Vixen!

Vixen!; erotic satire, USA, 1968; D: Russ Meyer, S: Erica Gavin, Garth Pillsbury, Harrison Page, Jon Evans, Vincene Wallace

Canada. Tom is a bush pilot in the isolated outskirts of Canadian forests. He transports tourists who want to see the nature, but since he is away for weeks from his home, his young wife, Vixen, a nymphomaniac, is secretly cheating on him with every man she can find. She even flirts with her brother Judd, but hates his black friend Niles. As Tom brings new tourists to the cabin, Dave and Janet, Vixen goes on to seduce him, and then her. But then Tom goes on to fly an Irish communist, O'Bannion, to USA together with Vixen and Judd. During the flight, O'Bannion pull out a gun and hijacks the plane to fly to Cuba, but Judd manages to beat him and land the plane.

"Vixen" is another contribution to the long, semi-porn opus from director Russ Meyer, which means it's a trashy, weak and bizarre film, with just enough charm and little crumbs of spirit to place itself above the mass of other films made today. Stylistically, the film is shaky, unsure, gaining attention with an unusual visual style, strange humor (the whole exposition with the narrator explaining Tom's job, the bush pilot, in Canadian wilderness, seems like some educational documentary, only to cynically switch to erotic story in the sequence where the main heroine Vixen is sleeping with a man in the wilderness - incidentally, when the man puts his clothes on, he turns out to be a Canadian Mountie!) and exaggerated situations. Erika Gavin is rather solid as the title heroine. Set in the Canadian wilderness, this 70 minute film doesn't have much going for it except (by today's standard timid) nudity and intercourse, portraying Vixen's nymphomaniac side as something humorous since it doesn't stop neither at incest nor at lesbianism (she even goes so far to seduce her brother) and the bizarre finale surprisingly steps into satirical territory which directly exposes the conflict between Communism and Capitalism, but out of pure curiosity for those interested in '60s it's an easily watchable film.

Grade:+