Motorpsycho/ Russ Meyer’s Up! (18) |Home Ents Review

Two slabs of sex, violence and comic sexual violence from the inimitable Russ Meyer. The films are very different: Russ at his bleakest, streamlined, monochrome best and at his most flamboyant, nay rococo. 

In Motorpsycho, a trio of psycho bikers (to me their ‘hogs’ look more like scooters) burns a trail of rape and murder across a desert community. The local veterinarian (Rocco) teams up with an angry stripper from New Orleans (Haji) to run the bikers to ground in a desert hell hole called the Devil’s Cauldron. 

There’s something very sleek and streamlined – almost existential – about the story arc and the desert setting in Motorpsycho. But it is a nasty story, a classic example of the mid-60s exploitation ethos that presents rape as titillation. Russ himself even opines, as a minor cop character, of a rape victim that ‘nothing happened to her that she wasn’t built for’ – which must rank as one of the most unpleasant statements in the history of cinema dialogue. 

Despite this, something is working full throttle here. It is short, sharp, brutal and features a great soundtrack, which segues queasily from exotica to up-tempo dizzily crescendoing R&B. 

For this release, the film was scanned in 4K from the original negative and restored by The Museum of Modern Art, with curated by Severin Films in association with The Russ Meyer Trust.

Special features include great interviews with both Haji and Alex Rocco. 

Up!, Russ Meyer’s penultimate feature film, is a much more outlandish affair, with film and narrative form taking centre stage. It is a small-town sex and crime comedy in which a naked narrator cum-Greek chorus (Natividad) lets us into the secrets of a Northern Californian community. 

The craziness includes some very Pop Art colour film, randy policemen, sodomised Führers, ravenous piranhas, sapphic ecstasy, murder mystery, Shakespearean appropriation and Raven De La Croix as a rather unlikely undercover cop. This is also pretty rapey, and the sexual assault is played out in a comedic mode which will offend many.  

It is all done in the worst possible taste but I am still looking forward to the forthcoming release of the great man’s Mudhoney and Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!