Supervixens

Bluesky

One would expect that the second instalment of Russ Meyer's Vixen trilogy would in some way follow on from the first film. Thinking that would be a mistake. SuperVixens has precious little to do with Vixen, in much the same way as Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls is unconnected with Valley Of The Dolls. There are of course some similarities between the two sexploitation comedies, and any other Russ Meyer film for that matter: scarlet as a motif for sex; large breasted, sexually dominant women; the bare wire frame of a mattress; nature and nudity.

Clint Ramsey (Charles Pitts), a mechanic at a gas station, receives a phone call from his partner SuperAngel (Shari Eubank). During the call SuperAngel hears the voice of a flirtatious customer, SuperLorna (Christy Hartburg), and goes ballistic, threatening to burn down their house. Clint rushes home. On his return he is subjected to a tirade of verbal and then physical abuse culminating in SuperAngel attacking his red pickup truck with a large wood axe. The cops are called.

On his arrival, officer Harry Sledge (Charles Napier) immediately arrests Clint for domestic violence. Despite suspecting that SuperAngel is in fact the violent party, Sledge decides to pay her a visit, hoping to get his end away. When he can't get it up she mocks him mercilessly. His reaction is a brutal and chaotic murder.

Meanwhile Clint decides to get very drunk. He knocks back the advances of the naked, but bejewelled, barwoman SuperHaji (Haji). In revenge she shops him to the cops. So begins Clint's road trip. He encounters SuperCherry (Colleen Brennan), SuperSoul (Uschi Digard) and SuperEula (Deborah McGuire). He is hit on, beaten up, chased and sexually assaulted.

Eventually he finds love, a job and a place of safety at a gas station, the SuperVixen Oasis. Its owner SuperVixen is played Shari Eubank who also plays SuperAngel. Everything goes fine until Sledge makes an appearance.

The plot looks more like 1970's nihilism than a softcore porn action comedy crossover. In SuperVixens Meyer blends farce, parody and surrealism. When Sledge puts on black leather gloves before SuperAngel's murder Meyer is aiming squarely at the knife wielding serial killers of Giallo. What little there is of the Supers' costumes becomes increasingly stylised, and the over the top performances of the actors playing in them combine to form not characters but pornographic tropes. The actors are portraying fantasies, not real people.

As the film progresses so does the level of farce and surreality. The mundane is juxtaposed with the ridiculous and there is a deliberate subversion of narrative flow. By the time SuperAngel is reincarnated as a naked nature spirit watching over Clint and SuperVixen, the viewer knows that this is spectacle not story. The film is all about sensation. In some ways Meyer is following the path trodden by films like Requiem Pour Un Vampire. SuperVixens works as a comedy because it never tries to suspend your disbelief. It is always obvious that it is staged.

Like Vixen before it, SuperVixens is, by today's standards, quite tame. There is far more explicit content in mainstream film and television. It is a little more risqué than its predecessor: there is full frontal nudity and shots of penises, and there is a lot more violence. The sex and violence is comical and exaggerated, poking fun at the cultural norms of the time.