Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens (4K UHD Review)

Reviewed by: Tim Salmons
Review Date: Jan 21, 2025
Format: 4K Ultra HD

Director

Russ Meyer

Release Date(s)

1979 (January 28, 2024)

Studio(s)

RM Films International/Signal 166 (Severin Films)

Film/Program Grade: N/A
Video Grade: A-
Audio Grade: A
Extras Grade: B+

Review

After Supervixens and Up!, the latter not quite as successful as the former, Russ Meyer returned to his “Vixen” trilogy, bringing Roger Ebert and Kitten Natividad along with him for Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens, an obvious play on his most successful studio film, Beneath the Valley of the Dolls. This time around, we’re treated to a series of vignettes about the common folk, but in the extraordinarily excessive, astounding satirical, and staggeringly candid Russ Meyer manner that we’ve become accustomed to over the course of the last two films.

Small Town, U.S.A., where in the world of Russ Meyer, anyone and everyone is either an undersexed or oversexed maniac looking for a good time, especially Lavonia (Kitten Natividad), whose husband Lamar (Ken Kerr) only gets pleasure from sex in less traditional ways, much to her dismay. As Lamar ponders what to do about this predicament and Lavonia finds what she needs elsewhere, the rest of the town is under the spell of the large-chested Eufaula Roop (Ann Marie, credited as Anne Marie), an evangelical radio personality who uses sex as religious cleansing, which is just what Lamar needs. He meanwhile must deal with the advances of local stripper Lola Langusta (also Natividad) and his sexed-up junkyard boss Sal (June Mack).

Russ Meyer outdoes himself with what could be the sex romp to end all sex romps, seeming to find a new muse in the sexy and energetic Kitten Natividad, who’s only to eager to please her director. Ultravixens takes satire to new heights with its ideas, including the main narrative drive of a man who enjoys anal sex with his girlfriend exclusively and can’t perform otherwise. This leads to a possible scene of homosexual rape that goes off the rails entirely, then moves on to a strip club wherein he’s tied up and raped by a stripper who uses a sock for contraception in order arouse him. He then finds himself on the receiving end of deeply-devout religious sex, baptized in a bathtub with a bible-thumping buxom woman on top of him. All of this behavior is seemingly the cure for what ails him, subsequently going home and making love to his wife the way she wants him to. I’m not exactly sure what’s trying to be said here, if anything, but its execution is over-caffeinated hilarity regardless.

All of this activity is narrated with poetic observation and explanation by Stuart Lancaster, who appears on camera seemingly as his character from Supervixens, who lives in a tiny shack on the hill with his Austrian wife SuperSoul (Uschi Digard). He walks in on her having sex with his son and he steps in to take over and “show him how its done,” quaking the earth and shaking up the film in the process. The film was also co-written by Roger Ebert under the pseudonym of R. Hyde (Russ Meyer takes the writing credit of B. Callum) and the film ends with a closing soliloquy from Russ Meyer himself, also appearing on camera as the director, which seems fitting as this was his final film before unofficially retiring after he was unable to get more projects off the ground. Ultravixens seems to be the ultimate expression of his filmmaking talents and his attitudes on sex and the human condition. If you have to go, go out with the ultimate bang.

Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens was shot by Russ Meyer himself on 35mm film, finished photochemically, and presented in the aspect ratio of 1.85:1. Severin Films debuts the film on Ultra HD with a 4K restoration of the original camera negative, which had suffered from environmental and chemical decomposition, with hundreds of hours spent on repairing it digitally. It has been graded for High Dynamic Range in HDR10 and presented on a dual-layered BD-66 disc. Based upon the description, I was expecting a presentation that was more compromised than it actually is. The damage is surprisingly minimal, with only mild discoloration and water damage to the negative in random shots, but it’s an otherwise superlative presentation, on par with the other films, if not surpassing them at times. Grain is very well-attenuated, with bitrates that primarily sit between 80 and 100Mbps. The new HDR10 grade fully widens the gamut for rich detail in the color, which offers bursts of blue, pink, and green, with perfect flesh tones and gorgeous shading on various locales. Blacks are deep with perfect contrast, and the presentation is stable throughout with only the previously-mentioned damage visible. It’s outstanding.

Audio is included in English 2.0 mono DTS-HD Master Audio with optional subtitles in English SDH. It was sourced from theatrical prints and one inch tape masters of the film in order to complete it. It’s a mostly clean track with a couple of random changes in quality, resulting in some mild hiss, but otherwise offers excellent support for dialogue and score. One need to look no further than the commentary track on this release that uses the LaserDisc audio underneath to hear the vast improvement in aural quality.

Severin Films’ 2-Disc 4K Ultra HD release of Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens sits in a black Amaray case alongside a Region-Free 1080p Blu-ray with an insert and a slipcover that features the original theatrical artwork, re-creating the original RM Films VHS and DVD artwork. This is also being released simultaneously in the US, Canada, and the UK, for those keeping score. The following extras are included on each disc:

DISC ONE: UHD

Audio Commentary with Russ Meyer
Trailer (HD – 1:57)

DISC TWO: BD

Audio Commentary with Russ Meyer
The Latin Brünhilde (SD – 17:00)
Talk It Over (SD – 23:28)
Still Talking It Over with Ellen Adelstein (HD – 7:20)
Trailer (HD – 1:57)

The audio commentary with Russ Meyer was first included on Image Entertainment’s 1997 LaserDisc release. Meyer, like his films, is extremely frank and doesn’t pull punches, offering his honest opinions about the people he works with, his various relationships with the women he’s known in his life, and his repeated battles with the censors. He goes quiet for several passages, but his input is absolutely invaluable and entertaining, but if you’re an overly sensitive person that has a difficult time with non-PC speak, you might want to steer clear (then again, if you’re watching this film, that statement is null and void). In The Latin Brünhilde, Kitten Natividad details meeting and getting involved with Russ Meyer, and subsequently working in his films. Talk It Over is a very frank 1979 interview with Russ Meyer by Ellen Adelstein for her television show on KZAZ-TV (aka KMSB) in Tucson, Arizona. Still Talking It Over is a modern interview which follows up with Adelstein about the interview and the content of her show. Last is the film’s trailer.

As they say, there’s no business like show business, and there was nobody quite like Russ Meyer. He never really fit into the Hollywood system, but against all adversity, he made a name for himself despite it. Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens is proof of that. Severin Films’ presentation is beautiful, and pays a fine tribute to one the best independent filmmakers of all time.

- Tim Salmons

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