Vixen! 1968. USA. Directed by Russ Meyer. Screenplay by Robert Rudelson. With Erica Gavin, Garth Pillsbury, Harrison Page, Jon Evans. New York restoration premiere. 70 min.
“Russ Meyer’s 1968 skin-flick is a hilarious, stylistically adroit compendium of middle-American preoccupations: breasts, fishing, anticommunism. Meyer is the supreme poet of the Rotary Club smoker, telling his tall stories with wit, relish, and a montage style that might make Eisenstein nervous” (Dave Kehr). To Save and Project opens in a big way with the MoMA restoration premiere of Russ Meyer’s Vixen! in all its uncut glory, one of the biggest box-office hits of 1968 despite its X-rating and 23 separate US prosecutions for obscenity. Much as George Romero did with Night of the Living Dead—another MoMA restoration—Russ Meyer transcended genre conventions to make a hilariously acerbic sendup of 1968 politics, sexual and otherwise, by putting the screws on everyone from Vietnam War draft dodgers and Communist agitators to IRA freedom fighters, Royal Canadian Mounties, and one particularly liberated housewife. Presented, as well, is the 1981 censor prologue from the theatrical rerelease. The January 8 screening features the film’s star, Erica Gavin, in a post-screening conversation with the filmmaker Peggy Ahwesh, during which they will discuss Gavin’s life and career as the daughter of a blacklisted actor, her work with Meyer on Vixen! and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, her appearance in Jonathan Demme’s Caged Heat (Demme was a big fan), and her run-in with the feminist Betty Friedan on a television talk show.
Scanned in 4K from the original 35mm negative and restored by The Museum of Modern Art, preserved with funding from The Celeste Bartos Fund for Film Preservation.