Miyazaki and Gorman (Who?) Meet Russ Meyer

My friend Roxanne Lane, once the powerhouse PSA coordinator for Women in Film, is serious about movies and the status of women. That’s why she turned me on to a blog called “Cherchez La Female,” in which entertainment journalist Krystyna Hunt muses about “the power and influence, good or bad, of women in films.” So far Hunt has discussed The Hunger Games, Winter’s Bone, Chicago, and the work of Hayao Miyazaki, whose strong female leads in animated features like Spirited Away strike her as the best possible role-models for young girls. Hunt describes her topic thus: “The roles of women in film have most often been controlled by men. Sometimes the portrayals have been very good (such as those produced by Studio Ghibli), sometimes they have been very bad (such as those directed by Roger Gorman).”

Hey, wait a minute! There’s no question that Studio Ghibli, which is Miyazaki’s home base, has produced wondrous heroines. But Roger Gorman? (The misspelling is Hunt’s, and reminds me of all the ways that Corman writers and directors have amused themselves by sneaking Roger’s name into their cast of characters. On TV’s The Phantom Eye, he himself played a mad scientist pointedly called Dr. Gorman. And I recall an oddball neighbor named Namroc, along with other variations.)

Anyway, though women in Roger Corman movies definitely serve an eye-candy function, I wouldn’t be so quick to see their roles as entirely negative. I’m thinking, for instance, of Angie Dickinson in Big Bad Mama. She’s strong; she’s tough; she’s sexy as all get-out; she takes charge of her own destiny. There are lots of other kick-ass women in Corman flicks too, and even the heroines of his slasher movies (like Slumber Party Massacre) have what it takes to survive, bloody but unbowed. Then there’s the fact that Roger has always made a point of promoting women behind the scenes. Many an established writer, director, editor, production manager, and crew member got her start thanks to Roger. Most notably, he discovered the talents of producers-to-be Barbara Boyle (Phenomenon) and Gale Ann Hurd (Terminator, Aliens, Armageddon) at a time when Hollywood was even more of an all-male club than it is today.

I suspect that a better example for Hunt of really offensive female characters can be found in the oeuvre of the late, unlamented Russ Meyer, who used his movies to work out his own obsession with the female anatomy. I admit to a certain fascination with Meyer’s sado-masochistic girl-on-girl slugfest, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! But his much-talked-about Vixen (which I watched in the line of duty while researching the films of the late Sixties) just left me queasy. Its leading character’s exuberant sexuality is matched by her racism, her lack of scruples, and her overall bitchiness. Amazingly, in 1970, Twentieth Century-Fox gave Meyer a shot at the big time, with an assignment to direct the big-budget sexploitation flick, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. (The screenplay is by Roger Ebert, of all people, and I consider it not just trash but unwatchable.)

Nor was Meyer open to women on his creative staff. My old buddy Stan Berkowitz, who crewed on Supervixens, tells me that on the set he saw plenty of women, most of them flaunting the audacious "Guns of Navarone" bazooms that were Meyer's stock in trade. But on the production team there was not a female to be found, and the pneumatic starlets were strictly off-limits. Meyer made movies to feed his personal fixations. He wanted his crews, like himself, in a permanent state of arousal.