Massacre at Central High (1976)

Directed by Rene Daalder
Starring Derrel Maury, Andrew Stevens, Robert Carradine, Kimberly Beck, Cheryl Rainbeaux Smith
Rated R
USA

You’re the new kid. You’re buds with one of the members of the innermost, most powerful clique at Central High. But you’re a rebel. A loner. You don’t go for this clique-stuff, no sir.

So what happens? Massacre at Central High, that’s what.

Vets of 70s drive-ins, early 80s cable, or the days of VHS and Betamax may remember this cult classic, the first feature from writer-director Rene Daalder whose credits-listing as “Renee” might cause some to think mistakenly it’s a woman at the helm. (It’s a man, baby.)

Holland-born Daalder got his start working with Russ Meyer (Supervixens, Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens), who is described on Daalder’s website as the person responsible for the Dutchman’s “initiation in all things American.” (Just imagine that for a moment, if you will.) Sounds like Daalder worked as a cameraman for Meyer and co-wrote an ultimately unproduced script for Meyer as well.

As far as its theatrical life is concerned, Daalder’s low-budgeted drama came and went without a whole lot of fanfare. This despite the praise of several critics including Roger Ebert who cited it as one of the better films of 1976, then heralded it again as a “Guilty Pleasure” a few years later on an episode of “At the Movies,” the PBS version of the show Ebert co-hosted with Gene Siskel. Danny Peary also singled it out for analysis in his second Cult Movies reader.

In the decades since, Massacre has been frequently mentioned as an influential, early example of the ultra-violent high school revenge flick, with several later films -- 1989’s Heathers, in particular -- clearly demonstrating its influence. It’s getting-back-at-the-bullies premise is also sometimes evoked in discussions of real-life high school massacres, most especially the one that occurring at Columbine High in Colorado in 1999.

The title cries exploitative horror, though there’s certainly more going on here than your typical grindhouse fare. It fact, the movie ultimately goes beyond the simple revenge formula to try to present a kind of Animal Farm-type allegory about power and its effect on us. I wouldn’t go so far as to say the film entirely succeeds in advancing some sort of coherent “message” about such. But it does get you thinkin’ -- perhaps more than you might expect to do when watching a film with such a title.


As the opening credits roll, we see the new kid, David, running on the California beach, accompanied by a melodramatic tune declaring “You’re at the crossroads of your life.” Weird “flash-forwards” are intercut here, previews of some of the violence to come.

Soon we’re at school with David, effectively played by a brooding Derrel Maury. With David we witness the three bullies -- Bruce, Paul, and Craig -- in the hall roughing up Spoony, a pre-Revenge of the Nerds Robert Carradine for having drawn a swastika on a locker.

“It’s a social protest,” Spoony explains. “That’s very sixties,” says Bruce, and the rough-housing continues.

That opening exchange does set up what seems like a kind of conflict between an earlier, idealistic time (the 60s) and the more practical, self-interested present (the 70s) where all that “summer of love” crap no longer flies. In any event, David makes a bad first impression when he seems to object to Spoony’s abuse.

Eventually David ends up in a student lounge, a space seemingly ruled by the bullies along with David’s friend Mark, played by Andrew Stevens, a familiar face that fans of movies about girls might remember from 1982’s The Seduction (starring Morgan Fairchild).

Actually, the whole campus is pretty clearly under the bullies’ dominion. It’s a weird world, Central High, where no teachers are ever shown, nor do we meet any parents or other adults for pretty much the entire film.


“This place is a fucking country club,” is how Mark describes the scene to David. “Gotta be able to change your whole style here,” he instructs. “You gotta drop that loner shit.” It’s pretty obvious from the eye-rolls that David isn’t comfortable with his friend’s advice.

The first half-hour rapidly establishes the dynamics of power at Central High while also introducing the female cast. There’s Mark’s girl, Theresa, played by a fetching Kimberly Beck (the final girl in 1984’s Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter). Lani O’Grady, one of the sisters on “Eight Is Enough,” is there, too, as Jane, along with the ever-sweet Cheryl Rainbeaux Smith, the cult-film fave who plays Mary.

The girls are aware of David’s unwillingness to accept the school’s firmly established power structure, but aren’t optimistic he’ll be able to continue to do so for long. As Jane says, “they get to everyone sooner or later.”

David keeps steaming as he watches the fellas rough up more nerds.


Meanwhile, David also laments at the attitude of his friend, Mark, who seemingly endorses such behavior. The nerds don’t care much, either, for David’s attempts at helping them. “Don’t you people ever fight back?” asks David incredulously.

The bullying turns even uglier as the troublesome trio grab Mary and Jane and pull them into an unoccupied classroom for what appears to be an afterschool gangbang. (Again, the viewer wonders, where the hell are the teachers?).


David decides he can’t sit back and watch any longer, and summarily whips all three in satisfying fashion.

Somewhat surprisingly, David and Theresa subsequently enjoy some dimly-lit skinny-dipping at dusk, which Mark finds out about later but doesn’t seem too bothered by. As it turns out, that little bit of fun is but a momentary respite for our protagonist, who soon receives a painful response from the bullies that leaves him crippled.


David tells no one of what happened to cause his now-permanent limp. “Ratting on people is not my style,” he explains. (Of course, in this world without adults it isn’t clear to whom he would do the ratting, even if it were his style.)

No, David’s style involves revenge. The violent kind. The middle third of the film is then taken up with his dealing with the bullies one by one, employing novel, slasher-film-style methods with each.


Along the way, Mark and Teresa make love on the beach (another dusky, hard-to-see encounter), after which Mark wonders if he, too, will fall victim to David’s wrath.

The film does not end with David’s revenge, rather continuing on into a third act, which is why I think critics like Ebert found the film more interesting than your typical drive-in offerings. (That, or perhaps Ebert’s own connection with Russ Meyer predisposed him toward giving the Daalder-directed Massacre more attention than he otherwise might have.)

“What goes around comes around,” says a newly-emboldened Spoony, sort of ironically summing up the new order. One soon realizes that with the bullies out of the way, something not-so-nice seems to be happening to the nerds as a result. “Suddenly this school is rife with opportunity,” says Arthur, who works in the library, as he tries to convince David that the two of them (brawn & brains) can become Central High’s new leaders.

David doesn’t like it. Not one bit. What happens? More nasty surprises.


Oh, and more stuff gets blowed up.


Will leave aside the particulars of how things turn out, other than to point out one much better-lit, campage-a-trois involving Jane, Mary, and Spoony. Spoony’s not such a nerd after all, it seems!


At under 90 minutes, Massacre at Central High gallops along at what to me seems a much-too-fast pace for any deeper messages to be absorbed (or plot twists to be accepted). Still, it's an entertaining ride, as well as a modest achievement with some historical significance. Definitely worth checking out for those with an interest in high school melodrama, “bully comeuppance” flicks, ultraviolence and/or explosions, Rainbeaux Smith, or all things '70s.

- Triple S

Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Vixens (1979)

Directed by Russ Meyer
Starring Kitten Natividad, Ann Marie, Sharon Hill, June Mack
Rated X
USA

"I don't eat pussy. It's un-American."

Unless you count 2001's glorified tit-loop Pandora Peaks - and no one does, really - Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Vixens is Russ Meyer's last official film. There are conflicting reports why. Some say Meyer felt that he'd already gone as far as he could go with his sex n' violence epics without tipping over into hardcore territory, something he vowed never to do. While it is true that Ultra Vixens is as close as he ever went to showing full-on penetration, sex scenes were hardly the biggest attraction to Meyer's films. This hitting-the-wall-of-X argument seems a little too convenient, especially since Russ himself announced his next proposed film - The Jaws of Vixen - at the end of this one. He'd also announced a fistful of other film projects around this period of time, as well, including Up the Valley of the Beyond, Blitzen, Vixen, and Harry, Mondo Topless II, and the Breast of Russ Meyer, an often threatened but never produced twelve hour videography/auto-biography. More likely, Meyer just couldn't raise the necessary funds to get any of these films off the ground. Certainly, the market had changed quite a bit at the dawn of the video age, and sexploitation films were being made on a sliver of the average Meyer budget by part-time pornographers like Chuck Vincent and Ed Hansen.

At any rate, this premature end to Russ's filmmaking resume did not do the old boy much harm. He made millions in the 80's and 90's selling his films to the home video market, and this more leisurely lifestyle afforded him the opportunity to spend more time doing what he loved best - banging big-breasted women. But as career finales go, Ultra Vixens is a bit of a letdown, especially in light of his two previous efforts, Supervixens (1975) and Up! (1976). Both of those films were drive-in classics, filled with epically beautiful women, two-fisted macho men, and an extraordinary amount of gratuitous nudity and violence. They also had intricate, metaphor-laden plots. Sure, neither one made much sense, but it was obvious that Meyer had some specific vision in mind when he made them. In contrast, Ultra Vixens seems trite and episodic. Written by frequent Meyer collaborator Roger Ebert, it's a thinly-veiled statement of Meyer's inherent homophobia stretched into 92 minutes of grinding monologues and pointless softcore sex scenes. On the plus side, it's absolutely the best place to see Kitten Nativadid strut her stuff, since she's in nearly every scene, usually naked, and on pneumatic sexual overdrive. It's also the best place to ogle the jaw-dropping Ann Marie (AKA Kathy Ayers), a truly gravity-defying freak of nature/science. Gorgeous and impossible all at once, Ann Marie is worth the price of admission all on her own. It is a pity that her filmic resume amounts to this, a cameo in Supervixens, and the little-seen '76 sexploiter Swinging Sorority Girls, because I could pretty much watch Ann Marie do her thing everyday. Just not in this movie.

Russ's cinematic arch nemesis, elusive ex-Nazi Martin Borman (Henry Rowland, RIP) is alive and well in Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens. This time around, he's the owner of a funeral home. As our story opens, we get a glimpse into his particular sexual dysfunction - he likes to cover himself up with a sheet and fuck chicks in coffins. The chick in question is busty blonde radio evangelist Miss Eufala Roop (Ann Marie), who mounts Mr. Borman in his favorite casket after a vigorous game of Pong on her Odyssey console. Hardcore video game nerds will be confused as to what parts to freeze-frame when they furiously masturbate to this scene.

Cut to: The Man from Small Town, USA (long-standing Meyer troupe member Stuart Lancaster, RIP), who introduces all of the film's character's in one of Russ Meyer's most long-winded, tongue twisting monologues. As it is with most of Russ's "Small towns", the population hovers at around a dozen people, at least half of which are oversexed women with painfully inflated chests.

Lamar (Ken Kerr), is our tragic hero. He doesn't want any problems, really. It's late at night, and he's got to do the books. And that's exactly what he's doing, carefully crunching numbers at the kitchen table, using his new-fangled beeping calculator. His bosomy wife Lavonia (Kitten Natividad, acting exactly like an alley cat overdosing on catnip) waits for him in bed, but when he ignores her fully-nude come-ons, she gets positively aggressive, climbing under the table to slobber on his crotch while he works. Lamar can take it no longer. He bends Lavonia over the table and forcibly sodomizes her. That's his thing, you see. Lavonia is not happy about this rear-entry bullshit, so she throws on a mini-dress and takes off into the night, presumably to find a bag of ice to sit down on.

Well, first she stops by the junkyard, where Small Town's "Garbage Czar", Mr. Peterbuilt (Pat Wright, Bikini Car Wash Company) bones her in a more socially acceptable manner. In the front seat of his garbage truck.

The message of this scene, and indeed the whole film, is that Lamar's predilection for butt sex is the source of all his problems. If he could only learn to "fuck straight", as our narrator suggests, everything would be ok. So, let's see if he can be pummeled and girl-raped enough to suit Meyer's heterosexual ideal by the end of this story, shall we?

While lonely Lamar snoozes and Lavonia exercises her vagina, Eufala Roop is busy at the Rio Dio 100,000 Watts AM Christian radio station, practicing what she refers to as 'Radio Healing'. Just put your afflicted body part against the speaker, and she'll fix it right up for you. Seems valid.

The next morning, everything's back to normal. Lamar heads off to work at Junkyard Sal's, while Lavonia goes skinny-dipping and bangs Rhett (Steve Tracey, Class Reunion) a 14 year old kid who was swimming the backstroke in the creek. He was relatively easy to find, since his penis was sticking up above the water like a periscope. Lamar, once again, tries to stay out of trouble, but after a hard day of whatever it is you do at a junkyard, he is called into Sal's office/boudoir to work some overtime. If you know what I mean, and I think you do.

A word, before we continue, about June Mack, AKA Junkyard Sal. Mack was not, by any stretch, one of Meyer's classic beauties. A 250 lb cosmetic surgery addict, Mack was a notorious and well-known figure on the seedier streets of Hollywood, both for her specialty modeling spreads - readily available in grubby mags catering to plus sized women - and for her lucrative phone sex service. Despite her rather braying performance in UltraVixens, Mack was known far and wide for her uncanny ability to bring men to trembling orgasms via the telephone. Her phone sex business was so lucrative that she zipped around town in a purple Rolls Royce, dressed in elaborate dresses and wigs, her 66 Double G bras stuffed with thousands of dollars in cash. Clearly, Miss Mack was a woman who knew how to party, which is probably what attracted Russ Meyer. That and her gigantic tits, I imagine. Sadly, this much larger than life LA fixture - an actual, living, breathing Ultra Vixen - was gunned down in the street in 1984, the victim of multiple murderer William Mentzer, an "occult superstar" tenuously linked to Charlie Manson, the Son of Sam, and the Zodiac Killer.

Umm, sorry to bring everybody down. June Mack, RIP. Now, back to the antics.

Lamar allows Sal to sit on his face - she pretty much swallows it whole - and in exchange, she lets him bang her in the ass. That seems fair to me. However, halfway through his backdoor romp, he is interrupted by his two idiot co-workers, Tyrone (Aram Katcher, RIP) and Badger (Don Scarborough), who were peeping through the window the entire time. Lamar kicks their asses all over the junkyard. Tyrone, being a coward by nature, bleeds yellow. Badger, a jealous and petty man, bleeds green. At least, that's they idea. They really just look like they're spitting up baby food.

Sal's had enough of everybody's hijinks, so she fires the lot of 'em. Good thing Lavonia - after an eventful visit with a traveling lingerie salesman and a "Spanish Made Simple" book - has taken up stripping at a Mexican gentleman's club. Of course, Lamar doesn't know this - yet. But take it from a man who's been fired from every job he's ever had: a strip club and a cold beer is a fine way to dull the sting of sudden dismissal. Lamar heads into bordertown nudie bar The Other Ball to drown his sorrows, only to find Lavonia shaking her ample maracas for the local riff raff. Here's the thing, though - Lamar doesn't recognize her. This is possibly because she's facing him, and he's generally an ass-first sort of guy. Seizing her chance to fix her fucked-up hubby, she slips the dope a Mickey. He immediately passes out, and she drags him into a squalid bedroom upstairs, where she proceeds to tie him to the bed and sleep-bang him, hoping that this will somehow cure him of his anal obsession.

After she's finished with him - and after he's dutifully flooded the old "black sock" - Lavonia shocks him awake with smelling salts. She jabbers away in excited Spanish, convincing the groggy and confused Lamar that he's with another woman, and her angry Mexican husband - and his death squad posse - are due back home any minute now. Miraculously, this bullshit seems to work. Lamar dives out the window and gets out of Dodge.

Unfortunately, by the time Lamar gets home, Lavonia is already fucking Peterbuilt again. Lamar catches them in the act but Lavonia thinks quickly, burning Peterbuilt's balls with a lightbulb and trying to convince Lamar he'd forced himself on her. Even a dimwit like Lamar can see through that, so he drags his wayward wife to see Dr Lavender (Robert Pearson), Small Town's resident marriage counselor/dentist. As his name would imply, the kindly Doc is a flouncing, Rip Taylor-esque caricature of a gay man, complete with a lisp and a cigarette holder.

Lamar explains his problem to the doc. Lavender is sure he can get to the bottom of things, but first he has to clean Lavonia's teeth. This affords his gorgeous assistant, Nurse Flovilla Thatch (Sharon Hill, perhaps best known as the nurse zombie in Dawn of the Dead), the opportunity to give Lamar a thorough check-up.

This turns out to be a bad idea for everybody. Dr Lavender, presumably because he doesn't like girls, intentionally hurts Lavonia when he's working on her teeth. Meanwhile, Lamar throws Flovilla on the desk and butt-rapes her. When she protests, he laments, "Why can't a woman be more like a man?"

Hearing this cry for help, Doc Lavender decides they should all change places. Flovilla busts out a double-dildo and gets to work on Lavonia, while Lavender rips off his trousers and attempts to bone Lamar. Lamar calls the doctor a 'fag' and runs for it. Naturally, he ends up hiding in the closet. Where else? While the girls pleasure one another in a spectacularly shot girl-girl scene (if only Russ could've lingered there, instead of cross-cutting with the Tom and Jerry bullshit, he might have been able to pass this whole mess off as erotica!), the Doc uses a series of cartoon weapons - crowbar, mallet, shotgun, chainsaw - to get Lamar out of the closet. When he finally rips the door off, Lamar hits him so hard his toupee falls off. He bleeds pink, natch. Then Lamar yanks his wife off of the nurse and splits.

Desperate, Lamar drives over to see Sister Eufala Roop,hoping that perhaps she can save him with her considerable healing powers. She throws him into a bathtub and baptizes/fucks him, her giant boobs clanging against his head like church bells. It seems to do the trick, and he literally runs home to his wife.

As you might expect, given her track record, she's busy having sex with Peterbuilt, although he's showing signs of boredom with this particular routine.

To make an extremely long story slightly shorter, Lamar comes home, punches out Peterbuilt, and satisfies his wife and her vagina.

Oh, and then there's a gratuitous Russ Meyer cameo.

And then there's a gratuitous Ushi Digard (Supervixens, CB Hustlers, The Car Hops) cameo, as our yappy narrator slips back into his Supervixens role as a chicken-fucking farmer with a hot Austrian mail-order bride.

If just about any other filmmaker created Ultra Vixens, it would be their high water mark, their mesmerizing, desert-bound, all-nude masterpiece. But some other fucker did not make it, Russ Meyer did, and for a giant like him, this is clearly one of his lower-tier films. To call a Russ Meyer film tedious feels like heresy, but unfortunately, it fits the bill here. While it is still worth a look - pants on or off, your choice - for the breathtaking charms of Ann Marie, the sunny 70's supergirl beauty of Sharon Hill, and the power-packed fuck n' roll energy of Kitten Natividad, all the bullshit in-between is a slog to get through, and the homophobic vibe threaded throughout the film just feels square. A rare miss for the King of Skin Cinema, and a badly timed one, as well. I guess the moral here is: Make every film as if it's your last. Because it may very well be.

- Ken McIntyre

Supervixens (1975)

Directed by Russ Meyer
Starring Shari Eubank, Uschi Digard, Colleen Brennan, Charles Napier
Rated X
US

"Is the fucking we get worth the fucking we get?"

Borrowing liberally from Roadrunner cartoons, X-rated comic books, old movie serials and fractured fairy tales, Supervixens is one of Russ Meyer's most inspired desert epics, a bruising thrill ride full of fist-throwing macho men and oversexed glamazons all going crazy from the heat.

The episodic story involves one Clint Ramsey (Charles Pitts), an unmotivated gas station attendant at Martin Borman's Super Service who just wants to get through the day without an incident. Since he is inexplicably irresistible to women, this almost never happens.

When we first meet our man Clint, he is servicing the top-heavy SuperLorna (Christy Hartburg, AKA Playboy model/TV actress Christina Cummings, who later married a right-wing extremist and got pretty fuckin'crazy herself along the way), but when his darling wife SuperAngel (gorgeous Shari Eubank) gets wind of it, she demands he come home immediately. As she is clearly insane, he splits work to try and smooth things out.

When he gets there, Angel is waiting for him in a knockout black lace ensemble, but their clumsy coupling soon turns sour. Their verbal sparring turns into a knock-down, drag-out fist fight in the front yard. SuperAngel bashes up Clint's truck with an axe and threaten to "Chop him up good", so he drags his half-naked wife back into the house to calm her down.

Nosy old creep Rufus (frequent Meyer stooge F. Rufus Owens) from next door calls the cops, and soon officer Harry Sledge (Charles Napier) shows up and conks Clint on the skull with his night stick. SuperAngel gets a free ride to the hospital, and Clint gets off with a warning.

Clint is on the outs with his old lady, so he heads over to the local bar, where bartender SuperHaji (Faster Pussycat co-star Haji, bizarrely bejeweled from head to toe) propositions him. Meanwhile, SuperAngel has invited Officer Harry over, to thank him for saving her from the clutches of Clint. She attempts to seduce him, but it turns out that hard-man Harry has an impotence problem. The emasculating SuperAngel mocks him and his flaccid penis, which puts the already on-edge Harry into a full blown rage. He murders her in her own bathroom, stabbing her repeatedly and then electrocuting her in the bathtub in what is easily the most graphically violent scenes of Meyer's - or anybody's really - career.

Harry's got to cover his tracks, so naturally, he blames Clint for SuperAngel's murder. Martin Borman (Henry Rowland, RIP) drops by the bar to tell Clint he's been fingered, and that he needs to vamoose but quick. And so our fallen hero hits the road, with nothing but his tight denim jeans to help him along.

Clint meets an ever screwier collection of misfits, creeps, and bountiful babes as he traipses across the southwest, looking for a safe landing. He hitches a ride with SuperCherry (future porn star Colleen Brennan) and her groovy suitcase pimp boyfriend (Z-man himself, John LaZar). The always-up-for-it swingers try to entice Clint into a scene - SuperCherry even attempts some hand manipulation on him - but he rejects her advances, which pisses Z-man off. He beats the tar out of Clint and steals his wallet.

Clint is saved by a chicken-fucking farmer with a Swedish mail-order bride, SuperSoul (70's tit-queen Uschi Digard). He invites Clint to stay with them at the farm, as long as he doesn't bang SuperSoul. Naturally, he bangs her, and is forced to flee, with the farmer hurliing pitchforks at him.

Then he runs into an oddball motel owner with a deaf-mute daughter, SuperEulah (Deborah McGuire). He invites him to stay with them at the motel, as long as he doesn't...etc. etc. SuperEulah takes him out for a topless dune buggy ride and attempts to seduce him, prompting a high-speed chase when dad finds out.

Things finally turn around for our hero when he stumbles into a roadside diner and meets a waitress, SuperVixen ( a suddenly sunshiny Eubank), who appears to be the reincarnation of his slain wife. Or perhaps her (good) twin. Or the Yin to her Yang. It's never really explained. They fall head over heels for each other, and it looks like everything's going to turn out swell. That is, until a vacationing Harry Sledge turns up.

It all ends in a gonzo mountain-side showdown, with a fully-insane Harry chucking sticks of dynamite at Clint and Supervixen. Will love conquer all, or will bad-ass Harry squash these two fuckers like bugs?

Well, the ending is just as berserk as the beginning, so yes, but no. But yes.

Supervixens, much like Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill, is Russ Meyer firing on all cylinders. Easily the most accomplished film of his 70's sexploitaion era, Supervixens mashes cartoon hyperviolence with Little Annie Fanny-esque comic strip sexcapades to create a wildly clanging, balls-first, eyeball-gasm ode to the 70's Man and his giant, throbbing penis so effective in its chest-bearing machismo that you just wanna climb on the nearest dune buggy and head out on your own death-defying desert sexventure. Meyer's follow-ups to this were exponentially crazier, but none of 'em manage to achieve the complicated balance of surrealism, softcore, and teeth-gritting mayhem that Supervixens does. They also do not have the boundless charms of Shari Eubank.

Ms. Eubank is one of Meyer's most elusive starlets. She only acted in two films - this one, and the oddly muted PG-rated sexploiter Chesty Anderson, US Navy (1976), before giving up acting completely. A small town girl at heart, Eubank left showbiz in the late 70's and never looked back. She became a school teacher in Illinois and continues to teach there now, in her early sixties. She never does any press or interviews about her acting career, and from reports of people who know her, appears to regret ever making Supervixens. It's a pity, really, because she was an astonishing beauty, and her pneumatic, larger-than-life performance in Supervixens is really one for the ages.

While it is a tad overcooked - the entire SuperEulah and Supersoul sequences could be excised without missing a drop of plot - Supervixens still stands as one of the greatest sexploitation films ever made, a towering cinematic triumph of heaving bosoms, swaggering uber-men, and pop culture kitsch. You could base your life on this movie. You'd be dead in a month, but it would be the best month ever, that's for sure.

Supervixens is available from Russ Meyer Films International.

- Ken McIntyre

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