Beneath The Valley Of The Ultra Vixens [1979] [DVD]

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Francesca “Kitten” Natividad, the go-go dancer who became a cult pop culture figure when she was cast by sexploitation film director Russ Meyer in “Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens,” died Saturday of kidney failure after suffering from cancer at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, according to her friend Siouxzan Perry. She was 74. Jiggling Ann Marie and Uschi Digard are along for the roller coaster ride through Meyer’s lusty Small Town USA landscape (the film is set in the desert community of Rio Dio, Texas). Natividad guested on “The Dating Game” and “The Gong Show,” and had small parts in films including “My Tutor,”“Airplane II,”“The Wild Life,”“Another 48 Hours,”“The Double-D Avenger,” in which she appeared alongside two other former Meyer stars; and Adam Rifkin’s “A Night at the Golden Eagle.”

Somehow it seems fitting that Russ Meyer’s final home was situated right under the Hollywood sign, in a barely noticed area in the shadows of the iconic emblem of glamorous moviedom.As usual, another amazing and insightful post. Love the photos. I became an unlikely Meyer fan years ago after catching Beyond the Valley of the Dolls on TV late one night. That film left me discombobulated to say the least, but I had to seek out everything that madman made and I did! I found his biography a few years later for a whopping 50 cents. It’s flawed but I highly recommend it as it’s about the most definitive account of Meyer and his films. Chris Penn, who had starred in “The Wild Life,” hired her to perform as an erotic dancer the night before his brother Sean Penn married Madonna, and she appeared in a music video for Peaches. If I’m remembering correctly, someone in the Meyer biography said that Janice Cowart thinks Meyer’s films are sleazy and sees no value in them. She won’t grant access to Meyer’s archives for film historians or writers unless she deems them important. She’ll sue – or at least threaten to – anyone who screens even clips of Meyer’s films or uses Russ’ name without her permission. For a while, she was going after the actors who were trying to make extra money by doing conventions and stuff. She initially claimed Meyer told her to do that, but he wasn’t of sound mind then and almost certainly had no idea what was going on. In reality, she just thinks the Meyer women are whores.

Bye Bye Birdie (1963) Based on the Broadway Musical about teenage singing sensation Conrad Birdie giving his final TV show (in his hometown) before… Stuart Lancaster in front of 3121 Arrowhead Drive, in ‘Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens’ (1979) I re-introduced myself, and described my interest in visiting Russ’s house. As in our previous meeting, Janice was friendly though cagey. I started by asking about the hotel sign on the outside. Was the house being used in a commercial way now?It was clear that Janice was ready for me to leave. I thanked her for her time, before she offered one more clue. And yet, despite his movies’ box office success, compounded by cheap-as-chips budgets, Russ’ career was like his house: situated beneath the Hollywood mainstream, in a barely noticed sub-genre under the shadow of glamorous moviedom. The girls sport equally interesting names, such as Eufaula Roop (a DJ at a religious radio station) and a nurse called Flovilla Thatch (Sharon Hill). In the latest in our series revisiting locations of golden age adult films, Ashley West describes a recent road trip to visit the home of Russ Meyer in Los Angeles – where the Sultan of Sleaze filmed his last feature, Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens (1979).

Bellboy, The (1960) Stanley (Jerry Lewis) is just one of an army of bellboys at a luxury hotel in Miami. But, unlike the… Janice giggled. “No. That’s a joke. Russ attached it years ago. He put it there to throw people off the scent. It’s never been a hotel.” Russ continued to live in the same house until he passed in 2004. By then his life had changed, his brain addled with dementia, his films neglected, and his business affairs sewn up by a housekeeper-turned-assistant-turned administrator-turned-conservator-over-his-physical-being, named Janice Cowart. This article may contain an excessive amount of intricate detail that may interest only a particular audience. Please help by spinning off or relocating any relevant information, and removing excessive detail that may be against Wikipedia's inclusion policy. ( June 2023) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Knowing nothing about how a moviola that used to belong to a west coast sexploitation legend works, I needed an east coast sexploitation legend over to give me a crash course.Attached to the front of the house was a sign indicating that the building was a hotel. I peered through the windows but the inside looked dark and empty. At the side of the building sat Russ’ weights bench, just a few yards from a still pristinely-maintained pool. Bullseye! (1990) Bullseye! saw Roger Moore and Michael Caine work together onscreen for the first time. Great friends in real life, it…

As I said above, the films are available. They’re just shoddy releases that are wildly overpriced. So I guess the estate is making some money, but certainly not as much as it could if it were run by someone who cared even a bit. I don’t think Cowart’s end game was to ever make gobs of money. I think she simply wanted to seize control of something important and then wield power over people. The director plays himself in this satirical semi-autobiography, which has a strong moral code at its soft-core centre.

And Russ was the editor too. Ah, the editing. Russ had started out as a still photographer, and it shows. So terrified of anyone blinking on his watch, his films are cross cut in a dizzying manner, presaging the modern action films of a John Woo or Michael Bay. His montage is an epileptic strobe effect, a Picasso painting simultaneously depicting different points of view on the same plane.