Vixen! Review- By Michael Carlisle

Title: Vixen!
Year: 1968
Director: Russ Meyer
Country: US
Language: English

Director Russ Meyer has had a lot of critics against him throughout his long career. He has often been called disgusting, degrading, disgraceful and creepy. Rarely is he considered a master of camp and a pioneer of 60's-70's feminism. His film Vixen! jump-started the popularity of X-Rated flicks into the mainstream. Only a year after this "skin-flick" made its impact did John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy become the first, and only, X-rated film to win an Academy Award for "Best Picture".

Vixen Palmer (Erica Gavin) lives in a Canadian mountain resort with her naive pilot husband. While he's away flying in tourists, she has sex with practically everybody including a husband and his wife, and even her biker brother. She is openly racist, and she makes it clear that she won't do "it" with her brother's biker friend, who is black

Not only did Russ Meyer's Vixen! create a mainstream appeal of X-rated films, but it also was one of the first films to receive the newly developed MPAA rating. Many casual filmgoers assume an "X" rating indicates pornography, and while there is plenty of sex in Vixen! I wouldn't call it pornographic. Rather it is a subtle satire of pornography and the sexual revolution of the late 60's. Meyer shows how hollow meaningless sex is while never becoming too preachy and never taking itself seriously. 

Vixen Palmer is a bold woman for the 60's, at least in relation to other onscreen female characters at that time. She is not tied down to any man and she can make decisions for herself. She is physically strong, somewhat intelligent (she does discuss communism, Marxism and draft dodging) and very assertive. She has power over her life and can get what she desires because of that power. Certainly she has negative traits, such as her views on race, but overall she is completely against the status-quo of what society expects out of a woman.

In conclusion, Vixen! is a profound exploitation flick because it's one of the first to exploit masculinity. Vixen Palmer isn't the one being used, the men she has sex with are. Man's sexuality is being used against him and we are finally seeing a female character think on her own. Modern writers should commend Meyer for being so ahead of his time. 3.5/5