How Russ Meyer’s Body of Work Was Saved from Obscurity to Rescue These Sexless Times – IndieWire

The exploitation filmmaker's work had existed in a liminal space between lost and found — all but entirely out of circulation. Now, Severin has stepped in to restore a series of Meyer's bawdy classics.

By Rich Juzwiak

December 18, 2024 11:30 am

When Severin co-founder and CEO David Gregory signed the deal to release five Russ Meyer movies, he had caught his white whale — and it has one hell of a rack.

For years, the filmography of Meyer has languished in a liminal space between lost and found — Gregory described it as being out of circulation. While many of Meyer’s self-released movies have been available on DVD for decades, they’ve lived there via SD tape transfers that date back to the ‘80s, originally intended for VHS releases. Aside from 1970’s “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls,” one of two movies the usually independent Meyer made for 20th Century Fox, his body of work has eluded streaming.

Forget about 4K — many wondered if they’d make it to HD (aside from a long out-of-print Blu-ray of the beloved “Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!”). This has been a concern of Meyer fans for years — Meyer’s friend and frequent collaborator Roger Ebert is quoted in Jimmy McDonough’s 2005 Meyer bio “Big Bosoms and Square Jaws” as saying, “The state of DVD has gotten to the point now where they ought to remaster everything and restore it and do it right.” Then, those pining for proper state-of-the-art releases got the breast news ever earlier this year.

When Severin releases the so-called Vixen Trilogy (a cycle of softcore films spanning the late ‘60s to the late ‘70s that are unrelated narratively but all feature domineering, buxom women who pursue and often have copious amounts of sex) in late January 2025, Meyer’s films will properly enter the home-viewing century. The first wave of releases — 1968’s “Vixen!,” 1975’s “Supervixens,” and 1979’s “Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens” — is the product of a years-in-the-making collaboration with the Russ Meyer Trust, headed by Janice Cowart, whom Meyer hired, without a title, in 1988. She would eventually be named executive assistant and then president of the corporation. Cowart, who considers herself “more like a bookkeeper and a saleswoman” also served as Meyer’s conservator in the wake of his Alzheimer’s diagnosis. He died in 2004.

Meyer referred to his movies as “fleshed-out cartoons,” per Cowart, and they play like bawdy satires of American norms and anxieties around sex. The editing is staggering (Meyer arguably defined the kind of frenetic cutting that became so commonplace in the music-video age). The composition of most of the shots is breathtaking, even when what he’s shooting is a vibrator dipping into a tub of Vaseline. Meyer did so much of the work himself — he produced, directed, held the camera, edited, wrote (though sometimes with the help of his buddy Roger Ebert), and distributed. 

Among the first movies to receive an X rating by the MPAA, and a blockbuster in some markets, “Vixen!” undoubtedly paved the way for ‘70s porno chic. But there really was nothing like a Meyer movie before or since. “Strip away the storylines and the breasts and all that stuff: He had a great eye, and he had an amazing knack for cutting,” Eric Schaefer, author of “Bold! Daring! Shocking! True: A History of Exploitation Films, 1919-1959,” told IndieWire. “It’s kind of sad he didn’t have more of a semi-mainstream career after ‘Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.’”

“They’re pure cinema,” said Gregory of Meyer’s films. “This is one man’s vision — the films that he wanted to make. He wasn’t making them just for commercial reasons. Yes, he was a very smart businessman, and he knew he was going to make money on them. But he liked what he was filming. It comes across in the films.” 

Before they were friends, Ebert positively reviewed “Vixen!,” calling it “the best film to date in that uniquely American genre, the skin-flick.” In that review Ebert wrote of Meyer: “In a field filled with cheap, dreary productions, Meyer is the best craftsman and the only artist.”

“Vixen!”Everett Collection / Everett Collection

“Students and upcoming filmmakers need to know about him,” said Erica Gavin, who starred in “Vixen!” and had a supporting role in “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls,” in an interview. “It’s like architects not knowing about Frank Lloyd Wright. I mean, yeah, he wasn’t Spielberg, but in his field, there was no better.”

The independence that fueled Russ Meyer’s creativity, however, proved to be more a liability than an asset after his death. He left no heir, and running his company, RM Films, fell to his estate, with Cowart at the helm. In a rare interview with Indiewire, Cowart admitted that the management of Meyer’s body of work was “not as well taken care of as it could have been.” For example, when Meyer died, negatives and prints of his movies were scattered around the globe — the Producers Film Center in Hollywood, Cinémathèque Française in Paris, with his German rep, and Deluxe in London. There was no master list of what was where, Cowart said, and on top of that, elements were mislabeled or altogether missing. She said that as far as she knew, most of the elements were in climate-controlled storage.

“Nobody knew where anything was exactly, because he just kept control of everything. It was crazy,” she recalled. Because of the disarray, when RM Films released their Blu-ray of “Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!” in 2015, they used a pristine print in the absence of the missing negative.

There were “like seven or eight” sheds outside Meyer’s house, in addition to vaults “that got rained on,” which held many film elements. At some point, Cowart noticed a smell coming from the shed: vinegar syndrome.

In 2018, a good 14 years after Meyer’s death, the Museum of Modern Art and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences rescued the film elements and divided them among themselves, per Meyer’s wishes. This is where they live now, though not unscathed — “Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens” had water damage, affecting “large parts of each frame,” according to Gregory. Severin’s restoration for that movie took 400 hours and some traces of damage remain visible, if briefly. In contrast, “Supervixens” took less than half that time. (“Vixen!” was restored by MoMA.) Cowart was unaware of the state of the negatives yet to be restored: “I can’t really say which ones are damaged or not.” If any of the negatives have disintegrated beyond the point of being usable, “Nobody has said that,” reported Cowart.

Just getting to the point where a label could get its hands on the prints to restore them was a process. Cowart said that “every possible label or distributor,” including Criterion, had approached the trust with the interest of bringing Meyer’s work to HD (the costly and expensive process of restoring “Faster Pussycat!” made her wary of RM Films taking on another such project on its own). “They all wanted ‘Faster Pussycat!,’ but my strategy and goal was to get all, or at least many, of the films restored into the HD format so people could see them. And I knew if I licensed “Faster Pussycat!” by itself, that would probably never get done. So my strategy was: If you want “Faster Pussycat!,” you have to take at least four or five or six of the other films,” said Cowart. She has yet to cut a deal for the film that many consider to be the jewel in Meyer’s crown (or maybe it’s the cubic zirconia on his pasty) — about “Faster Pussycat!,” John Waters famously said, “Not only is it the best film ever made, it is the best film that will be made in the future.”

When Gregory reached out to Cowart, he did so with an essay of an email passionately arguing why Severin was the right company to release these films. Cowart was initially circumspect, thinking Severin was known more for its horror releases than anything along Meyer’s lines (Gregory pointed to Severin releases like “The Walerian Borowczyk Collection” and its 15-disc “The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle” box set as counterevidence). For months, they negotiated via an intermediary — a broker of sorts — and Cowart was impressed with the company’s willingness to agree to her terms. Unlike other labels, Severin was content to release the “Vixens” films (with two more to follow in 2025) without any promise of a “Faster Pussycat!” release to come. Severin also agreed to box art inspired by the original VHS releases approved by Meyer with a poster/film image framed with a thick red border replete with the word BOSOMANIA! within. 

“I could see they were treating it as a collaboration and not taking control,” Cowart said.

“The funny thing is that with Janice, the reputation comes all from this rumor and scuttlebutt,” Gregory said. “Everything that I have dealt with with Janice to this point has been absolutely fine. It might have been a lot slower than I wanted it to be, but that comes from her concern about making sure that it’s done right.” 

“I don’t want to have an inferior kind of quality, like so many of the people want to do: The really quick, digital-restoration type thing, where they scrub the film,” Cowart said. “Russ would never approve. I always think of Russ in the back of my mind, because he was so adamant about how things looked.”

“We don’t do some kind of automated restoration,” explained Gregory. “That’s technology that has long been debunked as a way to actually treat old films — to just press a button, leave it and then come back. I will say that sometimes we do a very light auto-pass first if the elements are very dirty to get rid of the most egregious stuff. But whenever we do that, we have to go back and go frame by frame to make sure that that hasn’t taken anybody’s limbs off.”

“Beyond the Valley of the Dolls”©20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection

In addition to the picture, Severin also restored the sound — albeit sparingly. “These are mono movies, and they’ve always been mono movies,” said Gregory. Instead of completing a 5.1 mix, the goal was more along the lines of removing cracks and hisses. 

The fruits of the labor are melons like you’ve never seen. IndieWire viewed the restorations of “Vixen!,” “Supervixens,” and “Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens,” and even via links that did not showcase the films in full 4K splendor, the experience was like watching these films for the first time with new eyes. The murk of the previous masters is gone. Colors pop, and Meyer’s ingenious composition is on full display, now that they’re presented in the intended aspect ratios (1.66:1 for Vixen!, and 1.85:1 for “Supervixens” and “Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens”). The previous video and DVD releases were presented in 4:3, via telecines of open matte framing.

“Vixen!” has never looked better, according to its star, Erica Gavin, who commented on “how clear, how vibrant the colors were — everything was perfect.” She continued: “It was like the way Russ would have wanted it, and he was so dogmatic and so particular, as you can imagine, with his photography being so exact.”

Gavin recorded a commentary for “Vixen!,” among the set’s new special features, which also include a piece on the battle to censor “Vixen!” in Ohio. Archival features like Meyer’s commentaries for all three films and his 1988 appearance on “The Incredibly Strange Film Show” are also included, as is a vintage interview with “Supervixens” star Charles Napier, recorded for Arrow’s Meyer DVD box set of the ‘00s but not included as a result of budgetary constraints.

Cowart reached out to praise Gavin after she listened to her commentary — an olive branch after years of estrangement and, at least on Gavin’s part, acrimony. In his Meyer bio, McDonough writes, “To one degree or another, Cowart had made enemies with all the Meyer women I spoke to.” This mostly owed to Cowart cutting off access to Meyer toward the end of his life, when his behavior turned erratic and at times, unkempt. “Janice was the only one allowed in,” said Gavin. “I was jealous.” 

Cowart’s recent affirmation helped patch things up. She said that she also remains in touch with Uschi Digard of “Supervixens” and reconciled with “Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens” star Kitten Natividad before she died in 2022. 

“I think she was sort of unfairly treated, especially on the internet,” said Gavin of Cowart. McDonaugh’s book contains many quotes dragging Cowart, including the allegation from Meyer’s French distributor and biographer Jean-Pierre Jackson that “she has contempt for Russ’s movies.” Cowart denied that claim, though she did say that “Supervixens” is her least favorite of Meyer’s films because of its violence. (1964’s “Lorna,” of Meyer’s black-and-white “rural Fellini” era, is her favorite.)

By any standard of any era, the violence in “Supervixens” is extraordinary. The film’s centerpiece is a roughly 10-minute sequence in which Charles Napier’s cop character enacts brutal revenge on SuperAngel (Shari Eubank) after she mocks his erectile dysfunction. It culminates with him stomping on her in a bathtub and electrocuting her with a plugged-in radio. It’s a glaring example of something that is true about all of these movies: They contain ugliness that does not jibe with modern standards and sensitivities. “Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens” is a sendup of Smalltown USA cliches, yes, but its narrative thrust concerns Lamar Shed (Ken Kerr), who can’t orgasm via anything but anal sex, and since none of his partners are interested in that, he rapes them. Casual homophobia ensues. 

The title character of “Vixen!” is a virulent racist who considers sex with her brother to be less taboo than with a Black man. The Black man in question, Niles (Harrison Page, who, like Gavin, also appeared in “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls”), endures verbal abuse from Vixen, including every imaginable slur besides the n-word (another character calls him that). Gavin said that she was naive to just how abrasive the script was, having not grown up around such language. “She just does whatever she wants,” Gavin added regarding her character.

“This was of its time,” said Gregory, who conceded that “Vixen!” has the potential to be the most controversial of the Severin releases. Cowart also worried about how “Vixen!” would be received by modern viewers. And then there’s “the way the younger women are about, you know, being exploited,” she added.

“His work has always been complex,” said Schaefer. “It’s problematic. And you can read it in any number of different ways.”

Chaz Ebert, the widow of Roger, recalled her husband asserting, “If people really analyzed Russ’s filmmaking, they would find that he had a feminist bent to it, because all of the women were strong characters, and they didn’t exist just to be exhibited or taken advantage of.” However, she said, “I thought this was a stretch.” Still, she remembered Meyer, one of the best men at her wedding, fondly. She described his behavior toward her as, much like that in his movies, cartoonish. He was “almost overly gentlemanly,” she thinks to compensate for the reputation of his pneumatic body of work. “He didn’t consider himself a pornographer.”

“I’m very much a person who thinks that there should be things out in the world — we have to have all kinds of exchanges of ideas,” said Ebert. “I have never seen the original [1915] ‘The Birth of a Nation.’ One day I will watch it, but right now, yes, it has a right to exist. I don’t have to consume it. I think maybe that’s how some people will feel about Russ’s movies.” 

Pussycat! Kill! Kill!”Courtesy Everett Collection

“Yes, he promoted sex, but sex was fun. Sex was funny,” said Gavin. “Yeah, it was a little serious, but not anything heartbreaking. He was conflicted. I don’t think [about] anybody that’s super talented, you can say that they’re either black or white. There’s so many colors.”

Soon, modern movie buffs can make these calls for themselves. Severin’s deal with the Meyer trust also includes streaming rights, which could put these movies in front of even more eyes. “But streamers are very nudity-averse, even softcore nudity, so we’re not sure where they’ll land yet,” wrote Gregory in a follow-up email.

Cowart said that since the announcement of the Vixen Trilogy release in September, she’s been “inundated” with requests for further licensing. “This was part of my plan,” she explained. On the RM Films end, Cowart says she’s been working solo. Staying profitable is nonetheless a challenge. “I really don’t want to be shipping videos and DVDs,” she said. Through the years, she’s watched many who were close to Russ die: to name a few, trustee Anthony James “Jim” Ryan died in 2012, “Faster Pussycat’s” Tura Satana and Napier in 2011. Cowart said she’s the last living trustee. “Before I die, I want to make sure Russ’ films get to be seen. Russ’s films shouldn’t just sit in a museum,” she said.

“Everybody is gone,” said Gavin. “It’s a very weird feeling to me. Like, ‘Why?’ I guess I just still have work to do or something.”

On the potential horizon is a possible “Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!” TV series adaptation from AMC. Its development was announced in 2021, and Cowart still hopes it will happen. After the 2018 announcement regarding the cancellation of a planned biopic focused on the making of “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” and the Meyer-Ebert friendship (Ebert wrote its script), there’s no such project brewing, though Cowart said that MoMA is interested in doing something with the unfinished anthology and doc about his life and work, “The Breast of Russ Meyer” that had, in McDonaugh’s words, “obsessed” Meyer throughout the ‘80s but was ultimately abandoned in favor of his memoir, “A Clean Breast.” The museum currently has that footage.

As far as future releases, Severin is taking a wait-and-see approach. “It’s really gonna depend on how they do and how we do, as far as the estate is concerned, because one of the things that they’re most concerned about is just directly representing Russ’s legacy,” said Gregory. “They don’t want it to be tarnished. They don’t want to be devalued in any way. It’s up to us to make sure that that is the case.” As for whether or not Severin will get to release “Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!,” Gregory is keeping his fingers crossed.