A Russ Meyer Poll

BEYOND
THE
VALLEY
OF
THE
DOLLS

I've only seen one or two of the others, but I doubt my vote would be anything but BtVotD even if I had seen all of them.

I've only seen the 2 everyone has, and Pussycat is better.

ie, it tries to be a good movie and succeeds.

boobs.

Faster is the best, Beyond is second-best, but Supervixens is my favourite (and has large doses of Ebert-mentalness, like BTVOTD) (and more importantly, it has Super Cherry)

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is one of my all-time favourite films, never mind my favourite Meyer. Faster is also truly great, but never quite won my heart so much. I've only seen two others, Cherry, Harry and another (can't remember which), and they were kind of meh, non-titillating soft porn with a couple of great moments. I do really want to see Mudhoney and Motor Psycho, though.

Motor Psycho is great!

Vixen is a bit meh, Supervixens is so far beyond mental it defies belief, Faster... seems to be the obvious choice because it stikes me as the only one that works as a coherent narrative.

So obviously I voted for Supervixens

all his colour films i can't actually remember them individually, they all seem so similar. ie that bloke with the jaw and twelve inch penis, and random clips of boobs on cliffs and desert shots.

but that didn't stop me downloading most of them

Impossible for me to decide between FPKK and BTVOTD. After those, I guess I'd vote for "Vixen" (Erica Gavin rules; the oddball political allegory is out-there enough to be a laugh, etc.) The last 2 proper movies, "UP!" and "BTVOTU," are seriously two of the weirdest filmic texts that exist anywhere. Many thanks for not including his horrifying end-period shot-on-video-in-his-backyard material.

I remember calling the phone number listed on the back of one of the old VHS issues of "Faster Pussycat" to order an "RM Films" catalog, and Russ himself answered the phone and was very nice.

wow!

"Beyond the Valey of the Dolls", for the dialogue. Er, yeah. If I knew which of his films featured uschi digart the most, then that one.

x-post WOW, man.

Yeah, I'd say that the b&w period with Faster Pussycat, Motor Psycho, Lorna and Mudhoney was his best work, as well as having the best titles. The tits were still necessary to the plot at this point, unlike the 70's efforts when it was the other way round. I voted Mudhoney even though Faster Pussycat is better, just to prevent it being entirely a 2-way race. The Immoral Mr Teas is almost unwatchable, god knows what the rest of those early nudies are like.

that bloke with the jaw and twelve inch penis

http://www.jasonbentley.org/blog/img/napier1.jpg

If I am voting on actual artistic merit, it's Faster Pussycat. If I am voting on boobies, it's Super Vixen.

Cherry, Harry & Raquel has the best theme though.

"artistic merit", ahem.

Good Morning... and Goodbye! (1967)
Finders Keepers, Lovers Weepers! (1968)
The Seven Minutes (1971)
Cherry, Harry & Raquel! (1970)
Up! (1976)
Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens (1979)

These are all blurred into one in my mind, maybe I should give them a second view. My favourite Meyer actress is Haji, who could almost act.

I think Beyond The Valley Of The Ultra Vixens was the first (soft) porn film I ever saw (courtesy of late night Sky Movies)! So that one.

faster pussycat, no contest

i've only seen i think 3 or 4

ie, it tries to be a good movie and succeeds.

If by this you mean that BVD tries to be a bad movie and fails, then I agree. It's fantastic.

Cherry, Harry & Raquel has the best theme though.

That's a tough one - everything about the "Faster Pussycat" theme by The Bostweeds is absolutely killer.

And that spoken word intro!

"Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to violence. The word and the act. While violence cloaks itself in a plethora of disguises, its favourite mantle still remains - sex. Violence devours all it touches, its voracious appetite rarely fulfilled. Yet violence doesn't only destroy. It creates and moulds as well. Let's examine closely then this dangerously evil creation, this new breed encased and contained within the supple skin of woman. The softness is there, the unmistakeable smell of female. the surface shiny and silken. The body yielding yet wanton. But a word of caution: handle with care and don't drop your guard. This rapacious new breed prowls both alone and in packs. Operating at any level, at any time, anywhere and with anybody. Who are they? One might be your secretary, your doctor's receptionist, or a dancer in a go-go club!"

And "In the Long Run" by the Carrie Nations is amazing too!

Come to think of it, all those re-issued doule pack soundtracks are essential.

Charles Napier (that bloke with the jaw lol) is cool as hell. He'd call me a faggot and kick my ass, no doubt.

And I believe John Currin was a Russ Meyer fan!

"Er, yeah. If I knew which of his films featured uschi digart the most, then that one."

It's Supervixens, I think. She only has a very minor bit in Beneath The Valley of the Ultravixens. Kitten Natividad is in the last two and she's exceptionally hot too.

UP! has the all-time craziest plot, I think (HITLER IS IN IT FER CHRISSAKE!) Black Snake is another total WTF film too although it seems positively normal compared to DRUM the impossible awful sequel to MANDINGO! Hollywood in the early 70s was very weird.

Plot keywords for Ultra-Vixens haha:

Vagina
Large Lady
Radio Broadcasting
Statutory Rape
Surreal
Woman On Top
Penis
Older Woman Younger Man
Cult Favorite
Non Statutory Female On Male Rape
Imbecile
Nazis
Anal Sex
Stripper
Narrator
Hardcore
Tow Truck
Sex
Necrophilia
Traveling Salesman
Female Full Frontal Nudity
Female Nudity
Female Frontal Nudity
Erection
Defecation
Doctor
Male Nudity
Male Frontal Nudity
Large Breasts
Junkyard
Latina
Troubled Marriage
Slapstick
Pubic Hair
Buxom
Erotica
Independent Film

up! is fucking weird (and the recycled dialogue is kind of annoying)

I saw a double feature of Lorna and Mudhoney at the now-closed Rialto theater (South Pasadena), and for that alone the theater should be preserved for all time. I believe Lorna is the one shot in a town called Locke in the Sacramento delta area, which is kind of an old-West style ghost town with canals, which amazed me greatly at the time. Lorna gets my vote.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Leg man, psssshaw.

Much as I think the right decision was made, I'm surprised there wasn't more competition between the two frontrunners.

I'm sorry I missed this poll. I'm trying very hard to remember exactly which one WAS my fave of the films of his that I saw and I do believe my fave was the winner in this case. I do seem to remember liking Up!, too though, not that Faster Pussycat was all that bad. This was way before my Greta Garbo phase so yeah this was probably 7 years ago that I watched Meyer films.

Oh, also the 1979 one was utter shite.

Wait you liked Up!, but Beneath The Valley Of The Ultra-Vixens was shit?!?!? Other than Hitler how can you even distinguish them?

oh shit my vote fucked up, i thought i voted for Motor Psycho !

I'm probably the only saddo that fell asleep when watching a Meyer movie. :-(

Pussycat followed by Mudhoney (who liked?) on TCM late tonight

Much as I love Meyer, I worry that TCM will become AMC every time something remotely psychotronic is programmed.

there's a five-week Friday series of Meyers running at an arthouse/rep cinema in Sydney right now, and they STARTED with Ultravixens o_O

Reading on Twitter that Tura Satana has passed on but no immediate reports anywhere. Anyone have anything concrete?

Oh gawd! Hope it's not true!

Found this:

The legendary Tura Satana passed away yesterday 5pm PST in Reno Nevada. A press release will be issued in the next few days.
A memorial page will be set up for you to leave your condolences.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dirty-Martini-and-the-New-Burlesque/175567123667?ref=ts

She developed breasts very early and, despite being an excellent student, was constantly harassed for her figure and Asian heritage. Walking home from school at the age of nine she was gang raped by five men. Her attackers were never prosecuted and it was rumored that the judge had been paid off.[1] This prompted her to learn the martial arts of aikido and karate and, over the next 15 years, track down each rapist and exact revenge.[2] "I made a vow to myself that I would someday, somehow get even with all of them," she said years later. "They never knew who I was until I told them."[2]

Wow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry9KwrKXdw4

Wild Gals of the Naked West is missing on that list!

HEAVILY padded out but the parts with the fast cuts and pop art skeeziness are really amazing and actually kinda avant garde.

From IndieWire

Tura Satana, born Tura Luna Pascual Yamaguchi, July 10, 1935, in Hokkaido, Japan, grew up in an Italian, Jewish, Polish neighborhood on the west side of Chicago, IL after her family were released from the Manzanar relocation camp for Japanese-Americans after the war. Asians didn’t mix well in the neighborhood and Tura found herself constantly fighting with the African-American girls on her way to and from school, skills that would serve her throughout her life. At age nine an a half Tura was brutalized and raped by five boys from the neighborhood. She then formed a girl gang with her Italian, Jewish, and Polish girlfriends called the Angels. After her parents placed her with an abusive uncle, Tura walked away to start her own life, becoming a cigarette girl at the Moulin Rouge on Hollywood Boulevard.

By age 15 she was a burlesque dancer with a fake ID. She was discovered by Turk Prujan who hired Tura for his Trocadero nightclub, also on Sunset. She also earned money modeling, becoming a favorite of famed actor Harold Lloyd, with results printed in Harold Lloyd’s Hollywood Nudes in 3-D. During her tour in New Orleans, Tura performed down the street from Lili St. Cyr before working for Harold Minsky, who was married to Lily’s sister. While performing in Chicago at the Follies Theater, Elvis Presley became infatuated and the two started an affair resulting in a marriage proposal. She declined, but kept the ring.

While working the Follies Theater in Los Angeles, a Warner Brothers scout approached Tura and she earned her Guild card on Hawaiian Eye. Subsequent television roles including The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., and Burke’s Law. While working at the Pink Pussycat in West Hollywood, Billy Wilder and his wife came in one night and enraptured with Tura’s performance realized they had finally found the girl to play Suzette Wong in the Shirley Maclaine-starring Irma La Douce. Tura’s performance earned her additional roles as the nightclub dancer in Dean Martin’s Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed? and the job of Carol Burnett’s choreographer for the film.

Tura earned her most visible role while performing in Irma La Douce. She got a call from her agent to come read for Russ Meyeer. She didn’t have time to change so she showed up in the wedding dress she was wearing for Irma La Douce. Russ handed her the script for “Leather Girls,” the original title of Faster, Pussycat! Kill Kill! and asked how she would play her. Tura replied, “I’d make her kind of feminine, but also a bitch on wheels.” After her cold reading Russ told her, “You are definitely Varla.”

Ted V. Mikels gave Tura two more classic roles in Astro-Zombies, and Charlie’s Angels precursor The Doll Squad, where she starred alongside Francine York and Michael Ansara.

Deciding to spend her time raising her two daughters, Tura left show biz and returned to her nursing career which she first studied while in high school, and continued to go to nursing school while dancing. One nigh, a druggie who had been turned in to the police by one of the doctors came looking for him and shot Tura twice but only hit her once, in the stomach. In 1981 she was hit by a driver without a license, heading at her at 60 miles per hour in a 25 mph zone. She spent two years in the hospital. They told her she would never walk again but she told the doctor, “Not only will I walk again, doc, but I’m going to do everything else I used to do.” She made that promise shy of her martial arts moves.

When I interviewed her, I asked her if she had any words to live by. “One of the things that I always said, and it was one of my father’s favorite sayings, ‘Always be good to the people on the way up, because you’re going to meet them on the way down.’ I have always lived by that philosophy.

“The one thing you’ve got to remember is that you just never accept defeat. Remember to never let life get you down, because there is always something new to learn tomorrow. Life is to be lived, and lived well.”

Tura Satana passed away February 4, 2011, in Reno, NV.

A press release from her manager will be released in a few days.

RIP. Hell is so much hotter now.

RIP

I was just talking to a friend on the phone and we were both lamenting that this was a bad week for Female icons of the sexual revolution. Maria Schneider, Lena Nyman, and now Tura Satana all in THE LAST THREE DAYS.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_rWdThD85Q5k/SatlISFEo7I/AAAAAAAAAfo/QVhuqJra-aA/s400/Tura+Satana.jpg

Beyonce in the "Telephone" video was a great Tura tribute.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVBsypHzF3U

Meanwhile, holy shit!

As I said back on another Russ Meyer thread on here:

Back in 1991 or so I had a chance to see Beyond the Valley at UCLA at a one-off screening -- this was when the film was not being circulated or released on video or whatever, some rights problems. Great crowd, tons of old LA punks who grew up on the darn thing, plus John Landis lurking in the back somewhere. Afterwards the panel discussion consisted of Meyer, Ebert and most of the main cast, including the guy who played Z-man, apparently having finally gotten over his bitterness about the role (he was quite friendly, actually!). Great time, and when the one guy in the film can walk away from his wheelchair at the end, the place exploded in the best applause and cheers I think I've ever heard.

Well, turns out it was 1990 -- and the panel discussion was filmed -- and it's on YouTube!

All eight parts are linked here:

http://dareland.blogspot.com/

Produced by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association in conjunction with Robert Rosen at the UCLA Film and Television Archives, this screening was shot by The Voyager Company for a laserdisc on the Criterion label that was blocked by 20th Century Fox and never released. In attendance for a discussion after the film, Russ Meyer, Roger Ebert, John LaZar, David Gurian, Dolly Read, Charles Napier, Michael Blodgett, Edy Williams, and host Michael Dare. This is raw, unedited footage provided by Susan Arosteguy at The Criterion Collection. Cameraman unknown.

:-D And I'm somewhere in the crowd...third or fourth row, maybe?

Last Friday in the NYT Dave Kehr fleetingly referred to Vixen! as RM's masterpiece. Anyone agree? (playing tonight in NYC)

I've heard that too. Or maybe it was Supervixens. Or maybe Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens.

So did Morbs see Vixen!?

In other news, Uschi Digard has given perhaps her first interview ever to the http://www.therialtoreport.com/2013/08/25/next-podcast-uschi-digard-supersoul/ (NSFW images on page)

I didn't, but I see there's a DVD.

Vixen is sort've suspended between the semi-arty black-and-white 'backwoods' movies like 'Lorna' and 'Mudhoney' and the more overtly vulgar/comedic colour flicks that were to follow in the late 60s/early 70s - and Faster Pussycat is a more complete work of art than Vixen, imho

Faster Pussycat is a more complete work of art than 80% of western culture

The key to Vixen is the central performance by Erica Gavin - she's just nuts in it

http://touch.dangerousminds.net/all/breast_man_will_ferrell_to_play_russ_meyer_in_film_about_making_of_beyond_t#1

For some reason, I see Kat Dennings as Erica Gavin

Yeah, I'm curious who the girls will be, if they will get actresses or models to play them.

I have a difficult time imagining a director like him existing today or current models acting in these types of films but I'd love to see it. I think he probably would have just made soft porn if he was born a few decades later.

I really wish there was more Christy Hartburg. She had her own website and was signing stuff and wrote for a conservative blog but it's crazy that the early scene in Supervixens is one of the only substantial things with her.

Holy fuck at this

Apparently unnoticed in the 2017 declassified JFK document dump was the revelation that Tura Satana of FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! was a well-placed FBI informant against the Chicago mob. pic.twitter.com/WkXuV9JtW1

— Ignatiy Vishnevetsky (@vishnevetsky) October 31, 2020

Wow - there's a movie in that...

A full series!