posted 09-22-2004 03:01 AM                    

quote: source and source

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Russ Meyer, a master of sexploitation filmmaking who was called ''king of the nudies'' or ''King Leer'' for such soft-core pornography classics as ''Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!'' and ''Vixen,'' has died. He was 82.

Meyer, who also directed the major studio release Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, died Saturday at his home in the Hollywood Hills, according to his company, RM Films International Inc. Spokeswoman Janice Cowart said Meyer had suffered from dementia and died of complications of pneumonia.

Something of a one-man studio, Meyer produced, directed, financed, wrote, edited and shot 23 tantalizing films that pioneered a genre of skinflicks with much violence and large-busted women but little sex. The titles of the X-rated fare that made him millions are descriptive -- The Immoral Mr. Teas, Erotica, Wild Gals of the Naked West, Heavenly Bodies, Mudhoney, Mondo Topless, Common Law Cabin, Supervixens and Europe in the Raw.

''I love big-breasted women with wasp waists,'' he told the London Times in 1999, two decades after making his final film. ''I love them with big cleavages.'' Little wonder that Time magazine critic Richard Corliss called Meyer's films ''bosomacious melodramas'' or that Meyer came to be viewed as an auteur.

But with age came grace -- and admiration -- as Meyer's work was honored at film festivals around the world, including at the American Cinematheque in Hollywood and the National Film Theater in London. His movies were discussed in classes at Yale and Harvard, and purchased by such respectable institutions as the New York Museum of Modern Art.

Meyer's films continue to engender debate, which may explain their popularity in film classes at the University of Southern California and across the United States. A San Francisco Chronicle critic labeled the 1966 Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! as ''the worst film ever made,'' but director John Waters has called it ''beyond doubt, the best movie ever made . . . possibly better than any film that will ever be made in the future.'' The film fared poorly at the box office in its original release but was a hit on the art-house circuit 30 years later.

In further homage, three rock groups have named themselves for Meyer films -- Mudhoney, Vixen and Faster Pussycat.

Meyer married, divorced and lived with a series of models, playmates, strippers and actresses. His studio said he left no survivors.

FILMOGRAPHY

The Immoral Mr. Teas (1959)
Naked Camera (1960?)
Eve and the Handyman (1961)
Erotica (1961)
Wild Gals of the Naked West (1962; aka The Immoral West)
This Is My Body (1962?)
Heavenly Bodies! (1963)
Europe in the Raw (1963)
Lorna (1964)
Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1964)
Mudhoney (1965)
Motorpsycho (1965)
Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965)
Mondo Topless (1966)
Good Morning and Goodbye! (1967)
Common Law Cabin (1967)
Finders Keepers, Lovers Weepers (1968)
Vixen (1968)
Cherry, Harry & Raquel (1969)
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970)
The Seven Minutes (1971)
Blacksnake (1973; aka Sweet Suzy)
Supervixens (1975)
Up! (1976)
Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens (1979)
Pandora Peaks (2001)

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