Thursday, June 12, 2014

Waters, Meyer, Anger

Deep into movies starting with "M," I run up against "Mondo Trasho," "Multiple Maniacs," "Mondo Topless," and "Mudhoney," so it seems I should mention why certain director's films aren't appearing in this list.

Russ Meyer made a number of low-budget exploitation films, almost universally starring women with enormous breasts. These films, with a few exceptions, are well made and entertaining. "Blacksnake" is bad and his Hollywood films are not usually interesting ("Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" is good), his early nudies are nothing notable (except "The Immmoral Mr. Teas," which is important for historical reasons as the first true nudie film). His early efforts, like "Mudhoney," "Cherry, Harry and Raquel," "Good Morning... and Goddbye!," "Common-Law Cabin" and "Finders Keepers, Lovers Weepers" are all enjoyable romps. "Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!" is a masterpiece of exploitation and one of my favorite films. His later works in the Vixen series all have cult followings and are worth seeing. "Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens" verges on self-parody, but still is too good to make my list. "Mondo Topless" is just a series of outtakes, plotless and poorly conceived but not quite bad enough to include.

If I include John Waters' films, I'd have to include George Kuchar's and then, having included him, I'd have to delve into all experimental filmmakers. Waters films, once they developed production values, I'd say with "Desperate Living," his first in color, became less entertaining. His Hollywood films are terrible (excepting "Hairspray"), but not entertaining enough to include. His first films are wonderfully awful - the final scene in "Multiple Maniacs" where Divine gets raped by a giant boiled lobster may have produced the loudest laugh I've ever had (and I was embarrassed that I was laughing) - but it's hard to include films whose quality was intentionally poor. "The Diane Linkletter Story" and "Eat Your Make-Up" are two early shorts worth skipping. "Mondo Trasho," "Multiple Maniacs" and of course "Pink Flamingos" are cult classics.

Kenneth Anger's art films are, to my taste, embarrassingly terrible, but he has a position in the underground film world that makes his films not reviewable as entertainment.

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