Vixen! (1968)

3 Stars (out of 4)

Top Heavy

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Russ Meyer was a filmmaker that knew what he was up to. He loved women. He loved women with huge breasts. And he especially loved women with huge breasts who would bare them for the camera. But he was also smart enough not to be just another maker of "nudie-cuties." He dealt with parody, social commentary, and even female empowerment. He was also a skilled filmmaker, often handling the writing, directing, producing, cinematography, and editing himself. Many cinephiles consider him one of the all-time best director/editors, for his swift, funny, and supremely odd rhythms. Additionally, he was a savvy businessman, controlling the rights and distribution for most of his own films.

That has changed since his death in 2004, and many of his films are hard to find on physical media. Thankfully Severin Films has taken the initiative and released three restored Meyer classics on Blu-ray for the first time, with more to come. They are the informal "Vixen" trilogy, unrelated to each other except for the word "Vixen" in their titles.

Vixen (1968), sometimes stylized with an exclamation point (Vixen!), is one of Meyer's best, and earned a three-star review from young film critic Roger Ebert. (This began a friendship and a collaboration, with Ebert contributing screenwriting work for some of Meyer's films.) Vixen is quite short, only 71 minutes, but it packs a lot into that time. Erica Gavin plays the title character, who is married to a bush pilot (Garth Pillsbury). Together they run a fishing lodge in British Columbia, and is frequently left home alone while he flies.

Over the course of the film, she sleeps with a mountie, her husband (twice), a married male and female guest, and her own brother. She also performs a sexy-gross dance with a fish. The only one she won't sleep with is her brother's friend Niles (Harrison Page), a Black draft-dodger from the United States. (She says many hateful, racist things to him, but it's clear that Meyer doesn't condone this language or behavior.) The film's last half-hour contains no sex at all (a violation of the rules of a nudie) and focuses on an attempted hijacking and a discussion of Communism. This is a wild, weird, sexy, and funny film, a relic of its time, but also still entertaining.

Bonus features include an archival commentary with Meyer, a commentary with Gavin, interviews with Gavin and Page, an episode of David Del Valle's "The Sinister Image," with Meyer, a featurette on the attempts to censor the film, a trailer, and a 1981 "censor prologue." Recommended.