Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens

It was Russ Meyer who pretty much launched the new Sexploitation industry in 1959 when he made THE IMMORTAL MR. TEAS, the first nudie-cutie which grossed one-million dollars and spawned a new breed of adults-only movies throughout the early-60's. Nudie-cuties and nudist-colony movies then became a bore among the male audience so they began to mature. "Roughies" were films which mixed nudity and violence with women getting what they deserve. By that time around the mid-60's the Sexploitation era was at it's peak with "Roughies" like OLGA'S HOUSE OF SHAME and THE DEFILERS along side more creative and even more entertaining nudies like KISS ME QUICK knocking 'em out at grindhouses along 42nd street.

By the 70's, the innocence of Sexploitation had transformed itself in to "porno". Old masters obeyed their audiences' lusts and turned up with more dirtier flicks containing more nudity and less artistic touches. Some usually went over-board while others like Russ Meyer kept their brains in their head to create more funnier and sexier films which we can now look upon as art that has been lost through this age of video-taped and digitised filth.

Meyer's 70's features were usually lots of fun. Films like SUPERVIXENS and UP! are highly original and humorous spins on society with the typically great Meyeresque cinematography, editing and dialogue. BENEATH THE VALLEY OF THE ULTRA-VIXENS is his last film to date made in 1979, the coming-approach of video-cassette in which men could just go their local videostore to get aroused instead of their local grindhouse. It was also a year where things were really changing in the Sexploitation industry and even auteurs like Russ Meyer seemed to be going along with the flow. ULTRA-VIXENS is a pretty outrageous film but that does not necessarily mean it's a great film. Stuart Lancaster repeats his role from SUPERVIXENS as a farmer living in Smalltown USA narrating the tale of Lavonia (Kitten Natidad) and her husband Lamar who does not seem to be as horny as the rest of the town. They go around laying the town's small population and end up happily laying each other again. ULTRA-VIXENS contains *lots* of exaggerated sex and (lower-deck) nudity. A bouncy-boobed evangelist makes it with Martin Boorman to 'Old-Time Religion' while Kitten is fully naked for over half the movie making it with lingerie salesmen, nurses and underage boys. So basically, this is a movie that will satisfy the more perverse members of the audience. You can be anything but a porn freak to enjoy most of Russ Meyer's movies but it is a completely different case here. His amazing twenty-year career in film-making explored a whole range of Sexploitation sub-genres: nudie-cuties, "documentaries" on busty women, backwoods dramas, morality tales and bigger budget films for Fox Studios all make up for this; a tasteless, boring, totally unsophisticated piece of pornographic crap which seems to crave for more of it's director's special touches. You do get (in very small proportions) his snappy editing, cinematography and characters from previous films. Stuart Lancaster, who had been appearing in Meyer's films on and off since 1965, can sometimes be entertaining to watch, Uschi Digart once again plays Soul (humping her 15-year-old son), Henry Rowland as Martin Boorman and even RM himself shows at the end.

During the last forty years men's entertainment has depended on it's (mostly male) audience and what they enjoy viewing. THE IMMORTAL MR. TEAS was made at a time when most bachelors were clean-cut and sophisticated. Today's hard-core, non-simulated sex viewed over the internet seems to be aimed at brainless sleazebags who have never had a girlfriend or, for that matter, many friends. Meyer made this right in between these two eras and seems to be confused whether he's doing another one of his standards or a film for perverts. It's hard to sit through a film who's director does not know what he's getting at. Basically Russ should have stopped with UP! Like the rest of the reviewers, some of you may enjoy ULTRA-VIXENS more than I did.

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

Russ Meyer's films may be silly and irreverent, but they're also great fun, and while Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens is not his best work, it's still great fun to watch and certainly comes recommended to Meyer's fans! In my opinion, Meyer is at his best when he's mixing comedy porn with a thriller plot structure - with Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and Supervixens being the best examples of his work. Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens is basically your average porn movie with a focus on a load of set-piece situations, but Meyer keeps the laughs coming and there's no shortage of big breasted ladies to keep the audience interested. There isn't really much plot to speak of, but the film centres on Levonna & Lamar; a couple in "Smalltown, USA". They're having problems in (you guessed it) the bedroom, as Levonna wants to have sex normally, but Lamar only likes to go in through the backdoor. Levonna becomes frustrated, so she does what any woman would do - gets herself a wig, learns Spanish and pretends to be a Mexican dancer to try and change Lamar's sex preferences...

The plot isn't really relied upon and the film is more of an excuse for Meyer to present a load of silly scenes; but that isn't a problem. The situations that various characters find themselves in generally are funny - with the scenes that sees Levonna get her wig and Spanish phrase book, and a sequence taking place in a dentist's surgery being the highlights of the film. There's plenty of nudity as you might expect, and all the girls have overly inflated chests in the true Russ Meyer style. The sex is not exactly hardcore, but there's plenty of it and it's not disappointing. The style of the film seems to be a parody of the American "apple pie" theme and the story is told by a narrator, who seems to be taking on the role of the "all American workman", the twist being that he's always talking about perversion. I don't think Russ Meyer was really trying to say anything with this film - there's a slight hint of a point stemming from the idea of "Smalltown, USA is a normal small town, but look what goes on behind closed doors!", but it's not implemented well enough to have much meaning. Overall, this is a very decent little porn flick from Russ Meyer, and while I'd recommend other films of his over this one; Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens is worth a watch.

Beneath the Valley is one of Meyer's better known works, largely due to its broader distribution, over-indulgence of feminine beauty and crass humor. These are all time-honored features of Meyer in his films, but as his last feature (Pandora Peaks typically isn't counted in terms of conventional Meyer timeline), everything gets laid on extra thick. Meyer tests the boundaries of just how far he can go before the viewer reaches sensory overload. Nonetheless the impeccable Kitten Natividad and the often unmentioned, but still unforgettable Ann Marie stay true to Meyer fashion and manage to suck in the viewer while Meyer dishes out social taboos and common problems associated with the modern couple. Nobody is safe from his scathing satire. The homosexual professional, the self-defeating redneck and the two-faced nature of radio/TV evangelism all get a thorough walloping in this film. This film also serves as the epitome of Meyer's work with photography and cinematography. His virtually-patented "up through the bed springs" shots are unmistakable and this film serves as the perfect showcase and record of this unique, yet effective technique. Never before has any director opted to shoot the love scene from the mattresses point of view! Although this film does indeed lack in comparison to Supervixens or Up! as one of Meyer's late '70s style flicks in terms of dramatic story complexity, it's still Russ Meyer, and that alone makes the film worthwhile.

More than a comedy, this is a parody on a parody. Based more than a bit on Thornton Wilder's "Our Town", it satirises American middle class values in a much more Rabelaisian way than Wilder himself did. Or could.

OF course, Meyer is the great auteur. He writes, directs, produces, shoots and appears in this film, helped only by a pneumatic cast on screen and Roger Ebert thankfully off it. Even the title screams satire, from the great outsider, poking Hollywood right in its Beyond the Valley of the Dolls/Beneath the Planet of the Apes tunnel vision. Nobody makes films as full-blooded as Russ Meyer. His vision is full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes. But it's also sophisticated in structure, with enough dramatic irony to warrant the term post-modern.

I haven't seen it in 20 years but I'll never forget the rollercoaster experience, or the absurd self-referential epilogue. An extraordinary film that deserves acclaim beyond its secretive cult status.