Russ Meyer
USA, 1965
Review by Rumsey Taylor
Posted on 03 August 2004
Source RM Films VHS
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Three men bound by leather jackets, motorcycles, and dated ’60s colloquialisms comprise the villain of Russ Meyer’s Motor Psycho. The scenario is keenly similar to that of the director’s seminal Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, only with the sex and preferred transportation of the main characters supplanted. The narrative trajectory of each film is also mirrored, although, expectedly, Meyer’s male characters fail to earn the cautious temptation of his violent women.
The typifying impulse of most every Meyer character is sex. In keeping, our motorcycle troupe comes upon a sunbathing wife (in the Mojave desert, speculatively), and their unofficial leader begins kissing her. She awakens in fright, her husband stands to her defense and is beaten, and the gang escapes with the babe.
Later we see another to-be-tormented couple, an older man and his wife Ruby (Meyer regular Haji, previously in Pussycat). The husband is expended, and his wife is rescued by the surviving husband of the prior crime. The gang leaves, and the surviving couple vows to avenge their abused spouses.
This alliance results in the film’s most hilarious scene: as the two rest underneath a tree the husband is bitten by a snake. Alarmed, he orders Ruby to cut the wound and suck out the poison. The camera frames his head, and he orders: “SUCK IT! SUCK IT! SUCK IT SOME MORE! NOW SPIT IT OUT!” This scene is a chef d’oeuvre in a career of clever sexual allusions.
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