Vixen! (1968)
Directed by: Russ Meyer
Written by: Anthony-James Ryan, Robert Rudelson, Russ Meyer
Starring: Erica Gavin, Garth Pillsbury, Harrison Page, Jon Evans
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: 70 mins
REVIEWED BY: Dr Lenera
In the Canadian Bush live pilot Tom Palmer and his wife Vixen. They love each other, and don’t lack for a sex life, but Tom is often away on chartered flights transporting fishermen and nature lovers to the wild, some of them even staying at the small lodge operated by the pair. Tom is happily oblivious to the fact that Vixen has a voracious sexual appetite and will try to shag every man in the vicinity, and sometimes even a woman. Into this situation come not only the latest stayers at the lodge Dave and Janet, but Vixen’s brother Judd, his African-American draft-dodger friend Niles whom Vixen can’t stand, and Irish communist radical Mr. O’Bannion….
It doesn’t seem anywhere near as long as it has been since I watched and reviewed Arrow’s releases of Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls and The Seven Minutes, which were boob-loving smut purveyor Russ Meyer’s two forays into studio fare. Very good fun they were too, and hardly compromised efforts, but for some reason they didn’t spur me on to check out more from a writer/director [plus a lot of other things whom I’ve heard a fair bit about over the years but had never sampled until 2016 when the Arrow disc came out]. Well, along to the rescue comes Severin Films and three examples of prime Meyer which form a loose trilogy. I certainly had some idea of what to expect, though did I expect Vixen!, a tiny budgeted shame-free, comedic sex romp which consists mostly of one woman – and a genuinely racist one at that – screwing everything in sight until something resembling tension makes itself known in the final act as well as some hall-assed political commentary, to be so utterly entertaining? It probably shouldn’t be. A rewatch of Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls reminded me of the strange, almost cartoon-like world of exaggeration and unabashed lust in which many of Meyer’s films appear to take place. This one was prosecuted for charges of obscenity in some American states, and is still banned in some places in Ohio but, despite some obvious instances where Meyer is just trying to wind people up as he breaks taboos, seen from 2025, there’s a peculiar kind of innocence on display. The script almost feels like it was the result of a 14-year old boy given carte blanche to put in whatever he wanted as he wrote it; he then directed the actors to talk as if they’re in a comic book. Along with Meyer’s very distinct style of editing which keeps the film moving forward at a lively pace, the result is rather infectious if no more sophisticated than a Carry On movie.
The Canadian Flag with the credits scrolling up it is the first thing that we see, then shots of the locale and mockingly used grandiose music heard behind a narrator who sets the scene, this environment being a place that few go to despite the natural riches that are to be found. Here, the bush pilots are what it’s all about, people who “had to know a little bit about everything in order to survive”. Pilot Tom lands and chats to the mechanic, and right away the conversation seems a bit off, the two men talking so obviously about something though neither seems to be aware of the obviousness. It might take some getting used to to for some Meyer virgins, but the dialogue in his films is obviously, from what I’ve experienced, often like this, so surely it’s much better to see it as a stylistic choice that some will like and some won’t, rather than a flaw? The subject of chat is, of course, Tom’s wife Vixen. “A young girl can get kinda restless when her husbands away like that….I’d hate any of these rugged outdoor types try to take advantage of her” says the mechanic. “She might tease but knows where to draw the line” replies Tom. To Tom, Vixen is not just a loving wife, she’s responsible because she looks after her brother”. “I didn’t know Vixen was all that responsible, Tom” replies the mechanic, and then we cut Vixen, in just bra and panties, pretending to flee from a rugged outdoor type, then lying down so he can have sex with her, though for her he’s rather slow getting her panties off, after which the music on the soundtrack reaches a sort of “climax” just so that we get the idea. She can’t stay and talk afterwards though, because she has to shoot off and meet Tom. On her away home two guys on bikes annoy her. One is her brother Judd, whom she soon offers “a free ride“[!], and one is Judd’s black mate Niles wh0m Vixen keeps racially insulting, while Niles wonders if “she’s ready for some dirty primitive loving”, and gets most angry when she calls him a draft-dodger.
Judd and Niles decide to go and check out some broads down town, while Tom and Vixen’s new lodgers Dave and Janet have arrived. A great example of how things are often propelled forward is here, as we cut from Vixen saying “shall we go inside?” to Vixen and Dave dancing a few hours later, though have we seen a woman suggestively dancing with a fish before? However, the next sex scene that we see is between Vixen and Tom, amusingly over the top in its energetic passion, and intercut with Dave and Janet in bed. Janet wants some, but Dave says that he’s tired; the main reason for his reticence though is that he’s thinking of Vixen, and Janet knows it. It’s nice that Tom and Vixen are shown to have a good physical relationship; most stories where the wife sleeps around have the husband not being much interested in satisfying her. Tom most definitely is, and Vixen tells him that he’s “number one”, something which I don’t think is a lie; it’s just not enough for the nymphomaniac. The next day Tom and Vixen take Dave and Janet out fishing; you just know that Vixen’s going to have Dave at some point here, but it’s a surprise that she also gets her way with Vivian, introducing her into the world of Sapphic pleasure. And then – well the seeds have already been sown for Vixen’s next sexual adventure which will make some feel queasy, though the sudden shift to serious threat from harmless hijinks is well managed; Meyer ain’t playing the former for laughs, even though he does with most other things in this movie without always seeming to, which is quite clever really. Then the sex goes to be replaced by some simple political commentary which, among a couple of other things, clearly sympathises with Niles’s situation, meaning that the film doesn’t support Vixen’s racist attitude.
Indeed, some modern viewers will find the multitude of slurs aimed at Niles from Vixen to be very unpleasant, and you probably wouldn’t hear them in a new film, but here’s the thing; a person like Niles in 1968 would have probably had to suffer such insults, and from people who may not have known how hurtful they are, though I do wonder why Meyer and his co-writers Robert Rudelson and Anthony-James Ryan made their heroine be the one to say these things, a heroine who, ignoring what many of us feel about marital fidelity, ain’t really a bad person; she loves her husband, doesn’t lie and successfully [though partly due to his dimness] hides her cheating from her husband. But then again this film was made at a time when things weren’t so squeaky clean as they’ve now become with this kind of thing. In any case, Erica Palmer truly throws herself into her role, genuinely looking like she’s having fun in the part except for in her lesbian scene which she seems to be struggling to convincingly pull off; Vincene Wallace isn’t too good in the same scene either, and one wonders if its general awkwardness is largely due to Meyer being far more interested in the plentiful straight sex elsewhere. Of course it seems very tame now [Meyer doesn’t even like showing nether regions], but it’s understandable how it, along with Vixen’s loose and unjudged morals, caused so much of a sensation back in 1968. Whether the scenes are erotic probably comes down more to personal preference than anything else; I found the euro lounge-style scoring, by Fredeic Bavro though uncredited here, to be distracting even though I really liked the music. And was Meyer actually trying to be erotic?
The editing of Meyer and Richard S. Brummer is very notable, with a lot of cross cutting between scenes and speeding up of the narrative without ever getting confusing. One of the best examples is when Tom is awaiting his wife in bed. “Come on Vixen, this moment’s been on my mind all day” he says as we cut to her washing topless in the river and we here her voice saying “so you can wait a bit longer”, before we cut back to him in bed, then her suddenly now standing in the doorway in her dressing gown. I see just a bit of Sam Peckinpah here and there in terms of the editing; I’m not at all claiming that Meyer is anywhere near as great as a filmmaker, but he certainly has technical skill and a rather unique approach. He doesn’t always get his performers to behave totally convincingly, but a director can get away with that if he or she has such an offbeat view of life; Meyer’s films appear to take place in some off-kilter version of the world in which we live in. Of course his tiny budget can’t help but show at times, but towards the end he hopes that viewers will be so engrossed in his fantasies that we either won’t notice [I probably only did because I’ve perhaps unfortunately trained myself to pick up on such things] or even care that, when a plane lands at what we’re informed is “a big international airport in Seattle’, what we actually see a rural runway which looks suspiciously like the one they took off from earlier which was supposed to be Tom’s.
Indeed for me, Vixen! only significantly fails with its climax which does provide some drama and even some action of a kind that doesn’t involve screwing, but also brings in more political elements rather too late in the day to have much impact and then dispenses with them too quickly. And are we intended to believe that Vixen is now reformed, in terms of one particular flaw? It seems too pat, but then again Meyer does end the film with a lingering shot of Vixen, her mouth becoming just a bit lustful as more potential “victims” approach. Maybe she’s a horror villain really?










SPECIAL FEATURES
UHD
Archival Audio Commentary with Co-Writer/Producer/Cinematographer/Co-Editor/Director Russ Meyer
Audio Commentary with Actress Erica Gavin
Trailer [1 mins]
BLU-RAY
Some will disagree, but it’s my view that very low budget films often don’t look that great restored in High Definition. They can’t look that great, and trying to make them so doesn’t always work. However, this restoration is just fabulous, and this is just from watching the Blu-ray as I can’t play USDs yet. Colours pop out, grain is evenly distributed, and skin tones are very natural. A certain softness to the image couldn’t be helped and that’s as it should be; we want films to look how they’re supposed to, without any digital tinkering. Marvelous!
1981 Censor Prologue (Theatrical Re-Release) [1 min]
This is a tongue-in-cheek dig at those who tried to ban the film on its first release, pleading our right to watch what we want and, indeed, for more human compassion and love in the world. Descending text plays over quick city shots and what I presume are clips from Meyer movies of a “titillating” kind.
Archival Audio Commentary with co-writer/Producer/Cinematographer/Co-Editor/Director Russ Meyer
Somehow you’d expect Meyer to deliver an unashamedly honest, frank and even at times crude commentary. Ported over from the 1997 Image Entertainment laserdisc release, this is an absolute gem of a track of a kind that we don’t get much these days. Meyer tells story after story, some of them connected with this film, and a lot of them not, but he’s never ever boring. We learn that his first sexual experience was due to no less than Ernest Hemingway, who in World War 2 France let him into a hotel / brothel that he’d taken over even though he was very choosy about visitors, here about his relationship with Bella Starr among others, and how his early film of a French peepshow only got printed when they had so little money because a girl would have sex with the Eastman Kodac printer! Roger Ebert is mentioned a bit. What was his price was for working with Meyer? Screenwriter’s guild money and a “great big blonde”. Meyer admits that he sacked production manager George Costello for having a relationship with Erica and her tiring him out! There are times when Meyer is a bit hard to hear, and he talks [“! was just a no good shit looking for pussy”] in a way which is probably un-PC in these increasingly strict times, but I had a ball with this track.
Audio Commentary with Actress Erica Gavin
Gavin and Severin Films honcho David De Valle chat in this track, and, while it can’t match Meyer’s [what can?], it’s still a great listen, with De Valle asking just the right questions and gently moving things along, while Gavin is very receptive and open, and seems to be proud of the film. She tells of how she didn’t realise that one of her boyfriends Manny, was the cousin of Peter Carpenter, the guy who plays the mountie in the film, until many years later. She also recalls that Russ was actually very protective of the females on his sets, which he tended to run like a military camp. The highpoint has to be when she tells of how she couldn’t get into her character’s lesbian scene and didn’t want to do what she was asked. She improvised and Meyer liked it so much that he lay on the floor yelling “yes, yes” before crying “lunch, I’ve got to change my shorts”. Apparently a scene where a character is raped was significantly cut down from what was in the script. We definitely get the impression that Gavin, who was also in Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls, loved being in Meyer’s world, and her lively personality really shines through.
Woman… Or Animal? – Interviews With Actors Erica Gavin And Harrison Page [20 mins]
in this 2004 interview from Arrow’s DVD release, Gavin does say many of the things that she goes on to say in her commentary, though goes into more detail at times, such as when she appeared on a chat show with Meyer and feminist Betty Friedan but does deliver some new nuggets, like when at nighttime during the shoot Vincene Wallis would often sneak into Meyer’s room to give him blowjobs, after which we cut to Page, who slept in the same room as Meyer, expressing surprise at this! Page admits to really fancying Gavin at the time and recalls whispering “you feel so good” to Gavin’s eye during one scene when he’s on top of her and her crying as a reaction, which was used in the film. Gavin finishes by speaking movingly about Meyer’s death.
David Del Valle’s The Sinister Image with Guests Russ Meyer And Yvette Vickers [21 mins]
You may wonder what connection Vickers, known for films like Attack Of The Fifty Foot Woman, has with Meyer, but she was also photographed by him for Playboy, and she even brings two of such pictures to the interview, which we see. Russ says that he spent five years planning a monster movie which never happened, which is a great shame indeed, before Del Valle takes him through a lot of his career before suddenly having to wrap up because of time constraints/ It seems that the little known The Immoral Mr.Teas was really a landmark film in terms of liberalising sexual content in American cinema, while Meyer’s output is more diverse than I thought; he even went through a “Gothic” period.
Entertainment… Or Obscenity? – Marc Edward Heuck on the Film’s Historic Cincinnati Censorship Battles [13 mins]
Heuck begins by presenting some good things in Cincinatti before balancing this good with “the biggest god damn bluenoses in the mid-West”. His recounting of an often bonkers censorship war where several cinemas were raided by the Vice Squad and prints, including two of Vixen which were very hard to get back, were taken, is often just bizarre. At one point the New Guild Tbeatre was almost retroactively prosecuted for showing the film before it had been deemed obscene. The featurette finishes with Heuck showing us one of these prints which were deemed such a danger to society, along with its impound tag and shipping label.
Trailer [1 min]
The RUSS MEYER SUPER BUNDLE Contains
Russ Meyer’s Vixen. [2-Disc 4K UHD w/Slipcover]
Russ Meyer’s Supervixens [2-Disc 4K UHD w/Slipcover]
Russ Meyer’s Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens [2-Disc 4K UHD w/Slipcover]
Russ Meyer’s Bosomania [T-Shirt]
RM. Business Card [original vintage]
Russ Meyer Films Catalog [original vintage]
RM. Films Envelope [original vintage]
A Clean Breast Flyer [original vintage]
Supervixens postcard [original vintage]
Supervixens VHS sleeve [original vintage]
Erica Gavin SIGNED Vixen VHS sleeve [original vintage]
Vixen VHS Label [original vintage]
Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens VHS label [original vintage]
Although it doesn’t always come off when it tries to get political, “Vixen!” is mostly nothing less than good clean dirty fun and I had a ball with it. Recommended!
MORE RUSS MEYER “BOSOMANIA”, COURTESY OF SEVERIN FILMS, TO FOLLOW!
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