This one is ironic, my all time favorite decade, the 1970s, produced on of the worst movies of all time. This movie doesn't have any redeeming qualities. for example, none of the characters are good. this is because we don't know anything about the characters, the only one slightly developed is Myra herself, the least likable in the movie. This is because she rapes a man with no hesitation. Also, another insult is the stock footage. stock footage on a whole isn't a bad thing, but it has to be used right, this movie has a fetish for it, especially when its unnecessary, an example is john huston's character, who falls of a horse. it wouldn't be so bad , but its done in stock footage where the actor could actually do it. Also, it is impossible to watch the movie without a homophobic overtone. and the director is tasteless. so yeah, this movie is confusing, has Mae west, homophobic and a fetish for stock footage, 4 bad things. but, strangely, this needs to be seen to be believed

Reading the Citadel Film series book on the Films of Mae West I got the distinct impression there was no one really in charge of this film. This was certainly not Gore Vidal's vision of a satirical novel on gender stereotyping and transitioning. His name was on the credit as involved with the production, but this was not his film.Instead it was both a Mae West vanity film and a trashy and exploitive treatment of some new ideas that were being discussed publicly about gender identification. Gay man Rex Reed has decided that in his sexual journey he is indeed a transgender person. Surgery transforms Reed into Raquel Welch.What Raquel/Rex does is decide to cash in on an early inheritance. Raquel Welch travels west and says that she is Rex's widow and that through her mother as sister of old time cowboy star John Huston who runs a phony acting school. Raquel demands and gets a half interest, but Huston smells something wrong.As for Mae West she has a supporting part as a talent agent who only represents strapping and sturdy young men. One of them in a bit role is Tom Selleck. Mae demanded and got top billing though this is a Raquel Welch film. This was a move of sheer vanity on Mae's part, but not as bad as Sextette which was to come.Despite the billing the youth market surely came to see Raquel Welch in her prime taking it out on the male of the species for her treatment while she was one of them. Issues of homophobia and transphobia are raised, but they're not dealt with satisfactorily.One thing that was raised put me in mind of a question my young nephew raised many years ago when his other uncle who had Down's Syndrome died. He asked his mother will Uncle Jimmy be retarded in heaven? There is an afterlife coda to Myra Breckinridge where the issue is raised just who is in said afterlife Rex Reed or Raquel Welch? But you won't find an interesting point of view raised here.

The only reason I was tempted to see it was that I have aspirations of seeing every film from Harry Medved's book "The Fifty Worst Movies of All Time". What a creepy and god-awful mess of a film! It truly was an incredibly bad film (and a deserving selection for the book) and when you see it today you are left wondering "what were they thinking?!?!".The film begins with a scene where film critic Rex Reed is about to undergo a sex change. The whole thing is done in a strange and surrealistic way as an audience sits nearby to watch. Despite Rex transforming through surgery into Raquel Welch (truly an impossibility), you keep seeing BOTH incarnations of the same character (Myron and Myra) as they set on adventures designed to bring him/her hot sex as well as irritate their hated uncle (John Huston).Now had any of this been handled with any degree of finesse, it could have potentially been an interesting sex farce--certainly NOT family material, but still entertaining. However, instead of finesse or style, the entire effort is handled in a ham-fisted manner with all the style and grace of a production created by sexually frustrated 7th graders! For example, some bizarre necrophiliac urge pushed the producers to resurrect 78 year-old Mae West from the dead. She utters an amazing string of double entendres that MIGHT have been funny coming from a 20 or 30 or 40 year-old. However, seeing Miss West (who is very reminiscent of Lon Chaney in PHANTOM OF THE OPERA) deliver these lines made me feel rather queasy--it was like watching granny trying desperately to score one final time before meeting the Grim Reaper! The film is written in such a broad and sophomoric way that there really is almost no discernible plot and the acting, if you want to call it that, if sadly unprofessional. Plus, in a very bizarre move, the film is often permeated with usually irrelevant footage from many, many classic Hollywood films. Seeing Laurel and Hardy, Carmen Miranda, Claudette Colbert and countless others spliced into a smarmy movie is just sad and it should be criminal to abuse the dead or those unwilling to be in a smutty film.If you think seeing a "comedic" anal rape scene or a geriatric nympho is funny or interesting, then by all means see MYRA BRECKENRIDGE. Otherwise, think twice before viewing--your brain will thank you for saying "no" to this film!!By the way, don't you think that since Rex Reed starred in this bilge the idea of him being a film critic is a bit hypocritical? It's sort of like making Michael Jackson a camp counselor!

Much like Orson Welles thirty years earlier,Mike Sarne was given "the biggest train set in the world"to play with,but unfortunately lacked the ability to do anything more than watch his train set become a train wreck that is still spoken of with shock and a strange sort of awe. Despite post - modern interpretations purporting somehow to see it as a gay or even feminist tract,the fact of the matter is that it was a major disaster in 1970 and remains one today.How anyone given the resources at Mr Sarne's disposal could have screwed up so royally remains a closely - guarded secret.Only Michael Cimino ever came close with the political and artistic Armageddon that constitutes "Heaven's Gate".Both films appeared to be ego trips for their respective directors but at least Mr Cimino had made one of the great movies of the 1970s before squandering the studio's largesse,whereas Mr Sarne had only the rather fey "Joanna" in his locker. Furthermore,"Heaven's Gate" could boast some memorable and well - handled set - pieces where,tragically,"Myra Breckinridge"s cupboard was bare. Simply put,it is overwhelmingly the worst example of biting the hand that feeds in the history of Hollywood.