Directed by Russ Meyer
Written by Russ Meyer
Starring:
- Shari Eubank as Super Angel / Super Vixen
- Charles Napier as Harry Sledge
- Uschi Digard as Super Soul / Telephone Operator
- Charles Pitt as Clint Ramsey
- Henry Rowland as Martin Bormann
- Christina Cummings as Super Lorna (credited as Christy Hartburg)
- Colleen Brennan as Super Cherry (credited as Sharon Kelly)
Rating: 
Speechless? Dumbfounded? Laughing through tears? Wondering what I just watched? That about sums up my reaction to Supervixens, Russ Meyer’s unhinged sex farce of epic proportions. Whether I loved it or was just too stunned to hate it, something about it made me—if only for a minute—consider it a masterstroke of American satire. Discussing the film’s sex comedy is a moral and intellectual labyrinth, but let’s start here: it features perhaps the most random, absurdly funny and oddly enjoyable murder scene ever committed to celluloid.
After the commercial failure of Black Snake—Russ Meyer’s first foray into blaxploitation—the raunchy maestro of American sexploitation returned to familiar ground: voluptuous women entangled in a gleefully violent, absurdly sexy, pulp-infused narrative. In his outrageously naughty Vixen! (1968)—one of the defining prototypes of American softcore cinema—Meyer’s approach to sex was euphoric and unrestrained. In this quasi-sequel, however, it’s clear that he’s pushing the envelope even further, venturing into an oversexed self-parody of his signature style. In Supervixens, Meyer’s mythology of bosomy women reaches its zenith—everything is super. The violence is more outrageous than ever, and the sex is hornier, wilder, and even more cartoonishly exaggerated than in any of his previous films.
Supervixens is the ultimate Russ Meyer film. By that, I don’t necessarily mean it’s his finest—Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! still holds that title, in my view—but it most perfectly captures the director’s eccentric cinematic flair. You don’t just watch Supervixens; you savor it. But how can a film so saturated with violence and vulgarity be so strangely delightful? I’m not entirely sure, but I can say this: Supervixens’ improper artfulness is, somehow, good cinema. Meyer may present one of the most absurd and hyper-masculine interpretations of human sexuality, but within that caricature lies a surprisingly honest, non-judgmental, and joyfully liberal spirit. Ultimately, it’s satire—but not the bitter or biting kind. It’s a satire we can all enjoy, so long as we leave moral solemnity at home and don’t bring it to the theater. Lurid themes sell across every medium, and Russ Meyer knew it. That’s why, in Supervixens, he serves up a gleeful cocktail of sex and violence—an aphrodisiacal spectacle that makes for an unseemly, unforgettable time at the movies.
The SUPERplot featuring SUPERwomen endowed with colossal bosoms and SUPERmen gifted with humongous faux rubber penises makes no sense at all—well, a Russ Meyer movie should never make any sense—but with irony and unabashed sarcasm, Russ Meyer’s Supervixens chronicles the story of hapless gas station attendant Clint Ramsey (Charles Pitts), a virile man who lives under constant surveillance by his obsessive, nymphomaniacal girlfriend SuperAngel (Shari Eubank). She doesn’t trust Clint’s manly instincts, and believes he has been unfaithful with a beautiful, curvaceous client. SuperAngel, desperate to get Clint’s attention, threatens to burn down all his things and the house they both live in. In a heated argument between the pair, the malicious and tough local cop Harry (Charles Napier) intervenes by beating Clint. Now SuperAngel sets his sights on Harry’s overbearing masculinity and decides to abandon Clint. The mood of the plot is always that of a cartoon, things occur that only in an irrational realm would make sense. The momentous, awesome scene I mentioned at the beginning, happens when SuperAngel discovers the cop’s sexual impotence and she humiliates him for it, so he takes revenge on her by murdering her in the most hysterical manner you can think of; it’s like slapstick by way of grindhouse. Supervixens without the quirky rhythmic violence of that legendary scene wouldn’t be the same. That’s the scene that makes the movie. It’s thanks to the orgasmic brutality of that scene that the rest of the movie feels…shall we say, normal.
Russ Meyer’s feverish editing coordinated by some of the most physically incoherent camera angles I’ve ever seen resolves the best sequence in the entire hypersexual mythology of his filmography. It’s as if there is a before and after. And even though nothing that comes after that glorious sequence is as good, the simple fact that it happened keeps you in a mesmerized state until the very end. Holding much of the film together is Shari Eubank, easily one of Meyer’s top-tier leading ladies. She gives a bold dual performance as both the over-the-top, chaotic SuperAngel and her total opposite, the calm and radiant SuperVixen—a character who is essentially SuperAngel reborn, but emotionally reversed. Eubank’s unforgettable curves and screen presence, combined with the sheer gusto she brings to both roles, contribute massively to the film’s nonstop entertainment. She’s a walking, talking highlight reel—handling all the sleaze and satire with radiant flair. Along the anarchic journey, Clint encounters a variety of compulsive nymphomaniacs, some nicer than others, among them softcore porn star and pin up model Uschi Digard, who plays SuperSoul, a sultry Austrian woman married to a farmer.
Russ Meyer’s sex comedy offers an alternative look at human sexuality, where sex is less a reproductive act or an expression of love than a pleasurable romp. The sexual revolution is celebrated from the most burlesque and animated angles—it is pure sleazy extravaganza, raw and carnivalesque. I still don’t fully understand how Meyer’s enthusiasm for close-ups of oversized female bosoms—more than faces—is so communicable, so infectious. Maybe I’ll never grasp it from a philosophical point of view, but on a more practical level, I’m firmly convinced that Supervixens is one of the most maddeningly fucked-up funny movies I’ve ever seen. While violence and sex are not reciprocal in real life, in the farcical realm of Supervixens, they become not only miraculously cinematic but also compulsively diverting.
