Review of Russ Meyer`s Up!

Introduction

Nothing to do with Frankie Howerd and his Up trilogy (...Pompeii, ...The Chastity Belt and ...The Front), but sharing a mission to titillate, amuse and offend. Up! was Russ Meyer`s 1976 offering, co-written by Meyer and Two-Thumbs-Up critic Roger Ebert. The story is a simple one of rape, revenge and retribution, studded with oversized breasts, filled with cartoonish violence and calculated to offend the most liberal soul.

Raven De La Croix stars as the wronged woman, out for revenge against a variety of perverts and ne`er-do-wells of the variety that inevitably populates a Russ Meyer movie. Nazis, perverts, crooked cops and loonies abound in this cheerfully sordid exercise.

Arrow have done a very nice job of the disc, in spite of the poor condition of the materials. The very nature of these movies means that they`ll never look as good as mainstream Hollywood product, but then if you`re a Russ Meyer aficionado you wouldn`t expect them to look anything more than the exploitation classics they are.

Video

Presented in its original 4:3, the movie has not aged well. I suspect that given the independent nature of its production, its storage and preservation has never been a great priority and the state the movie is in bears that out. There is a lot of handling damage to the print, and a lot of printed-in debris. Having said that, it all gives the movie that rough-and-ready feel that you`re watching both a real movie, and a real cheap movie at that.

The extras come in a variety of aspect ratios, including anamorphic 16:9 and letterboxed 16:9. If your player refuses to autoformat, you may find yourself getting annoyed switching to get the right aspect ratio.

Audio

A bog-standard mono soundtrack is reproduced in Dolby Digital 2.0.

Features

The disc is playable in regions 1-6. No subtitling or closed-captions are provided. There is an interview (shown in anamorphic 16:9) with the star of the film, Raven De La Croix reminiscing about making movies with Russ Meyer. There is also an interview with frequent Russ Meyer collaborator Kitten Natividad under the title "Pussy Galore Nite". This second interview is presented as letterboxed non-anamorphic 16:9. The extras are rounded off (ahem) with a trailer reel which covers much of Meyer`s output including Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill; Blacksnake (a title new to me which starred actress turned designer Anoushka Hempel and Carry On regular Percy Herbert); Mudhoney; Vixen; Wild Gals Of The Naked West; Supervixens; Beneath The Valley Of The Ultravixens; Cherry, Harry and Raquel; Common Law Cabin. All the trailers are presented 4:3 and suffer from generational and wear damage.

Conclusion

Russ Meyer is an acquired taste. You either get him or you hate him. His films are unashamed grindhouse exploitation, with a dash of Benny Hill humour. They are filled with grotesques that would make the likes of James Whale or the Coen brothers happy, and incredibly busty young women with a singular incapability to remain fully clothed. If you`re easily offended or terminally PC you`ll hate these pictures. Quentin Tarantino loves them, as do Mike Myers and our own Jonathan Ross (who may argue these days his daughter`s middle name of Kitten is not for the magnificently superstructured Ms Natividad whom he met on the film documentary series he introduced Russ Meyer`s movies to the UK). I love `em too.