SUPERVIXENS [1975] RUSS MEYER’S BOSOMANIA #2

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Directed by:
Written by:
Starring: , , ,

USA

AVAILABLE ON DUAL FORMAT 4K UHD & BLU-RAY, AND STANDALONE BLU-RAY: 27th January 2025
from SEVERIN FILMS UK Webstore 
and SEVERIN FILMS US Webstore
The RUSS MEYER SUPER BUNDLE also available on US store only [region free]

RUNNING TIME: 106 mins

REVIEWED BY: Dr Lenera

Supervixens

Garage mechanic Clint Ramsey probably just wants a quiet life, but everywhere he goes women just want him. After turning down a voluptuous lady who needed her car fixed, his jealous wife Supervixen demands that he return home immediately to satisfy her, but they have a row and he leaves her. She turns her attention to Sheriff Harry Sledge, but he isn’t turned on. She mocks him, so he brutally murders her and tries to pin the blame on Clint, who flees across America. However – as I said earlier – everywhere he goes women want him, even if they have partners, so life doesn’t get easier….

Despite the title, Supervixens isn’t really a sequel to Vixen!, even though many of its women – and this one is absolutely full of them – behave much the same say as the insatiable Vixen who was after anything in trousers. However, there is a scene later on in the film when a man says to our hero that he can stay with him and his wife at his fishing cabin, after which we cut o a woman, presumably his wife, screwing another guy. She’s blonde, unlike Vixen, but seeing as we also hear a rather different version of one of the pieces of music used in the 1968 movie on the soundtrack, this is clearly intended as a jokey references for fans. Supervixens is clearly set in the same world as Vixen!, though minus the political elements and with more threat. The jury is still a bit out for me as to whether Meyer is a great filmmaker, but, like many of the great filmmakers, a good example being the recently departed genius David Lynch, Meyer has a world view – cartoonlike, exaggerated, sexually liberated and with the women often stronger than the men – which is unique to him, meaning that describing his work as soft porn really doesn’t cut it at all, despite his fascination with big boobies, and boy does he love them, Vixen apparently being unique for a Meter woman  in that her mammaries aren’t that large. Supervixens is full of amusing picaresque raunchy incidents and its two sections of violent seriousness shouldn’t seem that out of place if you’re familiar with ’70s grindhouse-style stuff which would often switch from one kind of exploitation to another. The biggest question is what Meyer is trying to say about women here; its confused though celebratory portrayal of the fairer sex would be a field day for a psychiatrist.

More scrolling credits take place, this time over a desert where we can just about make out a vehicle winding its way into view. It’s a pick-up truck and it’s being driven by Martin Bormann, a German [accompanied by a very old German song] who owns a gas station. We know that we’re in Meyer Land almost immediately when the latest customer, replete with big knockers of course, starts flirting with Martin’s assistant Clint – well, I wouldn’t even call it flirting, she’s blatantly coming on to him. “Can I take it out in trade”? she purrs when the subject of money comes up. Hos wife Supervixen [all the ladies in this film are named after previous Meyer characters but with “super” added] rings and wants him to get some food for her cat and then come home and have sex with her. “I’m just not important to you” she whinges, and to be fair she’s gorgeous, but she doesn’t seem  to realise that he has to work for a living. Then she gets it into her head that Clint is going to or has had sex with this girl. and orders him to  get home, or she’ll burn down their house. He understandably has a go at her, she touches him up and they have sex, but the argument after, where she’s far more abusive than him ‘[“you have faggot friends and a rotten mother whore”!] as well as us learning that she may have been both a stripper and a hooker, results in him almost hitting her before he storms out, followed by her who takes an axe to his truck. The resulting physical struggle between the two is just comical, aa is the whole scene really, the language hardly realistic but flowing off the tongues of the performers as well as the dialogue of Quentin Tarantino. The neighbour calls the police but he’s not in trouble for long. As somebody says when she’s in hospital “she says he often beat her, it looks the other way round”.

The next day, Martin tells Clint that he can go home early, but his horrid wife won’t let him in, so, after giving her an “up yours” sign, accompanied by a few appropriate comedic musical notes, leaves for good. We now see that she’s with Sheriff Harry Sledge and we assume that some fun is going to be had between the two, right? Clint goes to drink in a bar and is immediately shown interest by the lady, known as SuperSoul, serving whilst naked except for flowers in certain areas. “I get off in two hours” she says, handing him a key, but, considering what he’s just been through, he’s not interested, putting her off with “I reckon Angel’s tits are bigger than yours”.  Meanwhile Harry can’t “get it up”, though it doesn’t help when he refuses a blowjob”, calling it “gay shit”, after which we get a brief shot of a very fake and rather long [considering it’s not supposed to be “up”] penis. But now things get nasty, and I imagine some viewers are jolted. She insults him, throws her drink over him and tells him to get out, but he punches her in the stomach. She manages to lock herself in the bathroom, but Harry repeatedly stabs into the door with a knife with frightening frenzy, eventually knocking it down and over SuperVixen, the knife piercing her because it had got stuck in the door. Then he drags her into the bathtub and stomps on her then, because she’s not quite dead yet, electrocuting her by throwing a radio into the water. Despite not much gore, this is a very grim scene, especially because SuperVixen has been painted so badly that we wonder if we’re being asked if she deserves all this. Then Harry burns the house down. He doesn’t do things by halves. Clint becomes a suspect because the insulted SuperSoul refuses to give him an alibi, so he leaves for nowhere in particular, but his adventures are only just beginning.

Clint just happens to be an unintentional babe magnet. Women throw themselves at him, sometimes successfully, sometimes not, but it always causes problems. One lady even has a boyfriend who’s extremely insulted that Clint turns down his girlfriend’s advances which occur right in front of him, so he ends up beaten, robbed and stranded. All this female attention never ends well. A mail-order bride from Austria [accompanied by Austrian such as a Strauss waltz, even rapes him, which is of course presented comedically, with the camera at one point cutting to her hubby drilling into the ground. Female to male rape is rarely tackled in movies and probably isn’t taken seriously enough generally, so we shouldn’t really expect a film, especially one from 1975 and written and directed by Russ Meyer, to handle it with sensitivity, but it’s hard to get offended, what with the sheer joy of fornication and the mystical beauty of large baps that seems to exist in most of Meyer. Perhaps surprisingly though, we do encounter an African-American [though with a white father[!]  black deaf-mute lady who’s presented just as sexily as the others, and gets one of the funniest final moments of all the characters in the film when she eventually really does encounter the man of her dreams in a truly bonkers moment which I won’t ruin by describing, you have to see  it for yourself. By now things have got borderline surreal. Women randomly dance a lot. Clint finds love again with an Angel lookalike, but Angel – or her ghost –  or her reincarnation – herself is also seen at times atop a mountain or in a lake. Meyer seems to delving into his psyche with perhaps not always being sure about what comes out, though he’s certainly able to provide a genuinely tense climax out in the desert, with just three characters and lots of dynamite.

The plentiful sex scenes are again brief, photographed so that we never get shots of nether regions, and varied enough so they don’t become monotonous. Perhaps the funniest is when a weightlifter is lifting a weight in time with thrusting. I’m not sure that Meyer is properly trying to turn a viewer on, even if I admit that large bazookas aren’t really my “thing”, but he certainly seems determined to get us all to shag. His sex acenes also seem to emphasis the women’s pleasure over the man’s, which is interesting indeed, especially considering when his movies were made, and not just because, as I type, I’m kept pondering on the view of women which Meyer has, or at least presents onscreen, but maybe I’m trying too read too much into this and am taking it too seriously. Meyer’s women just are. A different species, and often leading to trouble, not to mention a predilection for randomly dancing, but, as Roger Moore’s James Bond once said, “the compensations speak for themselves”. Of course I’m only thinking about all this because I’m writing about it; while watching the film it moves too fast for one to ponder, though saying that the romance between Clint and SuperAngel could have done with a couple more scenes for it to convince, the two seeming to full in love too quickly, and why does the Sheriff eventually show up again, seeing as there’s no real need for him to do so? But then by now things have got obviously symbolic – replete with loads of phallic symbolism – and almost surreal. And I’ve noticed something which is very unique about the way Meyer, who often also photographed and edited his films including this one, shoots. He refuses to move the camera, but to compensate shoots footage from a lot of angles.

Meyer uses a variety of music on the soundtrack, from bluegrass to a vague western piece to classical to The Battle Hymn Of The Republic, usually employed ironically or exaggeratedly. It works. Shari Euback does fairly well in her dual role, though in terms of performances it’s Napier’s totally convincing sadist and killer who will stick in the mind. I can understand those who consider him to not fit into a goofy sex comedy, but then again hopefully those people also understand how folk like me like the addition of some darkness and weight. Supervixens probably ought to be widely regarded as some sort of trash classic.

Rating: ★★★★★★★★☆☆

 

 

“Supervixens” probably showcases what Meyer is all about even more thanVixen!” A unsophisticated but delightfully absurdist world view put on screen, presented superbly on disc. Highly Recommended!

MORE RUSS MEYER “BOSOMANIA”, COURTESY OF SEVERIN FILMS, TO FOLLOW!

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About Dr Lenera 2016 Articles
I'm a huge film fan and will watch pretty much any type of film, from Martial Arts to Westerns, from Romances [though I don't really like Romcoms!]] to Historical Epics. Though I most certainly 'have a life', I tend to go to the cinema twice a week! However,ever since I was a kid, sneaking downstairs when my parents had gone to bed to watch old Universal and Hammer horror movies, I've always been especially fascinated by horror, and though I enjoy all types of horror films, those Golden Oldies with people like Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee probably remain my favourites. That's not to say I don't enjoy a bit of blood and gore every now and again though, and am also a huge fan of Italian horror, I just love the style.

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