. She has full command of Vixen’s argumentative declarations. Harrison Page is costumed as if guest starring as a ‘right on dude’ for The Brady Bunch, yet he comes across as thoughtful and sincere … within the hyped style.

Meyer knows his audience will be entertained by his shame-free fantasies, and doesn’t worry too much about the technical details. When Tom’s plane lands at ‘a big international airport in Seattle’ what we see is obviously just another rural airstrip, if not the same one near Tom and Vixen’s rustic cabin. This isn’t a Frederic Wiseman documentary — the audience doesn’t ‘believe’ what’s on screen any more than they would a Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoon.

Make that a Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoon shot through with the sexed-up imagination of an ex-soldier whose mental fixation on grandiose breasts was entirely unapologetic. Who says vulgar infantilism can’t be art?