Home | Movies By Year | Movies from 1968
Vixen!
Buy Vixen! now from AmazonFirst, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the movie. And once you've experienced the movie, tell everyone what you thought about it.
Wikipedia article
'Vixen!' is a 1968 American drama film and satiric softcore sexploitation film directed by Russ Meyer and starring Erica Gavin. It was the first film to be given an X rating for its sex scenes, and was a breakthrough success for Meyer. The film was developed from a script by Meyer and Anthony James Ryan.
The film concerns the adventures of the oversexed Vixen (Gavin), as she sexually manipulates everyone she meets. The story's taboo-violations mount quickly, including themes of incest and racism.
Plot
In the heart of the Canadian wilderness, sultry and sexually assertive Vixen Palmer, quickly becomes bored when her husband Tom, a wilderness guide and pilot, leaves for the mountains. The hypersexual Vixen vents her frustration by attempting to seduce anyone within reach including a couple her husband brings home as clients (separately), a Mountie, and eventually her own brother, Judd.
The film finally veers into political satire as Vixen's racism and the creeping threat of Communism are discussed at length among the characters as the film draws to its end. At the end of the film, her husband brings another couple home and Vixen smiles, apparently planning to seduce them.
Production
Erica Gavin was a dancer in clubs who knew women who had acted in other Meyer films. She answered an advertisement seeking actors for 'Vixen' and was cast.
Meyer recalled, "Bravely I went up to the location for Vixen without a leading lady and left a couple of my henchmen to try to find somebody. It's always difficult. But Erica had a curious quality about her. She didn't have the greatest body, you know. She didn't have the up-thrust breasts like the others. "
The film was shot in Miranda, California. Many of the opening scenes were filmed in Victoria, BC, Canada During the film, George Costello had a relationship with Gavin, which led to the end of Costello's professional relationship with Meyer.
Meyer said the sex scene between Gavin and her brother "was the best of them all. She [Erica Gavin] really displayed an animal quality that I've never been able to achieve before the way she grunted and hung in there and did her lines. It was a really remarkable job... I've done a lot of jokey screwing but there's something about Erica and her brother that was just remarkable... [it] really represents the way I like to screw."
Reception
The film was a huge box office success. Meyer later attributed this to the fact "it was so frank for its time. And a lot of it had to be attributed to Erica Gavin. She had a quality that also appealed to women. And women came in great numbers."Russ Meyer: Ten Years After the 'Beyond'
Ebert, Roger. Film Comment; New York Vol. 16, Iss. 4, (Jul/Aug 1980): 43-48,80.
Meyer later elaborated:
I think an awful lot of women would have liked to have been able to act like Vixen a few times in their lives. To have an afternoon in which they could have laid three guys, have an affair with their best girl friend, that would straighten a lot of people out... Everything she [Vixen] touched was improved. She didn't destroy, she helped. If there was a marriage that was kind of dying on the vine, she injected something into it which made it better... I think that every man at one time or another would thoroughly enjoy running into an aggressive female like Vixen... She was like a switch-hitter. You show this girl as being like a utility outfielder: she could cover all the positions.SEX, VIOLENCE AND DRUGS ALL IN GOOD FUN!
Berkowitz, Stan. Film Comment; New York Vol. 9, Iss. 1, (Jan/Feb 1973): 47-51.
Meyer said he used sex in the film to make points about racial bigotry and communism.West View: King Leer
BURT PRELUTSKY. Los Angeles Times 8 June 1969: l8.
Critical reception
The 'Los Angeles Times' called the film "good clean fun for adults... may well be Meyer's best film to date".MOVIE REVIEW: 'Vixen' Screening Citywide Thomas, Kevin. Los Angeles Times 1 May 1969: e20.The 'New York Times' called it "slick, lascivious."Screen: Sensationalism: ' Russ Meyer's Vixen' at Three Theaters
By HOWARD THOMPSON. New York Times 17 May 1969: 19.
Roger Ebert called it "the quintessential Russ Meyer film... Meyer's ability to keep his movies light and farcical took the edge off the sex for people seeing their first skin-flick. By the time he made vixen, Meyer had developed a directing style so open, direct and good-humored that it dominated his material. He was willing to use dialogue so ridiculous... situations so obviously tongue-in-cheek, characters so incredibly stereotyped and larger than life, that even his most torrid scenes usually managed to get outside themselves. Vixen was not only a good skin-flick, but a merciless satire on the whole genre."RUSS MEYER: King of the Nudies
Ebert, Roger. Film Comment; New York Vol. 9, Iss. 1, (Jan/Feb 1973): 35-46.
See also
*List of American films of 1968
References
Buy Vixen! now from Amazon
<-- Return to movies from 1968