I do not know whether Jonathan Yudis is the heir apparent to Russ Meyer, but he sure can make one crazy film.The current Governor of California had to beat another actor for his job - Mary Carey. The way she eats an ear of corn or pours honey all over her body will quickly make you forget the Terminator. Who cares if he'll be back when you have Mary.Now, to see Mary, we do have to put up with Hezekiah (Darrell Sandeen) and his "art." Along with a bodacious display of breasts, we have some blood and death, as befits a B-horror movie. But the wildest thing is yet to come!
... View MoreThere were all types of sexploitation films, and they had many different underlying themes and aims. Russ Meyer's aim seemed to be to glorify the female as a fully voluptuous, fully powerful, and fully remarkable creature. The female to Meyer is "more" than the male. The sheer joy he takes in her physicality proves this, plus her mythic strength and power over the male. This movie, PERVERT, is exactly the opposite. The women are completely subordinate to the men. Their sexuality is seen from the outside, and has no real power. The women are viciously slaughtered. Even the gooniest, most degenerate, oldest, or stupidest males are stronger and smarter than the females. This is cheap sex comedy a hundred times removed from adult sexual issues. The attitude towards the women is like that of teen males who hate women because the sexiest women aren't available to them, and because a woman's sexuality is totally abstract to them. It's actually quite Victorian in that sense. It's full of a type of fear and curiosity of the female that emerges in times of great repression. SPOILER ALERT: Worse still, the "killer" that is terrorizing the females (the detached penis of the protagonist), is never related psychologically to its owner, so that an opportunity for discussing male violence or a split between the civilized and savage parts of male desire, is missed. Indeed, the claymation penis is the only character that is given a personality. It has rage, humility, bashfulness, shame, makes cutesy faces, etc. This is all of course a cheap joke. Especially as this killer penis rapes women, destroys their insides, and comes out through their mouths, behaving like a knife, eviscerating them and making them explode with blood, then scuttles across the desert like a cowboy hero out for revenge. Ha ha. Other jokes draw on racism, homophobia, ageism, etc. As an attempt to make fun of redneck values it doesn't work, as the film doesn't offer an alternate point of view, so it seems to condone the values it's sending up. Therefore, as satire it fails miserably. The filmmakers seem to revel in the bad values, almost nostalgic for them, and to be making this film as a way of re-entrenching them through humor. As a female, I find as much humor in this travesty as a black person might find in a comic send-up of a KKK lynching, all of course from the point of view of the racists. Humor is always based on the audience sharing values with the jokes being made, and so all of the people loving this film might want to take a look at themselves and why they think it's funny.
... View MorePervert! is a modern-day homage to the films of Sexploitation king Russ Meyer. I went into this not expecting much as I'm really not a big fan of the recent flood of "homage's" and "tribute's" being churned out by directors pathetically trying to cash-in on the current "retro" / "grindhouse" trend. Pervert! however, is a totally different beast.Old Hezekiah (Darrell Sandeen) resides with his young, busty live-in whore Cheryl (Mary Carey) in Desert Range, an isolated stretch of desert in the south(?) where he indulges in his love for the art of meat sculpting. When his son James (Sean Andrews) comes to stay Cheryl gets a hankerin' for some younger meat and the two of them begin an affair behind the old man's back. Suddenly, Cheryl mysteriously disappears and James thinks his ol' man may be behind it. When Hezekiah comes home the next day with a new whore, James sets out to investigate his pops "studio" where he discovers Cheryl's temporarily re-animated corpse. But all is not as it seems, as later on when ol' pops is chained down, the bodies still keep a droppin'...Writer/director team Jonathan Yudis and Mike Davis obviously have a Russ Meyer obsession. There are scenes and set-pieces here stolen directly from such Meyer films as Supervixens, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Vixen and a few others but nevertheless Pervert! still manages not to come off as yet another feeble attempt at a cash-in. Like Meyers films, Pervert! is very comic bookish in style with dream bubbles, wacky in-your-face camera angles, cartoon sound effects and loadsa really silly humour. Aside from Darrell Sandeen's fantastic performance as the perverted old holy roller, the acting isn't all that good especially from porn star and one-time Governor of California candidate Mary Carey, although she still fulfils the role of the stereotypical Meyer chick: big, natural tits! (in fact I'm pretty sure there's no silicone in this flick at all).So, being as this is a tribute to the spirit of Russ Meyer there's obviously a whole lotta gratuitous nudity, but there's also (mainly in the second half) a generous splattering of gore. From arterial blood sprays to ol' Hezekiah tearing his own heart out for one of his meat sculptures, Pervert! can be rather bloody at times. Also, to its credit, Pervert! never reveals its low-budget origins - it has excellent camera-work, razor sharp editing and its cartoonish colours are extra bright and bold.Overall, for a low-budget modern-day attempt at a Sexploitation flick, Pervert! is pretty decent. Sure, some of the jokes fall flat, the acting ain't too hot, and its all been done better before but if you're lookin' for some mindless nudity and laughs, check it out.
... View MoreI came to this film thinking it would be a dire movie with a few laughs, but all in all a decent 80 minutes of film footage. HOW WRONG I WAS..... This film blew me away. Obviously this film wont have wonderful CGI effects, or big named actors, or cohesion in some parts. The coyote babble for instance, whats all that about? However this film did make me smile a lot and even laugh out loud at a few parts, something not many films these days have inspired in me. The basic plot is an individual named James leaves New Orleans to live in the desert for the summer with his father. Things soon take a turn for the raunchy however when he arrives and discovers his grizzled old PA has a new plaything, going by the name of Cheryl (and no I don't consider women objects i'm just trying to convey the atmosphere of the film) who soon falls foul of James's "charms". Shortly after this Cheryl disappears, and James's father goes to town, returning with a new woman on his arm. From this point we take a step into the land of incredulity, as points of the plot spiral into the realms of madness. All in all however I definitely enjoyed the movie, and the ending certainly "pricked" my funny bone.Enjoy all J
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