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It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue, List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: UNITED TRASH (1996)

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aka The Slit

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DIRECTED BY: Christoph Schlingensief

FEATURING: Udo Kier, Kitten Natividad, Joachim Tomaschewsky, Johnny Pfeifer, Jones Muguse, Thomas Chibwe

PLOT: The wife of a gay German UN commander stationed in Africa gives birth to a child who is declared the new messiah; when an accident causes the boy to be horribly injured and endangers the UN mission, an escalating battle for power arises between the power-hungry commander, a religious leader who has declared war on the Vatican, and a chieftain who is attempting to actualize his dream to ride a ramshackle rocket into the White House to kill the American president.

Still from United Trash [AKA The Slit] (1996)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: Movies can be weird, they can be strange, they can be bizarre, but it’s rare to come across a movie that is actually insane. Under the trappings of satire on a global scale, United Trash offers a critique of international affairs forged in the crucible of late 20th century daytime talk shows. There is not a single character in the film who isn’t as awful as they can be, nor a situation that is not plussed to become the most grotesque version of itself. So many fluids are spattered across the screen, everyone is subject to abject humiliation, and not a single institution fails to be undermined. Rarely has a film’s contempt for its subjects been so blatant and so complete, nor has a commitment to the most base appeals for a laugh been pursued so vigorously.

COMMENTS: In a career cut appallingly short by cancer, Christoph Schlingensief racked up a remarkable number of achievements, including staging a Wagner opera at the Bayreuth Festival, making plans to build a performing arts center in Burkina Faso, and curating a retrospective of his art that was staged posthumously at the Vienna Biennale. In cinema, he created a trilogy of films exploring the trauma caused by both the rise of Hitler and the process of German reunification. (The last of those, Terror 2000, also sits in our Reader Queue.) And in the middle of all this, he directed a film in which Udo Kier paints himself in blackface, dons a skirt made of bananas, and dances like a monkey in front of an audience of Africans while stroking the center banana aggressively. It’s an extraordinary career.

United Trash features one of the most game casts I have ever seen. There’s not an ounce of shame among the lot of them. They got the note that subtlety would be punishable by death, and they responded by going furiously over the top. Keir leads the way with his relentless prissiness, matched by a frequently naked Natividad raving maniacally about her lack of sexual satisfaction. They are surrounded by actors working just as hard to win the title of Least Restrained Performance, including a Hitler-mustachioed doctor/rocket scientist, an amoral, sexually ravenous, Vatican-hating priest, and Keir’s absurdly bewigged, unexpectedly jacked, child-molesting Continue reading APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: UNITED TRASH (1996) →

Capsules

CAPSULE: FAGS IN THE FAST LANE (2017)

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DIRECTED BY: Josh Collins (as Sinbad Collins)

FEATURING: Chris Asimos, Oliver Bell, Matt Jones, Sasha Cuha, Airsh “King” Khan, Justine Jones, Aimee Nichols, Pugsley Buzzard, Luke Clayson,

PLOT: A gay superhero and his team go on a quest to retrieve a golden penis stolen by a gang of circus freaks.

Still from Fags in the Fast Lane (2017)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: This cartoonish gay superhero grossout flick will almost certainly make one of our lists: we fully expect to see it on our 10 Weirdest Movies of 2018 list. It’s a big jump from one of the weirdest of the year to weirdest of all time, though, a leap the slight Fags isn’t quite capable of making.

COMMENTS: When 69-year-old -ex Kitten Natividad counts as your star power, you know you’re aiming at a very particular audience. Fags presumes (or at least hopes for) a certain level of familiarity with yesteryear’s trash culture, although if you’ve seen at least one movie you’ll recognize the silly-yet-offensive spirit. Obviously, is an inspiration (one of the better throwaway jokes is a reference), but given the bright comic book design and heedless incoherence, I suspect Australia’s surreal Nazi-fighting comedy adventure “Danger 5” was a more direct stylistic influence.

Set in an anything-goes world of freak show gangs, Aztec cults and GILF brothels, the plot is bonkers. The action begins in small-minded small-town “Dullsville,” where dashing yachtsman Beau (AKA the “Cockslinger”) and his beefy, mustachioed longtime companion Lump are brought in to handle a gang of gay-bashing thugs. (“The toughest gays in town,” this avenging duo eschews limp wrists for pimp hands.) Soon enough, they find themselves chasing after jewels stolen from mama Kitten’s retirement home bordello, along with a mystical dildo. A buxom killer transvestite and a lethargic Indian eunuch (the original owner of the phallus in question) join the team, along with the young thug hostage Squirt, who opens up to his queer side as the adventure continues. The team is opposed by burlesque queen Wanda the Giantess and her gang of freaks (including a bald gal with crab claws) and tailed by the local sheriff and his sadistic hacker assistant. The gang’s adventures take them to a booby-trapped tiki truck stop, a gender-bending pagan temple, and into a freaky Freak Town final showdown. And that’s just scratching the surface of the maximalist mayhem.

The plot moves quickly enough and takes itself with so little seriousness that you probably won’t mind some suspect writing. Very few of the jokes land, tending towards the obvious, the juvenile, and the toilet-minded. (Baseball bat sodomy is not one of my favorite sources of comedy, but at least no one can accuse Fags of being overly PC.) The plot often makes little sense, but coherence was not a major point of emphasis. A melee at McBastard’s Meat Pies has almost no visible motivation but lots of cheesy violence and stiletto-heeled crotch-kicking. At one point Lump is captured and tortured with a laser finger; it’s not completely clear how he is abducted, and entirely unclear how he escapes. Plot points seem to have been left on the cutting room floor. On the other hand, the design elements—a grab bag of colorfully bizarre sets and costumes, low budget CGI, and animation both traditional and stop motion—are impressive, all the more so considering the obvious low budget. Key set pieces include a psychedelic musical number sung by the castrated fakir and a trip into a swamp filled with stop-motion penis-themed vermin. And if that’s not enough for your money, there’s a roadside performance by horror rockers “the Mummies” thrown in for good measure.

It goes without saying that neither homophobes nor the easily grossed-out will want to encounter Fags, but if you’re made of sterner stuff, you should find it fast-paced fluff that satisfies your guilty desire for absurd sleaze served with a twist of retro pop-culture surrealism. Currently in very limited release in the U.S., a DVD release is scheduled for June 1. More information can be found on the movie’s home page.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The mood is madcap, as pop-art expressionism meets ’60s trash meets Benny Hill action, while the entendre are single and spunky.”–Craig Mathieson, The Age (contemporaneous)

Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema

RUSS MEYER’S BENEATH THE VALLEY OF THE ULTRA VIXENS (1979)

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Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Vixens (1979) is the last authentic Russ Meyer film (he returned only to produce 2001‘s rarely-seen Pandora Peaks, which is, as to be expected, an idiosyncratic interpretation of the documentary genre). Co-written by (under his “R. Hyde” pseudonym), Meyer’s swan song is film as one additional cup size enhancement. It has charmed moments of Meyerisms, including his trademark spry editing, but adds erratic eroticism. Meyer once claimed it was the favorite of his own works (although he said the same of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls). This may be an echo of Paul Gauguin’s claim that the artistic process was more satisfying than the finished work. Coloring Meyer’s sense of nostalgia for the film was his admission that he constantly engaged in sex with star between takes. According to Meyer, the actress introduced him to multifarious taboos and was even more oversexed than he was.

As in Up! (1976), the plot is emaciated Surrealism. The relationship (so to speak) between Surrealism and pornography has been complex since the movement’s inception (works by Georges Bataille, Susan Sontag, and Theodor Adorno are among essential writings on the subject). Meyer’s brand of Surrealism is strictly visceral, which renders him closer to authentic Surrealism than to soft-core porn. For the Surrealists, porn’s lack of social acceptability amounted to an endorsement. However, its totalitarian simple-mindedness prevented a complete embrace, or mimicry. Rather, elements of pornography proved influential to the aesthetics and tenets of Surrealism.

Of course, Meyer did not associate himself with any –ism, and it’s doubtful that he gave much thought to categorizing his work. He simply stayed true to his sense of craftsmanship, making films that he would want to see. He voluntarily returned to the limits of independent budgets as opposed to compromising with Twentieth Century Fox, who any other indie filmmaker would have killed to work for. That anti-bourgeoisie, stubbornly rebellious streak invites a comparison to Surrealist bad boys such as Andre Breton, , or George Antheil. However, as much as Meyer was obsessed with breasts, he was equally preoccupied with cartoonish slapstick; another surrealist plane of identification. His films, especially his last two, are akin to a visualization of a Carl Stalling collage.

Still from Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-vixens (1979)The gossamer narrative revolves around Lavonia (Natividad) who is sexually unsatisfied with hubby Lamar (Ken Kerr). As the “Small Town USA Narrator” (Stuart Lancaster in a pickup truck) informs us, “Lamar, with a 37 IQ, is strictly a rear window man ((One might speculate as well how much of this plotline was semi-autobiographical. Meyer claimed that Natividad introduced him to anal sex, which she was apparently preoccupied with)).” Lamar’s fetish gets him fired from his job (no perverts allowed here), and drives Lavonia into the sheets with her vibrator. She follows this by having affairs with Mr. Peterbuilt (Pat Wright), teen meat Rhett (Steve Tracy) and lingerie salesman Semper Fidelis (Michael Finn). Oddly, wifey’s bonding with the battery powered machine drives Lamar into a far greater frenzy than her extramarital rendezvous.

With a slinky dress and gaudy wig from Semper, Lavonia hits the strip clubs under the stage name of Lola. Borrowing a plot from countless opera librettos, the husband comes across his disguised wife and does not recognize her. Lavonia’s ruse to trick her husband into good old fashioned vaginal intercourse utterly fails, driving Lamar to seek gay counselor Asa Lavender (Robert Pearson) and female Benny Hinn type-Eufaula Roop (Anne Marie) for conversion therapy.

Meyer’s camera work and editing is at it most -like, fixating on inanimate objects, most of which are utilized as phallic and vaginal symbols (such as a record player). He also employs extreme close-ups of Natividad’s sex parts paralleled, per the norm, with vivacious sound effects.

While much of Meyer’s work intersects sex and violence, there is virtually none of the latter here and, with no real antagonist, Beneath deliriously celebrates the joy of sex. Meyer had once planned a film titled The Bra Of God, which for various reasons did not come to fruition. However, in that planned title and this film we locate the pulse of Meyer’s inseparable art and life. Existential questions are banished. Like the birds, bees, ants, and fish, the relevance of life pertains primarily to pleasure found in sexual union. We share that with the beasts and primitives. The sole difference is we do not, or should not, divorce love (and appreciation of beauty) from sex. For Meyer, pursuit of power, acquisition of dyed green paper, and the quest to find an invisible deity are pursuits for the unenlightened.

Russ Meyer's Beneath The Valley Of The Ultravixens [4K UHD]

Russ Meyer's Beneath The Valley Of The Ultravixens [4K UHD]
  • An unwashed look at Small Town, U.S.A., complete with faith healers, war criminals, bosom buddies and the loin-girding quest for sexual salvation.
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Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema, List Candidates

RUSS MEYER’S UP! (1976)

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followed up on the relative success of 1975’s Supervixens with Up! From a script based on Roger Ebert’s original story, Meyer produced his most surreal live-action, X-rated cartoon. There is no tangible plot, but rather loosely connected vignettes.

Up! opens with a sadomasochistic scene of Adolf Schwartz (Edward Schaaf) being tortured, and pleasured, by three female prostitutes, each belonging to a different ethnic group: the Ethiopian Chief (Elaine Collins), the Oriental Limehouse (Su Ling) and Pocahontas (Foxy Lae). Of course, the Native American requires a Captain Smith, who she get in puritan pilgrim Paul (Robert McLane, with a foot-long prosthetic penis). Candy Samples also appears, under a mask, to breast slap Adolf, who is actually the aged Adolf Hitler, having apparently faked his 1944 suicide. He’s living in a Bavarian castle (his mailbox has a red flag) until a mysterious black-gloved assassin drops a piranha in the Fuhrer’s bathtub to the strains of the Horst-Wessel-Lied. Although obviously justified, Adolf’s death is actually a disappointment: within the dank dungeon, Schaff is the most animated sex participant, expressively enjoying his carnality. The remaining cast members all engage with the outdoor, sunny California countryside, but under a spell of kinetic blankness, like sex machines gone wild. That is intentional. It is essential to be aware of this film’s time period. The country was still under the spell and success of the hardcore XXX film Deep Throat (1972). It influenced the entire sexploitation industry and Up! is a venomous, satirical rejection of the hardcore phenomenon. Paradoxically, Up! is also an attempt to appease changing tastes.

appears (nude, except for leather boots) as “the Greek Chorus”: a mythological goddess come down to pleasure our eyes and inform us that Adolf’s death was “a murder most foul.” Throughout the rest of the film, Natividad sits atop phallic trees, prances through the landscape, and quotes dabs of Shakespeare mixed with nonsensical phrases such as “the kamikaze of cunnilingus” and “the black sperm of revenge” while Sweet L’il Alice (Janet Woods) engages in interracial dildo sex with Gwendoline (Linda Sue Ragsdale).

Cue the second opening (apparently, the first was a kind of overture): Margo Winchester (busty Raven de la Croix, in an amusing Mae West impersonation) is hitching a ride not far from the castle when the vile redneck Leonard Box (Larry Dean) chases her into a lake and brutally rapes her. In retaliation, she kills him, but copper Homer Johnson (Monty Bane) threatens to arrest her. Naturally, they retreat to a mountain cabin where she repeatedly pleasures Johnson’s johnson (another foot long prosthetic) and avoids incarceration.

Natividad returns sporadically to try to guide us through the dizziness (thankfully, she fails) and consistently reminds us that “a murder most foul,” has been committed (as if we care, unless you’re a mournful Meyer with a Nazi fetish).

Johnson’s johnson gets pleasured by more busty babes, including “Chesty Young Thing” Marianne Marks, on her knees. Winchester (after trying out numerous studs) decides to get a job at Paul and Alice’s diner as a dancing waitress, where her cleavage makes her a local sensation. Unfortunately, her gyrating arouses backwoodsman Rafe (Bob Schott) who rapes her on a table to a cheering crowd of sex-starved hayseeds (Meyer himself, billed as “Hitchcock,” is among the rabble). Rafe gets carried away and gets axed by Homer (remember him?), but survives long enough to reciprocate. Gallons of deep cadmium red and ploopy sound effects ramp up this mean-spirited, chainsaw to the crotch of a cartoon, which occasionally seems a precursor to Sam Raimi.

Before things get too out of hand, Natividad splashes through the tulips, crying again, “a murder most foul has been committed.” Winchester already knows, because she is an undercover detective. Both Paul and the bi-sexual Alice lust after Winchester, prompting a duel (return of the dildo) and, finally, uncovering the identity of Hitler’s assassin. The finale, shot and edited like future music videos, is a frenzied marathon of sex and violence run amok.

Still from Up! (1976)References to Citizen Kane (1941), Psycho (1960), and John Ford’s cavalry westerns abound. It is surprising that Up! is not better known. De la Croix  is femme fatale comparable to Tura Satana (both break the backs of lesser men). Woods and Natividad fill out the remaining trio of magnetic leads. Natividad went onto have a long personal relationship with Meyer, until her entry into hardcore sex films prompted a breakup (although they remained friends until his death). Up! may be Meyer’s most pronounced rebellion against the status quo, and is a definitely List Contender.