Supervixens (1975)

Supervixens (1975) Directed by Russ Meyer

Speechless? Dumbfounded? Shocked? Ecstatic? The truth is that I still can’t put into words my ambivalent reaction to Russ Meyer’s extraordinary sex farce Supervixens. Whether positive or negative, the ineffable effect it left on me made me even briefly consider this to be one of the greatest American satires of all time. To discuss the sex comedy of Supervixens is to engage in a whole controversial dilemma. For starters, I don’t know how to explain it, but Supervixens features one of the most random, humorous and thoroughly enjoyable murder sequences ever made in the history of cinema.

After the commercial fiasco of Black Snake – Russ Meyer’s first attempt at blaxploitation filmmaking – the raunchy maestro of American sexploitation decided to revisit his roots, the territory he knows best: voluptuous women amidst a gleefully violent and absurdly sexy pulpy narrative. In his outrageously naughty Vixen! released in 1968 – one of the finest prototypes of American softcore cinema – the mirthful approach to sex is euphoric and unbridled; in this quasi-sequel, it is evident that Russ Meyer is pushing the envelope and venturing into a hyperbole of his 1968 film, which could even pass as a boisterous pantomime of his trademark style. In Supervixens Russ Meyer’s mythology of bosomy women achieves the superlative, everything is super. Therefore, the violence is much more over-the-top than in any of his other films, and the sex is much hornier than in any of his other cinematic worlds.

Supervixens is the ultimate Russ Meyer film. By this I don’t mean to imply that it’s his finest film per se – I believe that title is rightfully held by Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! – but let’s just say that it somehow best typifies the director’s eccentric cinematic flair. You don’t just enjoy Supervixens, you savor it. But how does a film with so much violence and so much vulgarity turn out to be delightful to watch? I don’t know exactly, but I can assert that Supervixens’ improper artfulness is good cinema. Russ Meyer may have one of the most absurd, androcentric interpretations of human sexuality, but in that caricature, there is an honest, non-judgmental and joyful liberal sentiment. Ultimately, it is a satire, but it is not an irate or an acerbic one; it is a satire that we can all have fun with as long as you leave the moral solemnity at home and don’t take it to the movies. Lurid themes sell in every medium, and Russ Meyer knows it; that’s why in Supervixens he proves that his audience’s fascination with consuming a colorful cocktail of violence and sex will ultimately be the aphrodisiac that will render his film an entertaining, unseemly 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. 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. However, the dual performance of Shari Eubank – in my opinion one of the best Meyerian women – playing the histrionic SuperAngel and then the pleasant and amiable SuperVixen – simply put a reincarnation of SuperAngel but in a diametrically opposed personality – has such an essential part in the plot that her curvy and striking image also has a lot to do with the immense entertainment that this movie embodies from start to finish. She is the epitome of fun, and handles the debauchery of both female characters with exquisite exuberance. Along the chaotic 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 is an alternative look at human sexuality, where sex is more a pleasurable romp than a reproductive end or an expression of love between two people. The sexual revolution being celebrated from the most burlesque and animated perspectives. I still don’t understand how Russ Meyer’s enthusiasm for doing more close-ups of oversized female bosoms than faces is so communicable, infectious. Maybe I’ll never get it from a philosophical point of view, but on a more practical plane, I’m firmly convinced that Supervixens is one of the most maddeningly fucked-up funny movies I’ve ever seen. Violence and sex in real life are not reciprocal, in the farcical realm of Supervixens it is not only miraculously cinematic but also compulsively diverting.