MNASIDIKA (1969)

Given the inaudibility of the voice over narration wedded to the only readily available transfer of Michael and Roberta Findlay’s Mnasidika, it’s hard to understand exactly what is stuck in Michael’s craw in regards to the women characters in the film (I mean, outside his usual issues). From what can be gleaned from watching this […]

PANDORA PEAKS (2002)

If Russ Meyer’s last three films of the seventies were a reckoning of his career and his views on sex and sexuality as the golden age of pornography pushed him out of the market, Pandora Peaks, Meyer’s direct-to-video final film from 2002, was a way to reckon with the first half of his career, namely […]

UP! (1976)

After the refreshing journey of self-discovery that was 1975’s Supervixens, Up!, Russ Meyer’s follow up from the following year, is hostile and mean-spirited at times and curiously sexy and experimental in others. While the previous picture felt vigorous and refreshing, Up! began a slight downward trajectory for Meyer as the humor began to feel old-hat […]

CHERRY, HARRY, & RAQUEL! (1969)

In Russ Meyer’s Cherry, Harry & Raquel!, released in 1969 as the filmmaker inched closer to Hollywood, the cock of Erica Gavin’s eyebrow causes the soul of Vixen to discorporate and it finds itself inhabiting the shell of Uschi Digard, herself trapped in a lunar landscape of desert nothingness where man’s determination grinds fruitlessly against […]

MONDO KEYHOLE (1966)

The “roughie” was a subgenre of sexploitation that mixed the kind of soft-focus, waist-up nudity with a hard and dangerous edge of violence of some sort. Invented (accidentally, probably) in 1963 by Herschell Gordon Lewis with Scum of the Earth, the roughie gave audiences of a certain stripe the ability to indulge in a motion […]