Superxivens

Russ Meyer's Supervixens is very different to anything else the Film Society is showing this year; an amalgam of sex, violence, busty women, the most dynamic editing you've ever seen, slapstick comedy, and more sex. Essentially a road movie, but as with most of Meyer's films it fits uneasily into any genre.

The hapless Clint (Charles Pins) argues with his wife SuperAngel (Shari Eubank) and gets thrown out of home. Nasty cop Parry Sledge (Charles Napier, excellent; now a Jonathan Demme regular) tries to bed SuperAngel, and when she refuses, beats and kills her, rather gruesomely.

Clint is accused of the murder and escapes across the country meeting various well endowed women who invariably want to bed him, getting him into all sorts of trouble. He finally stops at the petrol station of SuperVixen, who looks exactly like SuperAngel. They fall in love and settle down, but Harry catches up with them, and kidnaps SuperVixen in a bizarre dynamite-filled finale.

Supervixens is in the rumbustious Meyer wodd of larger than life caricatures: weak down-trodden males and rampant females sexually starved by their husbands. The endless sex scenes and crude rnammary humour do wear a little thin, but the odd touches of vulgar humour (e.g. the lusty teutonic farmer's wife) are amusing. The breathtaking final sequence more than makes up for everything, as Napier chases Pitts and Eubank à la Roadrunner with Meyer making Hollywood editors seem positively geriatric.

Review by Mark Radice
Taken from EUFS Programme 1994-95