SuperVixens
Directed and Written by Russ Meyer
Starring Shari Eubank, Charles Pitt, Charles Napier, Uschi Digard, John Lazar
Unrated
Running time 1 hour and 46 minutes
Available on 4K Blu-ray from Severin Films

by "Doc" Hunter Bush, Podcast Director

Synopsis:

Following the 'serious' features The Seven Minutes and Black Snake, this 1975 return to form written, photographed, edited, produced, and directed by Russ Meyer remains perhaps his most over-the-top and savagely entertaining epic of all: when a hot-blooded wife (Shari Eubank) and a psychotic cop (a startling performance from Charles Napier of The Blues Brothers fame) come together, it will ignite a cross-country odyssey of violence, vengeance, and relentless coitus. John Lazar (Beyond the Valley of the Dolls), Uschi Digard (Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens) and Haji (Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!) co-star in Russ' "super-sexy live-action Road Runner cartoon" (Empire), now restored by Severin Films in conjunction with The Russ Meyer Trust and scanned in 4K from the original negative stored at The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

What Features Make it Special:

Archival Audio Commentary with writer/cinematographer/producer/director Russ Meyer
Russ Meyer Versus the Porn-Busters - Mike Carroll interview with Russ Meyer
The Return of Harry Sledge - interview with Charles Napier
The Incredibly Strange Film Show season 1, episode 5: Russ Meyer
Trailer
TV spot

As the second installment in director Russ Meyer's loosely-defined Vixens trilogy, SuperVixens is maybe as odd a duck as the first but in a completely different way. The original Vixen (1968) dealt with race issues in a gleefully confrontational, shocking, and immature-seeming way. SuperVixens abandons race as a flashpoint to focus on violence, and that violence oscillates from incredibly brutal to openly Looney Tunes. All of which I mention as preamble so that you know what you're getting into.

Now, as to why you should own it: It's pretty great. Everything in the film that ISN'T the cheesecake makes for a pretty damn engaging, if admittedly bizarre, thriller about an obsessed cop (the great Charles Napier, who got his start in films from Russ Meyer) determined to destroy the life of a man he just doesn't like (Charles Pitt). Now, in the context of this as a softcore film, that violence is jaw-droppingly savage. Harry (Napier) beats Clint's (Pitt) wife to death in the bath, framing Clint for the murder, then tracks him across the country to try and do it again when Clint finally settles down with his new dream-woman (Shari Eubank, who also plays the wife in the beginning).

The cheesecake, for what it's worth, is great. Everybody's attractive, the humor in the middle section works just fine, and the acting is charmingly heightened. As always, Meyer's direction is honestly really great. If you enjoy the kind of Dutch-angle, stylization-heavy shots of a director like Sam Raimi, they're present here, as is Meyer's tendency towards bright colors with dramatic lighting, and an appreciation for the beauty of nature.

The special features were also really fascinating. I was only really familiar with Russ Meyer by reputation–I know OF some of his more famous works (Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls) but have never seen them. I knew of him mostly as the punchline from an episode of Seinfeld (S4 E23, "The Pilot"). But after listening to these commentaries, and watching the interviews with both Meyer and Napier, I started to not only get a better idea of Meyer as a creator, but as a person. He opted to essentially retire in '78 rather than make hardcore pornography, which held no real interest to him as a filmmaker. For someone painted by censorship groups as a smut-peddler, there's a real honor and respectability to the man.

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