The classic adult movie was all about passion. In 1965 the law prevented the genre from exploring sexual passion so the passion often came in the form of violence. It's all well and good to condemn the violent misogyny of the 1960s adult film but it's irresponsible to blame the creators. The authors of the violence in LORNA were State censorship boards, ambitious politicians, protestant church groups and the Catholic church, all of whom found violence against women far more acceptable than nudity and who forced their sickness on the movie industry. It's tempting to think "in 1965 you could show breasts but not pubic hair," but the reality was far more complex. The censors had complete arbitrary control and dictated the entire tone of a movie. The early 1960s was a world where people were arrested for using the wrong words. (There are many recordings available today of Lenny Bruce being arrested, hand-cuffed and dragged off stage for using bad language, so one needn't take my word for it.) Yes, you could show breasts but characters couldn't use bad language or describe sex in any literal way. Aside from nipples the 1965 adult film was tamer than today's prime time TV. In one scene here we hear Lorna begging Jim to do some particular thing in bed but we have no clue what it is. On TV today we would know exactly what it is.

Even by Meyer's own standards the carnival barker/medicine show claim that star Lorna Maitland is "the new standard of beauty by which all women shall be judged" is extraordinary.

The story of a new breed of SUPERWOMEN emerging out of the ruthlessness of our times. We are introduced to three BUXOM Go-Go girls: VARLA, ROSIE, and BILLIE, wildly dancing the Watusi before the leers, jeers and lecherous come-ons of their drooling all-male audience. The violence, implicit in the girls' tease, is quickly moved out of the microcosmic bar into the outside world as they literally let go of themselves, embarking on a wild, violent, deadly journey of vengeance on all men. VARLA, the outrageously abundant KARATE MASTER leader of the pack, breaks the arms and back of one man, runs her Porsche over two others, grinds a fourth, a muscleman, against a wall and, eventually, deliberately goes down the path of her own self-destruction, dragging her two BUXOTIC cohorts along with her."

"Welcome to the world of female violence. Meet the sumptuously sexy Varla, played at full throttle and with well-upholstered relish by the half-Japanese, half-Cherokee Tura Satana. She's having a lovely time with her two go-going pals, dancing the Watusi in a sleazy bar packed with leering, jeering macho-men. And after a hard day's grooving, what better than a drag race in the desert? So it's off we go, hurtling across the California sands as we follow the trio of homicidal go-go gals, hell bent on wreaking revenge on all things male, as they embark on a desperate desert drive-thru, taking a bikini-clad wimp hostage and leaving a trail of human wreckage in their wake. Filmed in glorious black and blue, Faster Pussycat has been hailed as "the best movie ever made" and a "definite Desert Island Movie". Celluloid proof that Russ Meyer is a complete and utter cult."

Vixen is an inveterate racist willing to bed her brother but not his best friend and fellow motorcycle fiend who happens to be black. The poor guy suffers Vixen's prick-teasing and racist taunts at every turn until he falls in with the Irish Republican Army. (Weird enough for ya'?) VIXEN is as political as everything else made in 1968.

Here's how good Russ Meyer was. A little after this movie Gary Graver starred VIXEN star Erica Gavin in ERIKA'S HOT SUMMER. Graver was a good director and cinematographer. He was as professional as adult directors got. But VIXEN is about 10 times better than ERIKA'S HOT SUMMER. Russ Meyer was 10 times better than good.

Our hero Clint Ramsey is in the Meyer mold, a solid guy working a dead-end job at a gas station to support his voluptuous unfaithful and wholly wicked wife, Supervixen. She is well named, being even more unrepentantly wicked than her predecessor in VIXEN. She beds a psychotic cop named Harry Sledge who cannot perform despite being enormously endowed. (Meyer used a Tinto Brass style over-sized rubber appendage) When Supervixen begins mercilessly taunting Sledge for his impotence he kills her in a remarkable sequence that probably provided some inspiration for the James Gandolfini vs. Patricia Arquette scene in TRUE ROMANCE. Sledge is played by Charles Napier, one of the most durable (110+ movies) character actors of our time. I think his best known role is as the cop who serves Hannibal Lecter the rare lamb chops in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and gets beaten to death with his own nightstick. Anyway, when Sledge pins Supervixen's death on Clint our hero flees, beginning a cross-country odyssey marked by continual temptation from America's voluptuous and nymphomaniacal superwomen.

Particularly weird funny Meyer joke: Clint's works at "Martin Bormann's Texaco" and his boss is actually Martin Bormann. (Bormann, Hitler's right-hand man, is generally believed to have died in 1945 but because his body wasn't found all sorts of conspiracy theories arose. In the 1970s there were claims Bormann was living in Brazil, Chile, and elsewhere.)

"Russ Meyer's SUPERVIXENS is the epitome of twenty years of gut-tearing film making, a rural "Fellini," geared for the young and old alike, the sophisticate and the blue collar...and in each blazing scene, the ring of truth. Never before has Meyer revealed so much of himself, or taken such umbrage with his personal life...scenes bulging with love, violence and unrelenting hate...each scene bearing his own indelible stamp."

Russ Meyer's "tried and true" formula is on-target again...outrageously buxom women and dumb, muscular men laying their sexually aggressive prowess on the line. Yes, it's all here in Russ Meyer's UP! Two-timers, cops, robbers, joints, and mind-boggling, bra-busting women. SWEET LI'L ALICE ...fast, foxy, and fertile. the HEADPERSON (Candy Samples aka Mary Gavin)...awesome abundance. POCOHONTAS...cantilevered, protuberant. the CHESTY YOUNG THING...conical, unrestrained. LIMEHOUSE...pneumatic bliss - oriental style. GWENDOLYN...what a pair of jungle drums. the GREEK CHORUS (Kitten Natividad)...the biggest and the best, and the "smothering" MARGO WINCHESTER...assault with a deadly bosom, plus the usual assortment of good lookin', virile, awesomely hung, klutzy men. There's always somethin' BIG about a Russ Meyer movie!

At 57 Meyer's stock story had mellowed somewhat, drifting from tragi-comedy to farce. The cuckolded young husband set-up remains but the husband is just a boob offered for our derision and wife Kitten Natividad isn't presented as malign, just justifiably horny. The devotion to work that seemed sort of heroic in Vixen is now seen as cluelessness. (I doubt many aging men look back on their youth and say, "I wish I had spent more time at work and less time having sex with my wife.")

"Russ Meyer's Beneath the Valley of the UltraVIXENS...an all out assault on today's sexual mores, and more...an end-around attack against women's lib...blasting through the male machismo syndrome...kicking the crap out of convictions, hang-ups, obsessions...the whole bag...sexually aggressive females, willing klutzy men, petroleum jelly, gingham and gossamer, tax-sheltered religion, black socks, bedroom prowess, bunko artists, big breast fixation, rear window rednecks, therapeutic cuckolding, the sixty mile-an-hour zinger, born again immersion, unfaithful girlfriends, limp-wristed dentistry, and virile garbage men."