Whoa!  What was once ‘raw adult’ fare now plays as quaint — yet still hot. Voyeurism becomes entertainment — America’s mammary-obsessed independent filmmaker Russ Meyer did as much for naughty male daydreams as did Hugh Hefner. The entire ‘Vixen trilogy’ is being released, but we concentrate on Meyer’s breakthrough picture with Erica Gavin, the one that the young critic Roger Ebert helped make into an undressed success.

Russ Meyer’s Vixen!
Blu-ray
Also Available in 4K UHD
Severin Films
1978 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 71 min. / Street Date January 28, 2024 / Available from Severin Films / 49.95
Starring: Erica Gavin, Harrison Page, Jon Evans, Michael Donovan, Garth Pillsbury, Vincene Wallace, Robert Aiken, Peter Carpenter.
Cinematography: Russ Meyer
Art Directors: Wilfred Kues, Russ Meyer
Film Editors: Richard Brummer, Russ Meyer
Music: Igo Kantor
Screenplay by Robert Rudelson story by Russ Meyer, Anthony James Ryan
Associate producers: Eve Meyer, Anthony James Ryan, Richard Brummer, George Costello
Produced and Directed by Russ Meyer

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?

Severin Films’ Blu-ray of Russ Meyer’s Vixen! is from a new 4K restoration. The film elements appear to have been well preserved, and the image quality is picture perfect. Meyer retained control of all of his films except his work for 20th Century Fox,  Beyond the Vally of the Dolls and  The Seven Minutes. Many ordinary adult films were often abandoned and left to rot at labs and in distributors’ warehouses; the company  Something Weird got in business by grabbing up hundreds of films that otherwise would have become landfill. Meyer took good care of his pictures, and so apparently have the holders of his estate.

The packaging is basic, reminding us of old cassettes; a branded line called ‘Bosomania’ announces the genre. The audio is as clear as a bell, and remains an original mono mix. The lively music track that voyeur dogs likely won’t remember is fairly decent, too. Vixen! has some briskly-cut sequences, but it precedes the films in which Russ Meyer went crazy with his editing, radically accelerating the pace of his cuts. We’ll repeat once more that a  4K / Blu-ray combo is available as well.

The extras mix earlier ‘Bosomania’ material with a couple of appropriate new items. Russ Meyer recorded audio commentaries for most of his pictures; on this one he calmly explains how the story was chosen, how it was cast and how it came together. He doesn’t name all the names or fully explain his shooting method on this track, but he does give plenty of other details. He also tells personal stories about his actresses and his girlfriends, various romances that come and go … for a period of time he was apparently an item with the legendary Blaze Starr. Meyer sounds candid, reasonable but also unopologetically crude. Maybe he’s playing to his audience, but we hear most every dirty old man’s reference to women’s bodies. Them that walks the walk, talks the talk, I guess. Russ Meyer’s camera exercises a more refined brand of sex fixation.

A second commentary is with Erica Gavin herself, in conversation with Severin’s David Gregory. She’s articulate and has her thoughts together. Gregory asks all the right questions while dropping bits of info such as the fact that the shooting script for the 71-minute movie was 170 pages … apparently a lot of descriptions. Gavin characterizes Meyer’s filming habits and remembers having to perform in crazy, uncomfortable places out in the wild. It’s a well-rounded talk.

Repeated from a  Criterion disc is an episode of David Del Valle’s old cable access video show. His guests are Russ Meyer and none other than actress Yvette Vickers, who was one of Meyer’s figure models way back in the day. Del Valle offers a good range of questions and both guests say some worthwhile things. Meyer is on his best behavior.

The topper is a video essay by Marc Edward Heuck, who has been a CineSavant collaborator once or twice. Marc delivers a great speech about the bitter, ugly censorship battle over Vixen! in Cincinatti, where exhibitors resisted a local effort to ban the film. The fully-documented piece exposes direct collusion between a judge and a D.A. to use the campaign for self-promotion. Personally, I’m not outraged that sex-starved Cincinatti-ans had to to go Illinois to see the movie, but hypocrisy always makes for entertaining exposés.

And we thank Severin for the printable frame grabs !

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Russ Meyer’s Vixen!
Blu-ray rates:
Movie: It’s Own Thing
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
1981 Censor Prologue, from a theatrical reissue
Audio commentary with Russ Meyer
Audio commentary with Erica Gavin
Woman… Or Animal? interviews with Erica Gavin and Harrison Page
David Del Valle’s The Sinister Image with Russ Meyer And Yvette Vickers
Entertainment… Or Obscenity? Marc Edward Heuck on the film’s historic Cincinnati censorship battles
Trailer.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: January 1, 2025
(7249vix)

^*  From 2009 to around 2015 I expended a significant amount of energy trying to convince Michael Hyatt, the man who performed a beautiful photochemical restoration of the MIA favorite  The Day of the Triffids, to sign with David Gregory’s company Severin. It would have been ideal.

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