Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens (1979)

People are voting emotionally.

Absolutely amazing

All that we are seeing on the screen is happening with real people, real action sequences in the background, forcing the eye to watch as if we were there.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

With his final big-screen movie, the Sergei Eisenstein of skin- flicks, Russ Meyer, festoons Beyond the Valley of The Ultra-Vixens with his usual cynical and scornful look at small-town Americana. With the birth of video-tape and audiences preferences leaning in favour of penetrative, hard-core porn, Meyer bowed out with dignity, refusing to bow down to audience demand and lower himself to such a cheap and easy form of entertainment (although he would briefly return over twenty years later with Pandora Peaks (2001)). All the Meyer traits are here - blockhead male chauvinists, sex-mad townsfolk, a grizzled narrator, women blessed in the mammary gland area - and are loosely stringed together in what makes up the 'story'.Set in the small town of, er, Small Town, USA, our narrator, The Man From Small Town USA (Stuart Lancaster), shows us all it's wacky inhabitants. There's a well-endowed evangelical radio preacher (Ann Marie) who has sex inside of a coffin, a man-eating junk-yard owner (June Mack), and a randy dentist/marriage counsellor (Robert E. Pearson). In the centre of it all is the beautiful, big-breasted Lavonia (Kitten Natividad) and her lug-head husband Lamar (Ken Kerr). They are happy enough, only Lavonia's unquenchable thirst for sex and Lamar's preference to 'entering through the back door' means that they must find themselves before they can finally 'come together'. Co-written with Roger Ebert, Beyond the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens is less a story and more a collection of comic, fruity vignettes. Some of sharp, energetic and funny, others can be plodding. The satire is less sharp here than in his better movies, for instance Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) or Up! (1976), but his admiration of the female form is possibly clearer here than any of his other movies. He's often called anti-feminist, but, with Meyer, it's the women who hold all the power, outwitting and overpowering the numb-nut males, even raping one, a 14-year old boy I may add, in one scene. He certainly doesn't seem to mind though. It's often delightful and even titillating, but ultimately lacks the sharpness and daring of Meyer's best work.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

An on-screen narrator gives us the rundown on the inhabitants of a small south western American town… One young man works in a junkyard and restricts his sexual activities to rear end collisions, which is upsetting to his lovely but horny wife… A German emigrant plays out unusual erotic fantasies late at night… A female radio evangelist has a strange preaching style… The general plot concentrates on the junkyard employee and his wife… In contrast to his other ventures into provocative cinema, Meyer constructs this film more on sex than on violence… The erotic studies are quite varied, filled with his usual fast cutaways to naked, buxom ladies running inexplicably around the country side… The film is not without its macabre overtones either… He stimulates, suggests, teases, provokes, shocks, and upsets his audience in such an unusual way that he has become an American institution

I don't know what offended me more in BENEATH THE VALLEY OF THE ULTRA-VIXENS. Was it the total crudeness of the story and the direction? The two blonde women with the disturbingly ugly fake breasts? Was it Kitten Natividad (who looks like Rosie Perez) portrayed as a nymphomaniac Charo on speed and who jumps on anything with a heartbeat? The German music and swastikas (what's with Meyer and Nazis anyway?)? Was it the pseudo-necrophilia where one of the blonde bimbos with the ugly fake breasts humps an old man in a coffin? The big chunky black woman who owns and operates a junkyard and forces her male employees to have sex with her? The dentist who's a psycho queenie homosexual man who wants to bed Lamar, the main character of the film? The incessant yammering from the old man, or from Kitten during the scenes with her dual persona, Lola Langusta (when she rapes Lamar, her husband), or from the Christian blonde bimbo radio announcer? Shut-up!!!! Is it the baptism scene? The unexplained reason why Lamar can't have sex without doing it doggy style? The scene of the vibrator dipped in vaseline? The all around ugly cast? People's blood being different colors, including a black man who bleeds white blood? The appearance of Russ Meyer during the nonsensical ending?I love earthy movies. And BTVOTUV is definitely earthy but it's too crude and unsophisticated to be enjoyable, even as a sex comedy. I mean, we're talking about something that's less sophisticated than an Austin Powers movie. Yessh! And the constant talking and music gave me a headache. This is Russ Meyer's last film, and was co-written by Roger Ebert(!!!), and even if it never takes itself seriously, it's an extremely overindulgent film, about everything, including the pervasive political incorrectness, which usually doesn't bother me but not this time. The political incorrectness in BTVOTUV is excessive.

Some people might say that Russ Meyer is nothing more than a dirty old man, but SO what! He certainly knows a good thing when he sees it, day in, day out, having to film these lovely creatures, while we go back to work in our factories or offices. This particular offering, is nothing out of the ordinary, it stars Russ Meyers lovely wife Kitten Natividad, as, indeed, do most of his films. Russ Meyer, while not being the most politically correct person in the world, should, at least, go down in history as one of the FEW film makers in the world, that could tell the difference between a NAUGHTY movie & a DIRTY movie.