Russ Meyer, 1922 - 2004.

Adult film-maker Russ Meyer, one of the pioneers of the porn movie industry, has died in Los Angeles aged 82.

Meyer - nicknamed King Leer - produced, directed, wrote, edited and shot over 20 films, including the 1965 cult hit Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

The BBC.

"I love big-breasted women with wasp waists," he told the London Times in 1999, two decades after making his final film. "I love them with big cleavages." ...

But with age came grace - and admiration - as Meyer's work was honored at film festivals around the world including at the American Cinematheque in Hollywood and the National Film Theater in London. His movies were discussed in classes at Yale and Harvard, and purchased by such respectable institutions as the New York Museum of Modern Art.

[...]

When the Russ Meyer Film Festival opened at Los Angeles' Vagabond Theater in 1992, Times film writer Kevin Thomas wrote: "No one projects heterosexual male sex fantasies with greater gusto and resolute dedication than Meyer, who at heart is a puritan and who has always been a bigger tease than any burlesque queen."

Myrna Oliver in the Los Angeles Times.

A cornerstone of both camp and punk cultures - no mean feat - Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill! (1966) shows the thrillingly lethal consequences when aggravated go-go dancers get bored. Russ Meyer's black-and-white desert Gothic melodrama - for some viewers the crown jewel in a flashy career - opens with crazed half-naked women dancing in shadow and thrusting their tits into the camera, while a pompous male voice in overdub details the horrors of the "predatory female" for its nervous target audience - the sexually paranoid hetero male sitting alone in Pussycat theatres across the country.

Gary Morris in Bright Lights Film Journal.

See also the Daze Reader's page devoted to Russ Meyer.

Posted by dwhudson at September 22, 2004 10:46 AM