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The son of a policeman and a nurse, Russ Meyer made amateur films in his early teens, winning prizes at 15. He spent World War II in Europe as a combat cameraman, then after the war became a professional photographer, shooting some of the earliest "Playboy" centerfolds. He made his film directorial debut with The Immoral Mr. Teas (1959), the first "nudie" (softcore sex) film to make a profit (over a million dollars), which led to a string of self-financed films that gradually became more bizarre, violent and cartoonish. In 1964 and 1965 he established his style with his "Gothic period", a quartet of black-and-white films Lorna (1964), Mudhoney (1965), Motor Psycho (1965) and Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965)) that many consider to be his best work. After the blockbusting Vixen! (1968), he was hired by 20th-Century Fox to make studio pictures. The first of these, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), was an enormous hit, but after the lukewarm reception of the uncharacteristically serious The Seven Minutes (1971), Meyer returned to the sex-and-violence films that made his name, culminating in the delirious Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens (1979). He spent the 1980s working on various autobiographies, both in film (The Breast of Russ Meyer) and print ("A Clean Breast"). |
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