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Severin Unleashes Two More Huge Releases From Russ Meyer’S Bosomania! With Motorpsycho & Up!

“The films of Russ Meyer must be seen to be believed – exploitation entertainment that not only transgresses but achieves artistic transcendence“

Variety

‘Great to see Russ Meyer’s movies getting the treatment they deserve from Severin Films…. scanned in 4K from the original negative… they look gorgeous! I was surprised how detailed these are… Great stuff for fans of Russ Meyer and exploitation cinema’

Following their celebrated release of The Vixen Trilogy from Severin Films – in collaboration with The Russ Meyer Charitable Trust – the company is bringing two more landmark films from the vaults of iconic American auteur Russ Meyer: 1965’s action-and-violence saga Motorpsycho and the erotic comedy Russ Meyer’S Up! co-written by Roger Ebert.

Both titles have been restored and scanned in 4K from their original negatives with hours of new and archival Special...

Severin continues their good work in bringing hitherto largely unavailable Russ Meyer titles to home video in glorious new 4K restorations. Their latest releases are Motorpsycho, a gritty genre mashup that’s been unjustly dismissed as merely a “dry run” for the better known Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, and the late-period gonzo comedy Up!, involving, among other things, leather gimp masks and an orgy-loving Adolf Hitler.

Motorpsycho, from 1965, starts off as a rip-roaring exposé of a renegade biker gang led by troubled Vietnam vet Brahmin (Stephen Oliver). He’s joined by Slick (Thomas Scott), who has a fondness for his transistor radio, and Dante (Joseph Cellini), whose major signifier as a character is that he spouts off in Italian when he gets excitable. These two are, in true Meyer fashion, little more than caricatures, but Brahmin actually gets to display some nuance in his role. Mind you, these are far...

So who exactly is going to dig a production of this nature Anyone with a strong pulse Honestly above and beyond all things The Lost Empire is a total blast. Seeing Melanie Vincz Raven De La Croix and Angela Aames is always welcomed and seeing them randomly lose their tops is even more welcomed. Dont head into this viewing experience anticipating a slept on 80s rendition of Citizen Kane. Rather prepare yourself for the perfect opportunity to let your brain wander thinking about exactly nothing serious and everything silly. Thats what lies in wait for viewers and this particular critic has no complaints. I could watch this goofiness 100 times over.

What the hell is The Lost Empire? If you guessed a “cheesy, boob-filled knockoff of Big Trouble in Little China with a horrendous soundtrack, bad acting and terrible direction,” you’d be right!

Possibly the single-worst movie I’ve had to review since starting at JustPressPlay (with the exception of that Snoop Dogg/Wiz Khalifa movie), The Lost Empire stars Melanie Vincz, Raven De La Croix and other “special” ladies who are essentially warrior amazon-types. They’re up against the Tall Man himself, Angus Scrimm (who I can’t believe is in this movie).

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Back in 1983 Jim Wynorski shot his first film, The Lost Empire, which has itself been "lost" for several years. Finally, on April 22nd it's getting its long-awaited home video release on DVD.

From the Press Release:

In 1983 a young director stepped behind the camera for the first time and began to shoot a film which he thought might be both his first and his last. An ardent fan of "B" cinema, Jim Wynorski decided to cram this film with everything he loved.

"I got my first break doing The Lost Empire for Plitt Theatres," says Jim Wynorski. "The late owner, Henry Plitt (a decorated war hero), wanted to make a low budget sci-fi action picture as a tax loss. I never knew that when I made the show, so I put my heart and soul into the project. When it finally got completed, Plitt actually liked it enough to give...

We all love our monthly ‘Late Night Grindhouse’ at The Hi-Pointe, but what the heck is going on at the Jamestown Mall Cinema?! Daytime Grindhouse?! My buddy Mike Dugge called me last night and said he had just returned from a showing there of the 1985 big bust sci-fi schlock epic Lost Empire. I was like “Huh?!…What?!…Huh!?”. I checked Movietickets.com and saw he wasn’t pulling my leg. I called the Jamestown and talked to the manager there. Apparently, they’ve been having a ‘B-Movie’ series featuring schlock for the past 4 weeks. They’ve shown (and I’ve missed) Nightbeast, Giant Spider Invasion, A Boy And His Dog, and Rabid Love. That last one is a new film as are the next two films they will be playing: The Resurrection and Gila (a 2012 Sci-Fy channel movie). I wish I had known about this series earlier. Apparently the Jamestown...

Ebert's scripts: 'sexploitation' cult fare As found on the IMDb, Roger Ebert wrote scripts for a total of three movies, "sexploitation" fare directed by maverick independent filmmaker Russ Meyer. The first of those was Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, which follows three young (and good-looking) women who find sex (lesbian and straight), drugs (of various sorts), and unhappiness in Hollywood. Distributed by the then-daring 20th Century Fox (Fox also released Raquel Welch and Mae West's Myra Breckinridge that same year), Beyond takes Jacqueline Susann's trashy bestseller Valley of the Dolls and its 1967 Mark Robson-directed filmization to an even higher degree of tacky campiness. Among the movie's cast members were Dolly Read, Cynthia Myers, Marcia McBroom (all three seductive beauties are pictured above), John Lazar, and frequent presence on the Academy Awards red carpet, Edy Williams. The second Roger & Russ collaboration was Up!, a movie whose tagline...

The Russ Meyer Show Featuring Kitten Natividad takes place in St. Louis this Friday, June 15th at The Way Out Club. Details at the end of this article.

Article by Jim Batts, Dana Jung, and Tom Stockman

Russell Albion “Russ” Meyer was born in California in 1922 and spent WWII as a combat photographer. In 1953 Playboy magazine debuted and Meyer was one of its first centerfold photographers. Meyer had a knack, and a passion, for photographing gorgeous, busty women and felt that the gals in the nudist camp movies that were popular in the ’50s were far too plain-looking for his tastes. In 1959, Meyer scraped together $24,000 and made The Immoral Mr. Teas, a quaint, colorful, and cartoonish movie about a nerdy fellow whose life is constantly interrupted by beautiful large-breasted women in various stages of undress. There was no sex in Meyer’s film and he made no pretense of presenting nudity as a lifestyle choice,...

I usually make a point of not commenting on movies that haven’t been made yet, regardless of how promising they may sound. Yet when I learned that director David O. Russell, coming off The Fighter, was in negotiations with Fox Searchlight over the possibility of directing a feature film based on the life of Russ Meyer, the eccentric king of ’60s and ’70s sexploitation B movies, I thought, “Wow, now that is a film I’d love to see!” It sounded like it could be the Ed Wood of sleaze, a celebration of the raw and vital trash underground of American filmmaking.