Up!

Welcome to the land of the bizarre. I have to tell you that I never know what to expect when I watch a Russ Meyer film. Up! (1976) is just off-the-deep-end nuts, venturing to territories of psychosexual weirdness I couldn't have possibly anticipated. The Paul Bunyan-esque Rafe, and his ax, are quite a team. The film opens with this "vhat the vuck" narrative voice of a very energized naked woman (we get an extreme close up of her tits and bushy vagina) giving us the inside scoop on a very kinky Adolph "Schwartz" (Hitler a wee bit older, and a wee bit naughtier) taking a whipping and face full of boobs. He wants more, though. The whipping boy  is a rather disinterested scrawny guy dressed as a pilgrim (with the hat certainly standing out) who really takes the licking to Adolph who just can't get enough, especially desiring an anal workout by his torturer. In this cavernous prison, a gimp with a black leather zipper mask taking a bananna like a champ (a real bananna, trust me not symbolism, folks) as well as a naked participant who assists Pilgrim Paul (that's the whipping boy's name) in giving Adolph a good one-over. I couldn't wait for all of this to end because the Adolph Hitler crap creeped me the fuck out. Well, Adolph pays the man after the ram rod finish (I best leave this one alone, when you see it, the scene speaks for itself), takes a bath in his swank castle which is dressed like a pleasure den, and a visitor with biker gloves shows up with a tank carrying a fish with a carnivorous appetite. The fish is dumped into the bath with Adolph, with the water eventually turning blood red. Seeing Adolph squirm to German Reich music on a record as the fish gets busy on him is quite a way to open any film. Up! could go anywhere from here, and I wasn't sure what other bits of strange was awaiting me.

This celebrates sex like few films I can remember. These people share the joy of the orgasm and the rodding of various sexual positions loud and clear. There isn't an angle Russ didn't like and he shoots in every position from every area you could think of. Imaginative doesn't even come close to describe how he frames people in sexual embrace, while pleasure is especially driven home with great accuracy. I will say this, though, there are some scenes of forced sex and one particular rape that made me quite uncomfortable and antsy. Perhaps that's the point, but when Russ uses sound effects to describe the release of a john from its cubby hole with the goal of penetration on the agenda it seems like all of it is a joke. I think even a diving board shiver is used to describe a hard rod popping from an unzipped pair of pants. Wait until you see a very determined babe (who is a pro when it comes to the use of her oral skills) unzip Redwood County Sheriff Homer Johnson (Monty Bane, with an alligator smile); the way Russ shoots this, you'd think she had just opened a top secret file containing information of high level governmental importance. While Homer gets a cleansing, his face evidently expressing how wonderful a job this girl is at convincing him to drop a speeding ticket, there are locals sitting outside a county desert diner speaking candidly at how swell she is at bobbing that head up and down. I couldn't make this up if I tried.

In a Russ Meyer film, you get a ton of cuts back and forth between ongoing situations. A cook, Paul (Robert McLane), the one seen whipping Adolph, tending to the eggs and bacon, hamburgers and beer, while his hot girlfriend waitress (and owner of the diner), Alice (Janet Wood, nice last name and appropriate under the circumstances) is tending to the customers remain busy while the sheriff is focused on the girl he pulled over for speeding. Meanwhile, periodically, the narrator of Up! cuts in every once in a while to explain who all might have been responsible for Adolph's grisly demise. Lots of dialogue intent on describing sex and those having it in depraved poetry and lurid detail.

The star of this glossy trash, shot with a scope and artistic beauty by Russ who was an undeniable craftsman behind the camera, his films edited exactly so to get the most out of how sex can be used as a tool of manipulation, comedy, power, control, and aggression, is Raven De La Croix, a raven-haired sexpot with an ample bosom and figure that whips the men into a frenzy. Raven's Margo Winchester (Lord, what a name...) has the looks that causes certain men she comes across to get a little rough and wild, willing to use their strength to mount her despite quite a fight. An insistent wild buck in a truck, with a fro, finagles Margo into his vehicle, turns off onto a dirt road leading to a river, and won't take no for an answer. Prior to this, Sheriff Homer offered her a ride and was turned down, later seeing the abuse and rape of Margo from the prick with the truck but was unable to stop it in time. Margo uses her karate, naked of course, to finally silence her attacker, but his death leaves her in a predicament evaded thanks to Homer. Homer's help leads to a non-stop screw-fest, with Margo obliging him his every sexual whimsy.

You get Rafe going apeshit, tearing up Alice's new diner and bar while downing lots and lots of beer (the caps pulled from his own teeth), watching intently as Margo (now a waitress at the diner, working at Homer's suggestion, and she's a big hit with the local boys, ogling lustfully, drooling and excited) plays to the crowd of happy male patrons. Soon Rafe embarks on a rage-filled sexual tirade that plants Margo's naked body, her ripped dress and panties departing in quick order, on a wooden table, with everyone in attendance trying to drag him off. His massive member doesn't pleaure as much as anguish Margo. Soon the sheriff arrives, with Paul also unable to halt the ongoing rape, having to pull an ax from the wall in order to hold off the big lummox for a little bit. One buried ax to the back won't quite work on this moose, so the sheriff will have to finish the job with a chainsaw and the results are awfully bloody. I wasn't expecting all of this, to be sure, and it doesn't even stop here.


We actually see the sheriff take an ax to the chest, Rafe an ax to the back, both still able to keep going, a preposterous bit of business that seems to feel right at home in this mess of a movie. Oh, we even get the identity of the killer as she stalks Margo with a large dagger, soon the pursuer and pursued are both naked and endlessly flapping their gums about Adolph, Paul, and everything else. It is all framed to be as out-there and absurd as possible.

Gotta love, Russ. The screenplay is loaded with language that just leaves the cast's lips and enduces bewilderment and I figure dropped jaws. What is happening on screen and spoken from the characters performing such dubious acts of abberant behavior just accentuates that the movie's purpose is to be as wrong and unpredictable as possible. Those always irritated that these kinds of films lack pecker....well, let me inform you that this movie delivers this in clever sight gags, hanging down like dead pythons. Nakedness is the order of the day in this film (sorry, but I thought a diner joke was fitting for this movie).