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UP! (1976)

Dir: Russ Meyer

We open in the castle dungeon of one Adolph Schwartz, who looks suspiciously like a certain German dictator, who is having his bare arse whipped (as he burrows his face between the ample bosom of the leather mask wearing 'The Headsperson', Candy Samples) by a guy in Puritan clothes named Paul (Robert McLane) as he screams out his pleasure in ranting, pigeon, German.
They are joined in his depraved dungeon of depravity by Limehouse (Su Ling) and The Ethiopian Chef (Elaine Collins).

After a spot of sexual debauchery we skip to join Paul's Wife, Sweet Li'l Alice (Janet Wood) and her truck driver lover Gwendolyn (Linda Sue Ragsdale) making whoopee in the woods (with Gwendolyn sporting a truly gigantic strap on) before Gwen has to hit the road.

Back at Adolph's we see the old Dic…tator having a bath when a mysterious figure enter the room and promptly drops a Piranha fish in the tub! And thus it comes to pass that, in a welter of crimson water and foam, old Adolph is no more!

But who was this assassin?
Well, as we learn more about the characters, and are introduced to some new ones like the cool and sexy Margo Winchester (Raven De La Croix), our friendly, ever naked, Greek Chorus (one time Meyer Wife Kitten Natividad, who as always is a one woman carnival of sexual freedom and all round frolicking fun) leads us on the path of discovery……

 

You know that you are now in the presence of Sexploitation genius when the roll call of characters in the opening credits actually has footage for each person that is almost all sexual/nudity close-ups with no recognisable faces. Janet Wood as 'Sweet Li'l Alice' for example is just a cherry being squeezed between her naked buttocks.
Yes folks, the great (and now sadly late) Russ Meyer is doing his thing!

By 1976 Meyer was having to compete with the mini-boom in hardcore Porn Chic and the spread of sexually explicit films in general, so with "UP!" ol' Russ delivers as much rampant nudity as the running time (and plot) will allow and it's all gloriously in your face stuff!
On many occasions in fact Meyer will shoot nothing but a naked body (or close-ups of strategic parts) and simply not bother showing the actor's face.
And although Meyer never goes into hardcore territory, either in the sex or the nudity, he does go pretty close to the bone in many shots. A rear shot of The Ethiopian Chef', as she sits astride Adolph, clearly shows her labia for example and although no close-ups are given, in the same scene, Schwartz does indeed have his face buried between her legs. We also have a close-up of a (false, latex) erection being greased up, an appendage that will make numerous appearances in fact.

Meyer was always a hard bird to tie down though when it came to his attitude to women and sexual violence. He did indeed openly adore women (especially the big breasted type of course) and has countless, full-on, ass kicking, strong female characters in all of his films. And yet he puts them through more violence and sexual trauma than probably any director in the history of motion pictures.
And "UP!" is no different. Just after introducing Margo, for example, she is stripped, brutally beaten and raped in a classic example of pure, politically incorrect, grossly insensitive exploitation (hell, the rape is even treated as comic!). And yet in the same sequence Meyer shows her skilfully fighting back and gives her a truly great shot where she comes up out of the water, bare breasted, and strikes a defiant pose that screams out female empowerment and beauty.
He truly worships his women characters, and yet exploits and mistreats them with truly wild abandon.

Rape aside Meyer, as always, films the sex with a true feeling for the idea that it should be fun no matter who is doing it or how it is being done (and fuck anyone who disagrees) and as his actors buck, thrust, bounce and scream their joy (all scored to as many weird and wonderful music cues and sound effects as possible) a warm and fuzzy feeling of joy and abandonment overcomes those viewers who grasp Meyer's ideas and philosophy as tightly as the ample breasts on display are themselves being grasped.
Meyer also puts much of the more romantic sex (like between Alice and Paul) on a pedestal and has it staged and shot like some grand sculpture, as bodies thrust against one another atop of rocks, surrounded by water or draped by the hanging branches of trees.

But it's not all flesh and fornication, some wildly over the top, cartoon gore and violence is thrown into the mix as well. A battle between two of our characters involving axes and a chainsaw leaves reality far, far behind as the movie plummets even further into all out dementia. And the sexual tag line to this sequence beggars belief!

As with all the best 'Trash' cinema the dialogue and characters are as vital as any exploitative visual and in "UP!" the dialogue is mixture of the purposely pompous and obscure (The Greek Chorus's exhaltations), the genuinely funny and the amazingly crude where, for example, women are called "cunts" on more than one occasion (the only parts of the dialogue that leave a rather nasty taste in the mouth in fact, no pun intended).
The Nazi element (something that Meyer often lampooned in truly weird and off-beat ways) is handled without any concern to the conventions of reality or for the rest of film's setting, and is basically the oil sitting on top of the water that refuses to mix (and quite where that castle is meant to be is…well…not worth thinking about actually), something that in the hands of almost anyone else would mean the film is critically damaged from the start. And yet Meyer knows exactly how to craft such off-the-wall ideas so that, although they never integrate themselves with the main set-up of the movie, the viewer is cleverly coaxed into shrugging off logic (as well as the visual/story jolts such ideas have on the rest of the film) and simply sit back and enjoy the uniquely deranged madness unfurling before them.

The plot itself, if one can even call it that, is indeed a complete mess (Meyer had to shoot Kitten's 'Chorus' scenes later to try and pull the threads of the story together, though they actually make little sense themselves anyway) and it seems that Meyer, Anthony-James Ryan and critic Roger Ebert simply gave up in the end and had the film rely on it's sexual high-jinx and camp buffoonery to carry it along.
But somehow this 'mess' still, astonishingly, casts a compulsive charm over the audience.
Don't let the whole 'murder mystery' idea fool you though, it's pretty much a red herring as far as the majority of the running time is concerned and only has any baring on the film during the finale.
And boy, what a completely loony finale it is!
The revealing of the killer, the motives for the murder and various other crazed plot twists are delivered during a chaotic, naked chase over rocks and through woods and rivers as the entire plot is shouted out between shots of pubic hair, bouncing buttocks and jiggling blood streaked breasts. Forget any kind of logic or movie making convention here folks and simply go with the flow, because if you don't your brain might well explode.

Although not Meyer's best work, "UP!" is so stuffed with sexual abandon, crazy ideas, general madness, politically incorrect exploitation and 'Trash' delights (all crafted with Meyer's unique skill) that if you are in anyway, at all, into Exploitation, high camp, Grindhouse, Drive-In and just plain far-out craziness as far as your movie viewing is concerned, you won't be able to do anything else except love what Russ offers up.