Review of Vixens Trilogy Box Set, The (Russ Meyer)

Introduction

You can buy the three movies in this box set individually, but Arrow is also issuing them in a box set. The movies are also reviewed under their individual titles:

Vixen
First in the Vixen trilogy and sharing nothing in common with the other two pictures in the series apart from the word Vixen in the title. For this picture, the title was a veiled reference to a popular lesbian drama The Fox (1967, based on the DH Laurence novel). Erica Gavin stars as Vixen Palmer, Canadian nymphomaniac. Married to a charter pilot, she cheerfully bonks anyone who comes to hand while hubby is flying tourists in and out of the area. She`ll even shag her biker brother. However, there is one person she steadfastly refuses to get jiggy with and that`s her brother`s pal Niles - and that`s because he`s black. Played for sensuality rather than laughs, there is one bizarre moment where Vixen gets it on with a trout while go-go-dancing to seduce a newly-arrived tourist husband.

Supervixens
This is the one with the stick of dynamite up the arse. Made in 1973, it was Meyer`s return to the kind of film he had been making before his brief dalliance with the mainstream. After the toned-down Meyerism of Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls, the courtroom drama The Seven Minutes and the melodrama Black Snake, Meyer went back to what he did best - strong women with big boobs. Clint Ramsey (Charles Pitt) is an ineffectual mechanic at Martin Bormann`s desert gas station, married to a very strong woman SuperAngel (Shari Eubank). A domestic incident between the two of them escalates out of control when the local redneck psycho cop Harry Sledge (Charles Napier) intervenes. He murders SuperAngel (in a pretty vicious sequence) and plans to pin the killing on Clint, who goes on the run. On his odyssey he encounters a number of superwomen, eventually running into a doppelganger of his dead wife who runs a gas station. Then the psycho cop turns up...

Beneath The Valley Of The Ultra-Vixens
Made in 1979 and starring the magnificent Francesca "Kitten" Natividad as frustrated nymphomaniac Lavonia Shedd, "Beneath" is (like all Meyer`s movies) a twisted morality tale about small-town America. Married to junkyard worker Lamar (weaselly Ken Kerr), Lavonia`s active sex life is only spoiled by Lamar`s preference for the back passage, which does little for her and is otherwise just a pain in the ass. She hatches a plot to convert Lamar`s tastes by seducing him as stripper Lola Langusta. The last of the Meyer legacy and while not the best, it`s a personal favourite. Cheerfully riding roughshod over good taste and decency, this satire on the values of small-town America sometimes shows moments of sheer inspiration (the cartoon violence that was a little too straightforward in Supervixens is diluted by characters bleeding in a rainbow of colours other than red.)

Video

All three movies are presented in 4:3, although all were shot 1.85 Title Safe. None of the movies have survived the years terribly well, and the disc masters were authored from original materials some way removed from original camera negatives or reference quality prints. All things considered, however, Arrow has done an excellent job of bringing these films to disc, given their previous history in both the cinema and home video market.

Audio

The three movies were made with very plain vanilla Mono soundtracks which are reproduced in Dolby Digital 2.0.

Features

All three films have audio commentaries from the director himself and a reel of trailers for the films in the collection (as well as some coming attractions.) Vixen and Ultra-Vixens have additional interviews with the stars (presented in 16:9). There are no subtitles.

Conclusion

You either get Russ Meyer or you don`t. You either look on him as a pornographer or an advocate of strong-willed, proactive women with healthy sexual appetites and an ability to kick ineffectual male ass. The Vixen Trilogy picks up and runs with the themes Meyer made his name with in Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill, filling the screen with spectacularly Amazon women, creepy men and Looney-Tunes influenced violence. If you like your movies trashy, Meyer`s your man.