Vixen!

Last updated
Vixen!
Vixen poster 01.jpg
Theatrical poster
Directed by Russ Meyer
Written byRuss Meyer
Anthony James Ryan
Produced byRuss Meyer
Starring Erica Gavin
Edited byRuss Meyer
Music by Igo Kantor
Distributed byEve Productions
Release date
  • October 22, 1968 (1968-10-22)
Running time
70 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$73,000 [1]
Box office$8 million [1] [2]

Vixen! is a 1968 American drama film and satiric softcore sexploitation film directed by Russ Meyer and starring Erica Gavin. It was the first film to be given an X rating for its sex scenes, [3] and was a breakthrough success for Meyer. The film was developed from a script by Meyer and Anthony James Ryan.

Contents

The film concerns the adventures of the oversexed Vixen (Gavin), as she sexually manipulates everyone she meets. The story's taboo-violations mount quickly, including themes of incest and racism. [4]

Plot

At a Canadian wilderness resort, sultry and sexually assertive Vixen Palmer lives happily married with her husband Tom, a bush pilot and owner of a tourist lodge. The hypersexual Vixen nevertheless seduces anyone within reach including a Mountie, a couple her husband brings home as clients – the husband first, his wife later, and eventually her own brother, Judd. The only person she will not have sex with is Judd's friend Niles, an African American Vietnam War deserter, whom Vixen verbally abuses with racist insults.

A wealthy Irish tourist (who is really a Marxist Irish Republican Army sympathizer) entices the couple to fly him and – against Vixen's protestations – Niles to the United States. In the air, he attempts to hijack the small Cessna 177 Cardinal to Cuba, taking Vixen and her pilot husband as hostages. Niles is reluctant to take sides, but, after some altercations, Tom and Niles overwhelm the perpetrator. In return for his support, Tom helps Niles escape the US customs; as they are parting, Niles and Vixen conciliate.

At the end of the film, her husband takes on another couple and Vixen smiles in a sinister and disturbing way, apparently planning to seduce them. The final slide reads "The End?".

Production

Erica Gavin was a dancer in clubs who knew women who had acted in other Meyer films. She answered an advertisement seeking actors for Vixen and was cast. [5]

Meyer recalled, "Bravely I went up to the location for Vixen without a leading lady and left a couple of my henchmen to try to find somebody. It's always difficult. But Erica had a curious quality about her. She didn't have the greatest body, you know. She didn't have the up-thrust breasts like the others." [6]

The film was shot in Miranda, California. Many of the opening scenes were filmed in Victoria, BC, Canada. [7] [ circular reference ]

During the film, assistant director George Costello had a relationship with Gavin, which led to the end of Costello's professional relationship with Meyer. [8] Erica Gavin, on the other hand, went on to shoot one more movie with Meyer.

Meyer said the sex scene between Vixen and her brother "was the best of them all. She [Erica Gavin] really displayed an animal quality that I've never been able to achieve before – the way she grunted and hung in there and did her lines. It was a really remarkable job... I've done a lot of jokey screwing but there's something about Erica and her brother that was just remarkable... [it] really represents the way I like to screw." [9]

Reception

The film was a huge box office success. Meyer later attributed this to the fact "it was so frank for its time. And a lot of it had to be attributed to Erica Gavin. She had a quality that also appealed to women. And women came in great numbers." [6]

Meyer later elaborated:

I think an awful lot of women would have liked to have been able to act like Vixen a few times in their lives. To have an afternoon in which they could have laid three guys, have an affair with their best girl friend, that would straighten a lot of people out... Everything she [Vixen] touched was improved. She didn't destroy, she helped. If there was a marriage that was kind of dying on the vine, she injected something into it which made it better... I think that every man at one time or another would thoroughly enjoy running into an aggressive female like Vixen... She was like a switch-hitter. You show this girl as being like a utility outfielder: she could cover all the positions. [10]

Meyer said he used sex in the film to make points about racial bigotry and communism. [11]

Critical reception

The Los Angeles Times called the film "good clean fun for adults... may well be Meyer's best film to date". [12]

The New York Times called it "slick, lascivious." [13]

Roger Ebert called it "the quintessential Russ Meyer film... Meyer's ability to keep his movies light and farcical took the edge off the sex for people seeing their first skin-flick. By the time he made Vixen, Meyer had developed a directing style so open, direct and good-humored that it dominated his material. He was willing to use dialogue so ridiculous... situations so obviously tongue-in-cheek, characters so incredibly stereotyped and larger than life, that even his most torrid scenes usually managed to get outside themselves. Vixen was not only a good skin-flick, but a merciless satire on the whole genre." [14]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Russ Meyer</span> American film director and photographer (1922–2004)

Russell Albion Meyer was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, and editor. He is known primarily for writing and directing a series of successful sexploitation films that featured campy humor, sly satire and large-breasted women, such as Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), the latter of which he considered his definitive work.

<i>Beyond the Valley of the Dolls</i> 1970 film

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls is a 1970 American satirical musical melodrama film starring Dolly Read, Cynthia Myers, Marcia McBroom, Phyllis Davis, John LaZar, Michael Blodgett, Erica Gavin, and David Gurian. The film was directed by Russ Meyer and written by Roger Ebert from a story by Ebert and Meyer.

<i>The Immoral Mr. Teas</i> 1959 film by Russ Meyer

The Immoral Mr. Teas is the first commercially successful film of director Russ Meyer, released in 1959. The film was described as a nudist comedy, and was noted for exhibiting extensive female nudity. The film cost $24,000 to produce, and eventually grossed more than $1.5 million on the independent/exploitation circuit.

<i>Supervixens</i> 1975 film by Russ Meyer

Supervixens is a 1975 American film directed by American filmmaker Russ Meyer. The cast features Meyer regulars Charles Napier, Uschi Digard, and Haji. The film also features Shari Eubank in one of her only two film roles and Christy Hartburg in her only film role.

<i>Good Morning and... Goodbye!</i> 1967 film by Russ Meyer

Good Morning and... Goodbye! is a 1967 American exploitation film directed by Russ Meyer. It features Alaina Capri, Karen Ciral, as well as Meyer regular Jack Moran, who co-wrote the script.

<i>Cherry, Harry & Raquel!</i> 1970 film by Russ Meyer

Cherry, Harry & Raquel! is a 1969 American action comedy and exploitation film, produced and directed by American film director Russ Meyer. The plot involves the smuggling of marijuana, and the attraction between a female writer and an English nurse.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kitten Natividad</span> Mexican-American actress, exotic dancer and porn star (1948–2022)

Francesca Isabel Natividad, known professionally as Kitten Natividad, was a Mexican-American film actress and exotic dancer. She was noted for her 44-inch bust, and appearances in cult films made by her ex-partner, director Russ Meyer.

Who Killed Bambi? was to be the first film featuring the punk rock band the Sex Pistols, and was due to be released in 1978. Russ Meyer and then Jonathan Kaplan were due to direct from a script by Roger Ebert and Pistols' manager Malcolm McLaren.

<i>Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens</i> 1979 film by Russ Meyer

Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens is a 1979 satirical sexploitation film directed by American film-maker Russ Meyer and written by Roger Ebert and Meyer. It stars Kitten Natividad and Ann Marie with a cameo by Uschi Digard.

<i>Mudhoney</i> (film) 1965 film by Russ Meyer

Mudhoney is a 1965 Southern Gothic film directed by Russ Meyer. It is based on the novel Streets Paved With Gold by Raymond Friday Locke. The film is a period drama set during the Great Depression. "I got in a little bit over my head," Meyer said about the film. "That's when I thought I was Erskine Caldwell, John Steinbeck and George Stevens all in one."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Erica Gavin</span> American actress

Erica Gavin is an American film actress best known for playing the title role in Russ Meyer's 1968 film Vixen!.

<i>Mondo Topless</i> 1966 American film

Mondo Topless is a 1966 pseudo-documentary directed by Russ Meyer, featuring Babette Bardot and Lorna Maitland among others. It was Meyer's first color film following a string of black and white "roughie nudies", including Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! While a straightforward sexploitation film, the film owes some debt to the French New Wave and cinéma vérité traditions, and is known to some under the titles Mondo Girls and Mondo Top.

<i>Lorna</i> (film) 1964 film by Russ Meyer

Lorna is a 1964 independent film starring Lorna Maitland, produced and directed by Russ Meyer. It was written in four days by James Griffith, who played the preacher in the film.

<i>Finders Keepers, Lovers Weepers!</i> 1968 film by Russ Meyer

Finders Keepers, Lovers Weepers! is a 1968 film by Russ Meyer. The story involves the goings-on at a topless go-go bar on the Sunset Strip. Meyer himself makes an appearance in this film. The composition Finlandia by Jean Sibelius is used in one of the film's love scenes.

<i>Black Snake</i> (film) 1973 film by Russ Meyer

Black Snake is a 1973 American film directed by Russ Meyer and starring Anouska Hempel, David Warbeck, Percy Herbert and Thomas Baptiste. It was Meyer's return to self-financed projects, following the end of his brief deal at 20th Century Fox. Meyer's only attempt at the Blaxploitation genre, it was filmed in Panavision and was shot on location in Barbados. It was such a box office bomb that a film named Foxy starring Edy Williams, which Meyer wanted to follow this film, was not made.

<i>The Seven Minutes</i> (film) 1971 film by Russ Meyer

The Seven Minutes is a 1971 American drama movie directed and produced by Russ Meyer. The movie was based on the 1969 novel of the same name by Irving Wallace.

<i>Fanny Hill</i> (1964 film) 1964 film by Russ Meyer, Albert Zugsmith

Fanny Hill is a 1964 American – West German historical comedy film directed by Russ Meyer and starring Letícia Román, Miriam Hopkins and Ulli Lommel. Filmed at the Spandau Studios in Berlin, the film is an adaptation of the 1748 John Cleland novel of the same name.

<i>Wild Gals of the Naked West</i> 1962 film

Wild Gals of the Naked West is a 1962 nudie-cutie Western film written and directed by Russ Meyer and starring Sammy Gilbert, Anthony-James Ryan, Jackie Moran, Terri Taylor, Frank Bolger, and Werner Kirsch. The film is one of the few porn flicks in the American Western movie genre.

<i>Eve and the Handyman</i> 1961 American film

Eve and the Handyman is a 1961 American comedy film written and directed by Russ Meyer. The film stars Eve Meyer and Anthony-James Ryan. The film was released on May 5, 1961, by Pad-Ram Enterprises.

<i>Europe in the Raw</i> 1963 American film

Europe in the Raw is a 1963 American documentary film written and directed by Russ Meyer. The film was released on March 28, 1963.

References

  1. 1 2 King of the Nudies on Biggest Film Caper Yet Thomas, Kevin. Los Angeles Times 30 Nov 1969: s18.
  2. ↑ ""Dolls" triggers flood of great memories". Rogerebert.com. 2003-02-07. Retrieved 2021-06-17.
  3. ↑ "All About the VIXEN". Ericagavin.com. Retrieved 2021-06-17.
  4. ↑ Vagg, Stephen (December 16, 2018). "The A to Z of Russ Meyer". Filmink.
  5. ↑ "RetroCRUSH: The World's Greatest Pop Culture Site". Archived from the original on 2014-02-09. Retrieved 2018-12-04.
  6. 1 2 Russ Meyer: Ten Years After the 'Beyond' Ebert, Roger. Film Comment; New York Vol. 16, Iss. 4, (Jul/Aug 1980): 43-48,80.
  7. ↑ "Interview with Garth Pillsbury".
  8. ↑ "Interview with Garth Pillsbury". TV Store.
  9. ↑ Incredibly Strange Films. Starbrite. 1986. p. 86.
  10. ↑ SEX, VIOLENCE AND DRUGS ALL IN GOOD FUN! Berkowitz, Stan. Film Comment; New York Vol. 9, Iss. 1, (Jan/Feb 1973): 47-51.
  11. ↑ West View: King Leer BURT PRELUTSKY. Los Angeles Times 8 June 1969: l8.
  12. ↑ MOVIE REVIEW: 'Vixen' Screening Citywide Thomas, Kevin. Los Angeles Times 1 May 1969: e20.
  13. ↑ Screen: Sensationalism: ' Russ Meyer's Vixen' at Three Theaters By HOWARD THOMPSON. New York Times 17 May 1969: 19.
  14. ↑ RUSS MEYER: King of the Nudies Ebert, Roger. Film Comment; New York Vol. 9, Iss. 1, (Jan/Feb 1973): 35-46.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.