Supervixens (

1975

) ½

There’s a tradition in comic literature called the “picaresque” and for those unfamiliar with it, it’s a 25-cent word for a comic story where the hero has a series of episodic adventures. Several of these picaresque novels are classics of world literature, such as Don Quixote, The Pickwick Papers, and The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling. It seems a sacrilege to elevate a Russ Meyer helmed nudie cutie to such lofty company, and consequently, I couldn’t possibly resist doing so. But even beyond the thrill of comparing cheap exploitation to artistic milestones, Supervixens fits the definition of picaresque to a tee and is arguably one of the better cinematic stabs at the genre. Picaresque always worked better in literature (and TV and Video Games as well) because the entire story doesn’t have to be consumed in a single sitting. Just look at some of the novels I mentioned above, these are doorstoppers on an epic scale, Don Quixote alone clocks in at around 1000 pages. Movies are limited to at most three hours and change, and it’s hard even in those bloated runtimes to establish the multiple characters, settings, and plots that each episode demands. While there are some successful examples of the cinematic picaresque, Forrest Gump (1994) springs to mind, most films wisely shy away from such an ambitious challenge. However, nudie cuties have a different set of concerns that make them ideally suited for the picaresque treatment. The characters in pornography are usually archetypes rather than unique characterizations and can be established with minimum exposition. Soft-core pornography also lives and dies on novelty, so a change of setting and characters every 10-15 minutes is more of an asset than anything else. I’m pretty sure that director Russ Meyer knew what he was doing with this too, as the fact that he directed Fanny Hill (1964) a pornographic adaptation of an 18th-century smut story proves that he at the very least is familiar with the right period of literature.

Our story follows Clint, a young man with a disproportionately large penis, who works as a pump jockey at Martin Bormann’s gas station. Yes, that is the same Martin Bormann who was tried and sentenced in absentia at the Nuremberg Trials, the highest-ranking member of the German Nazi party to evade being captured or killed. In real life, Bormann probably committed suicide along with most of the rest of the Nazi leadership, but in Russ Meyer’s wacky world, Bormann escaped to America where he promptly opened a gas station. For an escaped war criminal, Bormann is not exactly keeping a low profile. Not only is going by his own name, but he has also named his business after himself so every car passing on the highway can see in giant red letters “Martin Bormann’s Gas Station.” Add in the fact that he likes to tool around town blasting the German national anthem and you’ll start to wonder why the IDF hasn’t pulled an Eichmann on his ass yet.

When we first meet Clint he is stuck in an abusive relationship with his wife, Super Angel (all the women in this movie have the first name of Super, don’t ask I don’t understand myself). Angel demands that Clint skip work so he can come home and make love to her, and when he does so she immediately accuses him of having an affair. The resulting blow-up leaves Clint’s truck all but totaled (Angel assaults it with rock, cinder block, and an axe in that order) and Clint covered in bruises. The neighbor calls the cops, and in a shockingly realistic turn of events, when patrolman Harry Sledge shows up, he blames the whole thing on Clint. Sledge doesn’t really think Harry is guilty, he just wants him out of the way so he can make his own move on Super Angel. At first, Angel is completely fine with this plan but unfortunately for her, Harry is a vicious murderer more interested in killing Angel than in making love to her. In a sequence that bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the famous “Here’s Johnny” scene in The Shining (1980), he does just that.

While this is going on Clint has gone to a bar owned by yet another impossibly proportioned woman, name Super Haji. A word must be said about Super Haji’s bar. On the surface, it is a normal dive bar, the sort of which you can find in any small town in rural America. Yet, a woman wearing nothing aside from high heels, a couple of flowers and some vaguely oriental looking jewelry, is tending this otherwise very ordinary bar. It’s a surreal scene given how out of place Haji looks in what is ostensibly her own establishment. Had the bar been a decadent pleasure house in the Las Vegas model I’d be less taken aback. Just like every other woman in the movie, Haji cannot resist Clint and makes a pass at him. Clint turns her down, and Haji is so pissed at being scorned that she refuses to provide Clint with an alibi when Angels’ dead body is discovered (jeez lady, they’re called priorities). Without a solid alibi, the scorned lover Clint is the prime suspect in the Angel’s murder. He is forced to flee town with nothing but the clothes on his back, and a $100 dollar loan from Martin Bormann. Despite being responsible for crimes against humanity, Bormann is a fairy caring and considerate boss.

From there, Clint gets into a series of surreal misadventures all involving a large breasted woman with a given name of Super. This is where the film shows its picaresque qualities front and center. The stories all follow a similar pattern though: large-breasted woman du jour is desperately attracted to Clint and makes an exceedingly aggressive pass at him. Just how aggressive varies on the girl, but in the case of Super Cherry it is almost certainly sexual assault and in the case of Super Soul it would probably be safe to call it rape. Then, as a consequence of the woman’s sexual desire, Clint gets into trouble with the men in their lives (boyfriend, husband, and father respectively). The similarity of each episode insures that the film will feel stale by the end if you’re just watching it for the plot. The lengthy climax will really push the endurance of anyone watching.

As pornography, the picaresque model is a very clever idea. Porn is, after all, a genre that lives and dies on novelty. With each girl being swapped out for another, newer model before she can grow stale, the film runs no risk of boring its audience with the same female performers. However, when looked at as pornography, Supervixens comes across as remarkably tame. There is a great deal of cleavage on display (of course) but despite that relatively little nudity. The sex scenes are short and resemble standard Hollywood depictions rather than soft-core pornography. Meyer’s style evidentially hasn’t changed much since he was making nudie cuties like The Immoral Mr. Teas (1959) in the late 50s. Censorship and the market being what they were then, a more modest approach made sense for mid-century pornographers, but those days were long gone in the mid-1970s when Meyer made Supervixens. Indeed, the film has more in common with a modern raunchy comedy, like say American Pie (1999) than it does with the contemporaries in its particular genre. It doesn’t hurt that the film is genuinely funny. In addition to the overt humor, Meyer’s rapid-fire editing is riddled with sight gags (take for instance the scene where Angel begs Clint to come home early, while she’s talking on the phone she strokes her pet cat).

Supervixens can be downright bizarre at times. The tone is all over the place, jumping from gruesome horror to goofy comedy multiple times in a single scene. As the movie progresses the boundaries between reality and fantasy melt away and it's left ambiguous just how much of the action on screen is really happening. For instance, when Super Eula begins to have sex with a hitherto unseen circus strongman just how are we supposed to interpret that? The guy doesn’t even stop lifting his cartoonish dumbbell throughout the whole process. The scene towards the end of the film, where the ghost of the murdered Super Angel has sex with a mountain is similarly perplexing. Then there is the footage spliced in, apropos of nothing, of an older couple having sex. Who are these people? I suppose its possible the version I watched is missing a few crucial scenes, though if this is the case I’d probably wind up liking the mangled print better than the complete addition. As it stands, Supervixens is a curious film, that while occasionally a bit sluggish, will keep the attention of even an audience not particularly interested in women with massive breasts.