This reviewing films lark is a funny old game! Well, it especially is when an old film gets a re-release. That’s even more especially so when it’s a film you know about, had wanted to see when you were younger, but never actually got around to it. The film I’m wittering on about is Vixen! Incidentally, the exclamation mark is actually part of the title rather than my excitement. There could be a certain amount of excitement though, because the usual films I get to write about tend to be fairly obscure whereas this one is reasonably well known.
Whether that is down to fame or notoriety is another question. Russ Meyer’s Vixen trilogy is getting a Blu-Ray re-release in January 2025 along with nine hours of special features as well as a 4K UHD scan from the original negatives and painstakingly restored. The trilogy consists of Vixen! (1968), Supervixens (1975), and Beneath The Valley Of The Ultravixens (1978). In and around those were titles such as Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Mondo Topless, Skyscrapers & Brassieres, and Wild Gals Of The Naked West among others.
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Vixen’s Full Of Fun
Meyer was in the enviable position of being able to make films about whatever he liked. As you might have guessed from the titles in the previous bit, what he liked was naked women. Especially women with big breasts. And this was the main reason why the teenage version of me wanted to see one of Mr Meyer’s films. First off, I’d like to say that I’m not a fan of pornography but I do enjoy a bit of smut…I’d prefer to watch Carry On Camping than Debbie Does Dallas. And Mr Meyer seemed to be of a similar set of sensibilities.
His first commercially successful film was The Immoral Mr Teas which was also the first of what is known as a nudie-cutie. These followed the formula of being humorous films with hapless, bumbling males and glorified women. They broke from the convention of having to find a way to get the heroine into a nudist colony which used to be how you got to see a bit of naked flesh back in the days before hard core porn was available at the flick of a modem. So while his output seems to be top shelf, being the inventor of the nudie-cutie it is actually a lot milder.
She Likes To Tease A Lot
So what is Vixen! all about? The short answer is not much really! Vixen (Erica Gavin) is married to Tom Palmer (Garth Pillsbury). Mind you, in this case, married doesn’t mean a great deal as far as the vows of fidelity are concerned. That is as far as Vixen is concerned anyway. She is first seen romping in the woods with a big, strapping chap. We know he isn’t her husband because he was just in the previous scene talking about how “Marriage is a big responsibility to her”. This is Vixen’s invitation to have sex with almost everyone that she meets.
I say “almost” because there is one aspect of this film that is particularly harsh to modern sensitivities…the blatant racism. Vixen has sex with everybody that she interacts with; guests Dave (Robert Aiken) and Janet King (Vincene Wallace), a Mountie (Peter Carpenter), her brother Judd (Jon Evans), and even her husband. The only person she won’t have anything to do with is Judd’s friend Niles (Harrison Page) and she makes no effort to hide that it is because he is black. She uses all manner of racial slurs which would not be tolerated today. Vixen! is part of the newly restored Vixen trilogy released on 20th January 2025 by Severin Films.
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