Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
Raven De La Croix | ... | Margo | |
![]() | Robert McLane | ... | Paul / Husband |
Janet Wood | ... | Alice / wife | |
Candy Samples | ... | The Headsperson (as Mary Gavin) | |
![]() | Su Ling | ... | Limehouse |
![]() | Elaine Collins | ... | The Ethopian Chef |
![]() | Linda Sue Ragsdale | ... | Gwendolyn |
![]() | Harry | ... | The Nimrod / Carnivorous Fish |
![]() | Edward Schaaf | ... | Adolph |
Monty Bane | ... | Homer / policeman (as Monte Bane) | |
Marianne Marks | ... | Chesty Young Thing | |
Larry Dean | ... | Leonard / rapist | |
Bob Schott | ... | Rafe / man with axe | |
![]() | Foxy Lae | ... | Pocohontas |
![]() | Ray Reinhardt | ... | The Commissioner |
This kicks off with the murder of one Adolf Schwartz (who bears a striking resemblance to another famous Adolf) by placing a ravenous piranha fish in his bathtub. Who did it? No-one knows or cares, as they're too busy being distracted by busty Margo Winchester, who hitch-hikes into# town and gets involved with all the local men. It all ends with a series of complicated plot twists that reveal that just about everyone is really someone else. And if it gets too confusing, Russ Meyer helpfully arranges for a one- woman nude Greek chorus to pop up at intervals to explain what's going on. Written byMichael Brooke <michael@everyman.demon.co.uk>
Never before has a porn movie made sex seem so ridiculous. Up!'s over-the-top irony cuts so deep that it does not merely satirize itself nor does it stop at its genre: Up! makes sex itself seem so absurd that, after seeing this movie, one wonders why anyone's interested in it at all. The many positive sex scenes in the movie are not shot as porn so much as parodies of the notion of sex as bliss (note the quick cut aways and the scene changes (mostly in beautiful natural spots), creating a sense of hours of lapsed time while preventing any build-up of erotic aura). The many negative sex scenes in the movie never grant any empathy to the rapists, never provide any glimpse of pleasure in the rapists, and always include the victimized avenging themselves, thereby rejecting pornographic rape fantasies and demanding that the viewer do so as well (if s/he hasn't done that already) (note: this actually makes the rape scenes easier viewing than, say, the one in Boy's Don't Cry, which - ironically - is probably more exploitative).
Obviously, the movie is not easy to take. Watching it, I was full of wonder but can't say that it was enjoyable or even consistently funny. Compared to Beyond The Valley of the Dolls, this is much more sex-centered and much less of a movie. Once again, though sex-centered, the movie is not really porn in that it makes no attempt to be sexy, instead portraying sex and the culture surrounding it (porn, sexual politics, and Moral Majority-style opposition) as possibly the greatest farce of contemporary Western culture. Highly recommended for people with extremely open minds who are interested in seeing a destruction of auratic sex. For people interested in a good laugh or a good movie, you probably would want to check out something else. For people with any no-go areas, you should probably forget about this movie altogether.