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The Worst Film Ever

Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

As Good As It Gets

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

An on-screen narrator gives us the rundown on the inhabitants of a small south western American town… One young man works in a junkyard and restricts his sexual activities to rear end collisions, which is upsetting to his lovely but horny wife… A German emigrant plays out unusual erotic fantasies late at night… A female radio evangelist has a strange preaching style… The general plot concentrates on the junkyard employee and his wife… In contrast to his other ventures into provocative cinema, Meyer constructs this film more on sex than on violence… The erotic studies are quite varied, filled with his usual fast cutaways to naked, buxom ladies running inexplicably around the country side… The film is not without its macabre overtones either… He stimulates, suggests, teases, provokes, shocks, and upsets his audience in such an unusual way that he has become an American institution

Some people might say that Russ Meyer is nothing more than a dirty old man, but SO what! He certainly knows a good thing when he sees it, day in, day out, having to film these lovely creatures, while we go back to work in our factories or offices. This particular offering, is nothing out of the ordinary, it stars Russ Meyers lovely wife Kitten Natividad, as, indeed, do most of his films. Russ Meyer, while not being the most politically correct person in the world, should, at least, go down in history as one of the FEW film makers in the world, that could tell the difference between a NAUGHTY movie & a DIRTY movie.

More than a comedy, this is a parody on a parody. Based more than a bit on Thornton Wilder's "Our Town", it satirises American middle class values in a much more Rabelaisian way than Wilder himself did. Or could.OF course, Meyer is the great auteur. He writes, directs, produces, shoots and appears in this film, helped only by a pneumatic cast on screen and Roger Ebert thankfully off it. Even the title screams satire, from the great outsider, poking Hollywood right in its Beyond the Valley of the Dolls/Beneath the Planet of the Apes tunnel vision. Nobody makes films as full-blooded as Russ Meyer. His vision is full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes. But it's also sophisticated in structure, with enough dramatic irony to warrant the term post-modern.I haven't seen it in 20 years but I'll never forget the rollercoaster experience, or the absurd self-referential epilogue. An extraordinary film that deserves acclaim beyond its secretive cult status.

Maybe it's because it was the first Russ Meyer movie that I had ever seen, but I happen to think that it is also his best. Because of this movie, I cannot hear the song OLD-TIME RELIGION without getting dirty thoughts. Sadly, most of the women who have appeared in this movie have never been heard from again (Anne Marie, June Mack, Sharon Hill) and I would like to know if anyone knows whatever became of them. Especially Marie, since she is a local girl. At any rate, this is just a plain, good, old-fashioned, dirty time at the movies. Since this year marks the twentieth anniversary of the movie, I wonder if there will be any special occasions to commemorate the event.