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It starts with a crawl about unnecessary censorship and ends with a complex picture of U.S. border relations and heritage. ("Think about it," nudges the narrator.) The game is marijuana, "that mind-bending narcotic," the plot is lifted from the opening of Coogan's Bluff, jeep and shootout and all. Cherry "the limey nurse" (Linda Ashton) with granite-jawed Sheriff Harry (Charles Napier), her ample form sculpted in the sands in a charming sendup of From Here to Eternity. Raquel (Larissa Ely) the blonde temptress for rental, bouncing from the craggy kingpin (Frank Bolger) to the Chicano deputy (Bert Santos): "Aw, get your enchilada outta here!" Id creatures and specters in the nation's lower body, with Mexico in the distance and the Apache (John Milo) fondling rifles. And there's the desert's bare soul (Uschi Digard), frolicking in feather headdress amidst priapic rock formations when not answering an alfresco switchboard in Swedish. "The toys of our times, the toys of our changing times," as the tune goes. Maidens straddling police sirens, leisurely oil rubdowns, images strung togethers and lit like firecrackers, these are a few of Russ Meyer's favorite things. Stuck with bucketfuls of inserts when half of the film was lost, he simply devises a new pop montage—pinups in split-second flickers to go with Fellini's disembodied cackles. Bushwhacking in the dunes segues into a Peckinpah squib fiesta while the heroines get to know each other in a divan, Meyer naturally braids the bullet-riddled macho tussle with the Sapphic grope into one grand eruption. The whole shebang springs from a housewife's typewriter in the final wink, "what does life hold further for these creatures of erotica?" With Michelle Grand, Robert Aiken, Michealani, and John Koester.
--- Fernando F. Croce |