Up! (4 Stars)

Who killed Adolf?

Or didn't he commit suicide in his bunker?

In "Up!" we find out that he faked his death, so that he could flee from the Russians. He's living in a castle in northern California. He's changed his name to Adolf Schwartz, so that nobody will suspect who he is. So what's he up to now, thirty years later (in 1976)? Is he planning to return to power and conquer the world. No, he's gone into retirement. He indulges in his masochistic fantasies by paying local townspeople to torture him. I shan't go into details, except that we see the typical twisted BDSM practise of the submissive being the person in control. Adolf is tied up, but he continues to bark commands about how he wants to be treated next. It's obvious that the people dominating him, a man and three women, despise him and are only with him for the money.

But Adolf's retirement doesn't last. After the BDSM session, when he thinks he's alone, someone murders him by throwing a piranha into his bathtub.

As far as the production went, this was probably Russ Meyer's most chaotic film. When the filming was completed, he realised it was too short, so he added interludes with Kitten Natividad, in which she balances naked on a tree and encourages the audience to work out who the killer is. Normally I would have laughed, but Kitten is so beautiful that I'll forgive Russ just this once. Russ had written the film itself, but he asked his friend Roger Ebert to write Kitten's dialogue. Kitten was picked at the last minute, and her Mexican accent was so strong that her dialogue was barely intelligible. Attempts were made to give her voice coaching, but it was too late to do a good job, so her voice was dubbed by an unknown actress.

I should mention that Adolf's dialogue, spoken completely in German, was written by the Swiss actress Uschi Digard. Despite being played by an American actor, the German accent is flawless, which makes me suspect his voice was also dubbed.

Is this Nietzsche's Superwoman? Kitten is unnecessarily modest, calling herself the Greek Chorus.

Maybe this is Nietzsche's Superwoman. Margo Winchester is an undercover policewoman who arrives in town to solve the murder. When she performs a dance act on stage her voice sounds like Mae West. The identical initials aren't a coincidence.

"Up!" wasn't as successful as Russ Meyer's other films in the 1970's. It was criticised for its excessive violence. His films always contained violence, but this time he pushed it to the limit. It was banned in several American states, which contributed to its lesser success. In a new commentary track for the 4K release, the film historian Elizabeth Purchell says that "Up!" is an underrated film, but doesn't go as far as to say it's up to the standard of "Supervixens" or "Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens". I also like "Up!" a lot, but not as much as these two films.