With a story that ricochets from violent to funny and back to violent in heartbeat, backed up by great shot selection and editing, Mudhoney is easily one of Meyer’s best flicks. The ever-mounting tension of this depression-era psycho-sexo-drama practically drips off the screen. The stagnant Southern heat is almost palpable, and it’s almost too easy to feel hatred and empathy for the appropriate characters… and what a cast of characters we have. Set in Spooner, MO, a fictional town thoroughly wracked by the depths of the depression, we’re introduced to Sidney, an abusive drunk who’s married to a long-suffering hot-looking blonde (Hannah), both of whom live on the farm owned by her uncle Lute. Enter a stranger, Calif (short for California), who’s looking for a job and gets hired on at the farm. Sidney’s alcohol-fueled rages are tempered by visits to the whorehouse up the road, where he splits his time between the blonde beauties Clara Belle (Lorna Matiland, star of Lorna) and her deaf-mute sister Eula (Rena Horten), but he can barely contain himself once he surmises that Calif has eyes for his Hannah. Sidney’s only real intention with his wife is to stick around long enough until old Lute dies (he’s got a bad heart) and the money and farm become Hannah’s, as he already has plans on wresting it from her and leaving for Kansas City. Problem is, old Lute has taken a liking to Calif and (unbeknownst to Sidney) has transferred everything into a trust in Calif’s name. Sidney is pretty much hated in the town and is only a few steps shy of begin ridden out on a rail until he enlists the aid of the town preacher, a bellowing bible thumper, who accuses Calif and Hannah of adultery (before they’ve even done anything) and manages to turn the town around in their hatred and focus it on the would-be couple. Tension and turmoil build to a boiling point that sees Sidney finally flip out completely, rape and kill the preacher’s wife under the drunken delusion she’s Hannah, and burn the farm to the ground. Eventually he gets caught by a mob of locals and, since we know there’s no justice like mob justice, you can guess what he’s got coming to him. (After all, good always triumphs over evil in RM films.)
—the Kommandant

Arguably one of the most well known films in the Russ Meyer cannon, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, his self-appointed “ode to the violence in women”, is an absolute must see for any fan of psychotronic cinema. (In fact, I’d be surprised if anyone reading this hasn’t seen it at least once.) Still, in some ways it’s kinda hard to write about this film. So much has been said about it already - and by people far more knowledgeable about RM’s body of work than me - but it’s such a classic flick, not to mention an extremely important piece of the puzzle, that there’s no way we could do a feature on his films and leave it out. Just in case there is someone out there who has never seen this and / or is getting exposed to his movies for the first time via this column (does that count as community service?) I’ll provide you with a little plot. All the action in Faster, Pussycat! - and there’s plenty of it - revolves around Varla, Rosie & Billie, played by Tura Satana, Haji and Lori Williams respectively, a trio of super hot, super curvy, super vixens who use their ample figures to earn financial figures down at the local go-go bar. When not enticing men with their wild gyrations they’re racing each other, wrestling each other and engaging in whatever other kicks come their way. And, as we all know, bad girls don’t have to go lookin’ for trouble because trouble always finds us… uh, I mean them. Anyway, sure enough trouble soon finds our heroines in the form of a couple of teenaged goody-two-shoes types looking for a much tamer type of kick. The ladies quickly establish that, even with his y-chromosome, they’re still the alpha males in this crowd and they waste no time in wasting the dude and running off with his annoyingly whiny dudette. While trying to decide on their next move, they catch a glimpse of a handsome young fella and his crippled father and learn the elder is sitting on a huge pile of cash. (Oddly enough we later learn that he was sitting on the cash literally; it’s hidden in his wheelchair.) Like most seasoned go-go girls, strippers and exotic dancers alike, Varla sees any man with a wad of cash as an easy mark and hatches a plan to separate the old coot from his not very hard earned dollars (I believe he got them due to the train accident that put him in the wheelchair in the first place) and maybe make some time with his sons - as it turns out, he actually has two - while they’re in the neighborhood. Of course, there’s a lot I left out so you’ll have to watch this for yourself and see what fate befalls these fierce femme fatales. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s crystal clear how influential this movie turned out to be. In many ways, much of today’s underground culture would not exist without Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and Meyer would have easily secured his spot in B-Movie history if this was the last film he ever made. Fortunately, it wasn’t.
—Bunny

Mondo Topless is in some ways an oddity among Meyer’s films. It’s definitely not a flick with a plot but I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a documentary, although some have. The storyline, if you really want to call it that, features RM’s coverage of the topless go-go rage that was apparently sweeping the nation in the mid-’60s. We get things started with the topless (duh) Babette Bardot driving around while the voiceover and some intercut visuals offer a tour of rarely seen pre-hippie San Fransisco. (Although from the angle of the camera in the car it’s clear that Ms. Bardot is definitely NOT driving around any metropolis.) Dispensing with the tour in relatively short order, we jump chest first into an hour-long montage of some of the West Coast’s presumably top go-go girls of the day shaking their moneymakers in various locations and situations. All of this is backed up by a combination of voiceovers by an unseen offscreen narrator and soundbites from interviews with the dancers. Whenever our narrator is “onscreen” we get a shots of a various transistor radios (a device Meyer repeats in a few of his films), and whenever we’re treated to the commentary by the girls of Mondo Topless we get more onscreen writhing and gyrating from the respective ladies in question. The neverending parade of buxotic beauties (although, to be honest, not all of them as traditionally overly buxotic as you might expect from RM, especially in this tribute to toplessness) does drag a bit at times; after about a half-hour I was beginning to play “are they real or are they fake?” (And in my unschooled opinion, at least half are fake.) The unseen but definitely heard star of Mondo Topless, however, is the soundtrack—which might be the best of any Meyer flick. It’s a non-stop, mod fuzzfest that packs as much action into any segment as the ladies themselves. Despite it’s drawbacks, the film is not a throwaway and is important in the Meyer ouvre because it’s kind of the last gasp for the nudie cutie—a genre he’s essentially credited with creating. (Or at least popularizing.) This is definitely mindless entertainment, make no mistake, but the kitsch factor and soundtrack make it memorable mindlessness everyone should see at least once.
—the Kommandant

By the time 1975 rolled around, once scandalous B&W mid-’60s films like Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! were considered tame in comparison to some of the more gritty grindhouse fare and hardcore porn you could see in your less moralistic moviehouses. While not one to jump on trends, Meyer did see the benefit to making a dollar, so it makes perfect sense that his films morphed a bit as did the times. Rest assured, Supervixens contains much of the same heated, sexually frustrated, poor white angst that permeates his earlier films, it’s just that everything has been magnified and exaggerated. And then magnified and exaggerated again, just for good measure. The story revolves around Clint (Charles Pitts) a well meaning but typically not very virile fella who ends up wrongly accused of the death of his horny girlfriend and is forced to hit the road, finding nothing but more sexually aggressive women and limp men with quick tempers on his path to a new life. In some ways the story is a muffled bible-esque tale of the forces of good versus the forces of evil—mixed with what most look to a RM flick hoping to see, boobs and violence, of course. The completely over the top nature of this flick is best exemplified by Charles Napier’s character, Harry Sledge. Often the chicks steal all the thunder in these movies - and for good reason - but Napier is absolutely brilliant as the evil cop and so good at acting like a deranged psychopath that I might actually be freaked out by him if I met him today. This is definitely one of the Russ Meyer movies you don’t want to rent on a first date; because a girl who doesn’t know you too well is bound to look at you funny, possibly even just get up and leave, if you look like you’re enjoying this film too much. Unlike some of the other movies reviewed in this column, where women are the main aggressors, in this one women get beat the fuck down. Or rather, it’s mainly just one woman (Shari Eubank) who plays two different characters (Super Angel and Super Vixen; see, there’s the good vs. evil thing again) who receives the brunt of the beat down, but the Angel death scene is pretty brutal by any standards. By the same token, RM didn’t invent violence towards women so you can’t judge him by one bloody bathtub stomping. Looking at his films as a whole, this is definitely a necessary piece of the overall puzzle but is probably not for the novice or newbie.
—Super Bunny

Filmed and released in 1979, BTVOTUV was Meyer’s last feature-length picture—and what a way to go out. The film flirts with out-and-out porn (‘70s style) while maintaining all the signature RM trademarks. Ostensibly a slice of “Small Town, USA,” or at least the Meyeresque version of it, our tale revolves around Lamar and his wife, Lavonia. Lamar’s got a bit of a problem, y’see, he only can “perform” with his wife (or any other woman) if he’s going for some backdoor action. This is quite literally a pain in the ass for Lavonia and she’s just about had enough of his antics—so much so that while he’s at work at the junkyard she’s out sowing her wild oats. Did I mention Lavonia is played by Meyer icon Kitten Natividad? Well, not only has Kitten never looked as good as she does here, her sexcapades carry the picture. Along Lamar’s road to sexual salvation he’s also gotta do a little overtime, specifically with his boss, Junkyard Sal, who I’m pretty sure is one of Meyer’s few black vixens. He warns Sal there’s only one way for him to go and, despite Sal’s hopes that he’ll do otherwise, he gets his way in the end. (Or is that her end?) But salvation comes in many forms, and Lavonia takes matters into her own hands courtesy of an outfit (and a copy of Spanish Made Simple) purchased from Semper Fidelis, a traveling salesman for Frederico’s Of Wisconsin, and transforms herself into Lola Langusta (“she’s hotter than a Mexican’s lunch”) the number one stripper at the local titty bar. Lola slips Lamar a Mickey while he’s soaking up the sights on his way home form work one day, and the next thing he knows he’s semi-conscious, tied to a bed and on the receiving end of the “black sock treatment” from Lola, which does seem to solve his problem. Unfortunately the solution only seems to hold for the time he’s half out of it, and once he’s awake he’s back to his old ways. After a highly unsuccessful visit to the local dentist/marriage counselor, where Lavonia gets it on with the hot-to-trot dental assistant and a giant two-headed dildo and Lamar is terrorized by the ultra-flamboyant dentist/marriage counselor, they head to the only place left to turn—the over-abundantly endowed radio evangelist Eufalia Roop, whose devotion to the lord is matched only by her devotion to sex. Needless to say, her version of the laying on of hands is significantly more than spiritual and—lo and behold—it does the trick and makes a proper fucker out of Lamar and he and Lavonia apparently live happily ever after. After all, this is Small Town, USA. Even though I’ve spilled the beans on most of this tale, there’s so much I’m leaving out that you’ve gotta see it for yourself (maybe twice) to soak it all in.
—the Kommandant