UP! From The IMHO Dept. of Kris Gilpin

Getting "Up!" with Russ Meyer 

Starring Janet Wood, Kitten Natividad (1976).
The IMHO Dept. of Kris Gilpin!

The late, great, gleefully anti-P.C. sleazemeister Russ Albion Meyer once said, "I wanted to make a film without any socially redeeming values whatsoever, so I made Supervixens!" It features the most purposely sadistic female killing he ever filmed (psychotically performed by main Meyer man, Charles Napier).

Treading through a sea of Piranha and Cunnilingus

A year later the producer/director/writer/photographer got his humor back full force with Up!, a farce about murder, S&M and a huge, airheaded, drunken lumberjack who guzzles "Beer!! Beer!!" like gulps of water in a small redneck town. This one's lots of fun--& very funny--and the women are exceptionally lovely for a Russ flick, Janet (Ice Cream Man) Wood, who plays Sweet Alice, is adorable and, interestingly enough, one of the few less-enormously breasted women to appear in a Meyer movie.

Sweet Alice karate chops Nazi-She bitches when she's not sunbathing

Up! has a crazed, hysterical, gory sequence in which the rowdy, horny lumberjack gets an axe in his back (& watch for a Russ cameo in this crowd scene!), after which he then buries the axe in his attacker's chest. A couple minutes later the original attacker wakes up (!), pulls the bloody weapon out of his chest (!!), catches up with the big grunt and, screaming insanely, runs an electric chainsaw through the lumberjack's chest & on out of his back, while flying blood splatters them both. It's perhaps my fave R.M. film sequence ;-) and is typical of his demented sense of humor, while showing his refusal to take his films too seriously. (That's true Entertainment, boy!)

Just getting a second wind, before I saw through a lumberjack with a chainsaw

At an L.A. Meyer film fest in Dec., 1987, the director, said, "Up! was a surprising, big success in Germany, thanks to the old German, S&M character Adolph Schwartz (!). It shows that there's hope for the Modern German film fans because they laffed at the old pathetic, submissive Hitler-like character who liked to get whipped. The fact that they weren't offended is a testament that they'd rather erase the past. In fact, the dubbing was excellent, in many instances the foreign actors came off in a much more superior way than the American actors."

That Knockwurst requires sauerkraut and mustard!

We sure miss ya, Russ! (My fave Meyers are Up!, Supervixens, Cherry Harry & Raquel, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Mudhoney & Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!)