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BOSOMANIA Russ Meyer holds a distinctive place in the pantheon of American film auteurs. In the wake of loosening censorship laws, he helped to transform exploitation film and to pave the way for the eruption of hard-core film pornography in the 1970s. His films are landmarks in exploitation filmmaking . In The Immoral Mr. Teas (1959) he adapted techniques developed for photographing centerfolds for Playboy and other men’s magazines to a grindhouse narrative, which was a radical departure from the documentaries and nudist films of the decade. In Lorna (1964) he introduced art-house aesthetics to sexploitation. And with Vixen! (1968) he brought sexploitation into the mainstream, breaking out of the male-only grind-house circuit and into firstclass theaters. Meyer brought a distinctive vision to exploitation audiences. He often wrote, edited, and produced his films, in addition to directing them, and his crew usually consisted of a handful of friends he had met during his service in World War II. The resulting films were tremendously profitable. Shot with a miniscule budget, The Immoral Mr. Teas, for example, brought in a 40-to-1 return. According to the Los Angeles Times, the only previous film to beat that C H A P T E R N I N E The Sweeter the Kitten the Sharper the Claws: Russ Meyer’s Bad Girls KRISTEN HATCH 143 profit ratio was Gone with the Wind (1939) (Prelutsky). Vixen! earned a large enough profit on its $70,000 investment to attract the attention of Richard Selznick at Fox, who hired the exploiter to direct Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) for the studio, thus marking Meyer’s entry into mainstream Hollywood. Nearly half a century after the release of The Immoral Mr. Teas, Meyer’s films continue to attract audiences. During the 1970s, he developed an underground following that included the director John Waters, who cited Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965) as the best film ever made. And Meyer was quick to recognize the marketing possibilities of video technology, releasing his films on VHS under the blanket title “Bosomania.” In 1994 his films were rereleased in theaters, introducing his body of work to a new generation of filmgoers. As a result, whereas most exploitation films are all but forgotten, Meyer’s continue to circulate in the popular imagination. Today, his films are enthusiastically embraced by feminists. Linda Perry, of the band 4 NonBlondes , describes his oeuvre as having inspired her own filmmaking efforts (Wilson 1996). In her presentation of video clips, “All Girl Action: A History of Lesbian Erotica” (1990), Susie Bright extols the pleasures of Vixen! for lesbian audiences. A women’s bar in New York has been named for Faster, Pussycat! And feminist film critic B. Ruby Rich has published her own celebration of that film in the Village Voice, praising it as “a model that’s been appropriated by dykes in search of some shit-kicking history and who find just the tonic in this band of frenzied femmes whose approach to men lies half way between Sharon Stone and Hothead Paisan” (1995, n.p.). Meyer’s signature—as distinctive as Hitchcock’s icy blondes or Griffith ’s child-women—is the casting of large-breasted women in his leading roles, as the title “Bosomania” implies. They are viciously bitchy, flouting nearly every rule invented by man. Given both Meyer’s formative role in the evolution of American sexploitation film and his surprising popularity with contemporary feminists, it is worth asking what the sexual politics of these bad women might be. Roger Ebert has divided Russ Meyer’s film career into three stages: The first he describes as the “nudie cuties”—The Immoral Mr. Teas, Eve and the Handyman (1961), Wild Gals of the Naked West! (1962), and Heavenly Bodies! (1963)—comedies characterized by only the skimpiest of narratives and nonsynchronous sound. The second group he terms Meyer’s “drive-in Steinbeck” films—Lorna, Mudhoney (1965), Motor Psycho (1965), and Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!—consisting of black-and-white melodramas. The third comprises Meyer’s sexual melodramas: Common Law Cabin (1967); Vixen!; Finders Keepers, Lovers Weepers! (1968); and Cherry, Harry, and Raquel! (1969). David Frasier adds a fourth period to the list: the “parody satires”: Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Supervixens (1975), Up! (1976), and Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens (1979) (1990, 4). It is the women who emerge in the films of the mid144 KRISTEN HATCH [3.137.161.222] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 02...

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