After Russ Meyer’s brief mainstream turn with Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, the skinflick auteur returned to the independent sector with this sexed-up, ultra-violent, live-action Road Runner cartoon.
All the voluptuous, lust-fuelled women are Super-prefixed incarnations of the heroines of his earlier work, with Lorna and Vixen reborn in even more fleshly form as SuperLorna and SuperVixen.
As often in sex films, the hero is literally a dick – an uncharismatic buffoon who is always getting into compromising situations with bizarre, eccentric fantasy women (a friendly farmer’s milkmaid-outfitted Austrian mail order bride, a deaf mute black go-go dancer in a polka-dot bikini who makes obscene suggestions in sign language) or exciting the instant enmity of fiendish villains like on-the-road psychopath John Lazar and grinning impotent sadist cop Charles Napier.
It errs on the side of the truly vicious as Napier stomps Eubank to death in the bath, but the far-fetched finale – which involves fizzing sticks of dynamite – is truly wild.
Among the magnificent creatures in the cast are Uschi Digard, Sharon Kelly and Haji.
Meyer is always an exciting filmmaker: a brilliant editor who gets laughs with bizarre, rapid-fire associations of images (and a patchwork brass band score) and demented dialogue (‘I’m looking forward to strapping on your groovy old man!’). This picks up threads from earlier Meyer items like Faster Pussycat Kill KILL, Cherry, Harry and Raquel and Motor Psycho, but hypes things even further; Supervixens was about as far Meyer could go, but he duly delivered Up! and Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens.