Woman or animal?

“Vixen!” is yet another masterpiece from Russ Meyer. The title character is a nymphomaniacal beauty living in the Canadian bush country with her pilot husband, who knows no bounds when it comes to satisfying her voracious sexual appetite. Vixen gets it on with everyone : one of her husband’s clients, his wife, her own brother… everyone, except her brother’s black best friend. For Vixen, a sexual ultra-liberal, is an extreme-right conservative when it comes to race. She is also ultra-conservative in her attitude to communism. Can she warm up to her black nemesis if it’s the only way to save him from the clutches of an evil commie?

If the above summary sounds weird, it’s because the movie is. After a first hour of non-stop softcore scenes, interspersed with some hilarious dialogue, including some delicious bickering between Vixen and the black Niles, the film ends with a confrontation aboard a plane between Vixen, her husband, Niles and an undercover communist trying to hijack the plane to Cuba. This is after all Russ Meyer.

Watching Vixen, I couldn’t help but wonder if Meyer wasn’t the main inspiration for Paul Verhoeven. The man was making exploitation movies with socio-political messages when the Dutchman was still in diapers. “Vixen!” is pure B-Movie sexploitation, but it is strange in its refusal to adhere to conventions. Vixen is a “sex machine” as one character calls her, with no apparent moral reservations. Yet her quest for sexual gratification is strangely innocent, like a survival instinct (hence the “animal” in the film’s slogan, which is hardly derogatory). Vixen actually gives happiness to everyone : her husband is a happy fulfilled man (“no one satisfies me like you do”, Vixen tells him after one hot night); her seduction of a client and then his wife mends their broken marriage.  And the  movie  doesn’t criticise her, nor does it give her a purgatory ending. Rather, the film ends with her apparently shedding her only fault : her racism.

Meyer succeeds in cramming a lot of political and social issues into the few non-sex scenes : the Vietnam war, the malaise of American blacks, differences between the US and Canada, the communist ideal (excellently and attractively laid out by the communist character, before he turns out to be a hypocrite). Meyer also succeeds in never taking a clear stance on most issues, the ambiguity providing fodder for after-movie reflection and discussion.

Oh and one last thing : Erica Gavin is hot! if you see this movie on the Arrow DVD, be sure to check out the new interview with her for some great insight on Meyer’s working ethics and the effect of “Vixen!” on her subsequent life. And she still looks hot, although in a very different way.

Planet Terror tries too hard…

Just saw the second of the “Grindhouse” movies, Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror. Living in France, I got to see the movies as two separate releases rather than the combined double-feature the directors intended. For the un-initiated, Grindhouse was originally released as a double feature, along with four trailers for non-existent movies, designed to recreate the atmosphere of a double-bill evening at a B-movie theater (a grindhouse, hence the name). When this concept tanked at the US box-office, they decided to split the movie in two, releasing Tarantino’s Death Proof first to raise momentum for the Rodriguez movie. Judging by people around me, the first movie didn’t do so well, so I don’t think the second will make a killing either.

I have to say I personally LOVED Death Proof. I am a bit of a B-movie fan myself (though I’d call myself a “casual” fan compared to some of my friends), and Death Proof pushed just the right buttons, referencing exactly the kind of movie I like. Seeing Planet Terror after it proved to be a disappointment. While I’d hardly call the film bad (in fact, it’s quite entertaining) I didn’t come out with that incredibly giddy feeling I got after Death Proof (I couldn’t stop thinking or talking about that movie for two days). The main problem, I think, comes from the two different approaches: Tarantino goes for a subtle treatment, making what is unmistakably a Tarantino movie while paying homage to his beloved genres (and not in an over-stylized Kill Bill vein, either). Rodriguez, on the other hand, goes for all-out fireworks, taking every genre cliché and blowing it out of proportion, making it sometimes look more like a parody than a tribute.

One aspect illustrates this perfectly: both directors decided to “deteriorate” the film reels, giving the movies the scratchy, decaying feel of original grindhouse movies, complete with jump cuts and de-synchronized soundtracks. While Tarantino does this with finesse, hardly allowing it to obscure what’s going on on-screen, Rodriguez goes at it with childlike glee, totally messing up parts of the movie (at one cringe-inducing moment, interrupting a steamy sex-scene with a strategically placed “missing reel”).

While there are moments of witty dialogue, extremely funny scenes, and some rather likeable characters (not to mention GORGEOUS women), it just gets too over-the-top at times. I think in its original context, this movie would have worked well, providing the madcap first-act and allowing Tarantino to finish up with a classier conclusion. As it is, the reshuffled release does this film a disservice.

Note that of the four fake trailers, only one made it to the European shores: Machette, shown just before Planet Terror. I had already seen all four (thank heaven for YouTube) and this was easily the best of the bunch. It looked great on the big screen.

In the beginning…

Having milked every possible film franchise first by endless sequels, then by remakes, the studios are now turning towards “prequels”, with atrocities like Hannibal Rising and Texas Chainsaw Masacre : the Beginning. At least Sylvester Stallone had the dignity not to give us a movie about Rocky Balboa’s high school days. For that alone, he deserves your respect.