This is a godawful movie. A pathetic swansong for Russ Meyer. It's hard to believe this is the same guy who brought us Faster, Pussycat! Russ eventually decided to swap his stylish penchant for sex and violence for what I suppose is meant to be a sex comedy with some 'social commentary' thrown in.
You would think, wouldn't you, that a movie which has Martin Borman having sex in a coffin, sex at a baptism, rape within marriage, pedophilia, incest and endless nudity including about 30 minutes of Kitten Natividad waving her tits about would somehow manage to be provocative or outrageous. It's not. It's just really boring. I saw it when it came out, and it was boring then, too. At the end of the movie, when the narrator inexplicably walks in on his fourteen year old son screwing his Austrian wife (why Austrian?), and decides he wants a bit of junior too, you ought to be shocked, right? Nope. You just think "What the f**k is the point of this scene? What's the point of any of this?"
The feeling I get all the way through this movie is that Meyer is trying to show John Waters a trick or two. Forget it. Compare this rubbish with Water's hilarious 'Polyester', from the same year, which is far more outrageous, funny and subversive, and didn't even cop an R rating. Come to think of it, I think Divine is probably sexier than half the women in this film. The Christian radio announcer with the absurdly large breasts who goes on and on and on and on in scene after scene is so excruciatingly tedious that I just had to hit fast forward whenever she started up. The endless bonking, screaming and bad music will set your teeth on edge.
Alright, are there any redeeming features in this movie? Well, there is one - count it - one - slightly memorable line. The two white trash junkyard workers who are 'bitterly envious of the lower classes', but God, if that's the best he can do...
There is a thing with colour. People keep bleeding weird colours. But Meyer is no Peter Greenaway. The Uncle Tom black character bleeds white, which might have been subtle, if one of the characters didn't heavy-handedly point it out to us in case we missed it. Similarly, the one potentially clever scene in the whole movie - where the main male character gets locked in a closet by a gay marriage therapist - is ruined by the latter character telling him to 'get out of my closet' about fourteen times. Besides which, I'm not sure why why we should infer from said male lead's preference for anal sex with his wife, that he's a closet gay anyway.
I can only conclude that Meyer had completely lost his talent by this stage. He's never made another movie (except some recent DTV thing apparently), and frankly, who cares?
You would think, wouldn't you, that a movie which has Martin Borman having sex in a coffin, sex at a baptism, rape within marriage, pedophilia, incest and endless nudity including about 30 minutes of Kitten Natividad waving her tits about would somehow manage to be provocative or outrageous. It's not. It's just really boring. I saw it when it came out, and it was boring then, too. At the end of the movie, when the narrator inexplicably walks in on his fourteen year old son screwing his Austrian wife (why Austrian?), and decides he wants a bit of junior too, you ought to be shocked, right? Nope. You just think "What the f**k is the point of this scene? What's the point of any of this?"
The feeling I get all the way through this movie is that Meyer is trying to show John Waters a trick or two. Forget it. Compare this rubbish with Water's hilarious 'Polyester', from the same year, which is far more outrageous, funny and subversive, and didn't even cop an R rating. Come to think of it, I think Divine is probably sexier than half the women in this film. The Christian radio announcer with the absurdly large breasts who goes on and on and on and on in scene after scene is so excruciatingly tedious that I just had to hit fast forward whenever she started up. The endless bonking, screaming and bad music will set your teeth on edge.
Alright, are there any redeeming features in this movie? Well, there is one - count it - one - slightly memorable line. The two white trash junkyard workers who are 'bitterly envious of the lower classes', but God, if that's the best he can do...
There is a thing with colour. People keep bleeding weird colours. But Meyer is no Peter Greenaway. The Uncle Tom black character bleeds white, which might have been subtle, if one of the characters didn't heavy-handedly point it out to us in case we missed it. Similarly, the one potentially clever scene in the whole movie - where the main male character gets locked in a closet by a gay marriage therapist - is ruined by the latter character telling him to 'get out of my closet' about fourteen times. Besides which, I'm not sure why why we should infer from said male lead's preference for anal sex with his wife, that he's a closet gay anyway.
I can only conclude that Meyer had completely lost his talent by this stage. He's never made another movie (except some recent DTV thing apparently), and frankly, who cares?