Up! (1976) – Film Review

Director: Russ Meyer
Cast: Edward Schaaf, Robert McLane, Elaine Collins
Certificate: 18

By Sarah Morgan

For goodness sake, don’t get this film confused with Up, the 2009 Oscar-winning animation from Disney and Pixar – if you do, any children watching may be scarred for life…

“Convoluted”

Instead, Up! (the exclamation mark is important when differentiating between the two titles) is one of the final completed directorial works of cult film-maker Russ Meyer, the man who gave censors more sleepless nights than most, and who loved nothing more than on-screen nudity, particularly if it involved nubile young women with incredibly huge breasts.

There’s certainly lots of that kind of thing going on here, but then again, I suppose there had to be something to keep whatever audience it gleaned occupied, because it’s unlikely the plot would. Weirdly, I can’t make my mind up about the ‘story’ – is it so convoluted it’s impossible to follow, or is it completely missing, so what we end up watching is a selection of rather unentertaining vignettes?

Whatever the case, as well as naked females, another of Meyer’s preoccupations – Nazis – also rear their ugly heads. There’s rape, sadomasochism, an affair between a patrolman and a hitchhiker who turns out to be an undercover cop, and a run-in with the previously unknown daughter of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun, all linked together by Meyer’s then-girlfriend Kitten Natividad, playing a Greek Chorus.

“Too long”

What comes as a big surprise is that the story was co-devised by revered Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Roger Ebert, working under the pseudonym Reinhold Timme; he had previously worked with Meyer on Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and would work with him again on his final film, Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens. It’s certainly rather way-out for the man who once championed the early career of Martin Scorsese.

I was going to say that at least the film only runs for about 80 minutes, but actually, even that feels way too long.

One for Meyer purists (which may be an oxymoron) and obsessives only, methinks.

Sarah Morgan

Sarah Morgan studied film journalism at post-graduate level with the BFI and has been writing about TV and film for PA Media’s newspaper, magazine and new media customers since 1996. She’s also written for a wide range of other publications, both online and in print, including the book Offbeat and Intermission magazine, and is a regular contributor to the Talking Pictures TV podcast. When she isn’t watching movies, she’s collecting and reading vintage crime and horror paperback books or, for her sins, watching her beloved Sheffield Wednesday.

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