Animals The Vixen

THE FIRST-TIME reviewer is in a spot. After years of slogging through the editorial pages on safe, dependable Political Analses, he's afraid to bare his artistic judgments before the breakfast-table audience. And when he knows that his first appearance as a critic will also be his last, he may secretly wish that he could make his reputation on something other than a skin-flick review.

But there are considerations here that blot out all the hesitations. The Vixen has come to town, and it's time to swallow journalistic honor and say the things that have to be said.

When The Vixen made its debate in Washington this summer, it attracted little attention outside the regular circle of skin-flick fans who hang out in the city's 14th Street theater district. Vixen opened in a movie house across the street from the Greyhound bus station, and on nights in early July there was a steady line of soldiers stretching across the street from the station into the theater.

There wasn't much in Vixen's appearance then to suggest that it was any different from the movies being shown next door to it (Hungry Thighs and Sweet Honey) . The posters outside the theater just showed a healthily panting woman, her face partially blocked by a huge "X RATING-NO ONE UNDER IS ADMITTED." The ticket seller was more interested in hustling some of the people from the Hungry Thighs crowd to Vixen than in checking the age of potential viewers.

Vixen's big break came in late July. The Washingly Post- whose reviewer said he secretly followed some Congressmen to find the movie-praised Vixen in a lavish piece headlined "At the Top of the Skin Flick Heap." From there on, the professional advertising machine went to work to produce a genuine hit. A woman with a breathy voice made a series of subtle ads ("Vixen-is she woman or animal"-pant-pant) for the local radio stations. By August the theater owners knew they were riding a good thing. So many tourists were flocking to the show that the owners could jack the prices to twice their original level.

THE MAN responsible for this film is Russ Meyer. He wrote the "story," directed the action, did some of the camerawork, and presumably coached his actors thrugh the crucial scenes. Meyer has a long and distinguished background in this kind of work (his early-60's classic. The Immoral Mr. Teas. won him world-wide fame as "the sailor's friend"), and his firm influence shows in every scene.

Meyer has not been treated as extensively by critics as say, Godard or Hitchcock have, but recently Vincent Canby decided to spend a few inches on him. Now I'm still so dumb about the cinema that I don't know whether I should say "movie" or "film" or "picture." but I know when I've caught Canby with his foot in his mouth. Meyer would be all right, Canby said, if only he could get his mind off sex. Hah. What makes Meyer so great is that he can think of nothing else.

The key to Meyer's genius is that he doesn't let any-complicating factors-like "redeeming social value" or "plot line"-get in his way as he steams toward his goal of producing a sexy movie. A brief outline of Vixen's action is an instructive example:

A chesty Canadian girl named Vixen ("my friends call my Vix"; everyone's her friend after a minute or two) lives in the woody wild land with her bush pilot husband. Vix has lots of those healthy hormonal impulses, and she likes to work them out with her husband. Wholesome family life, right? But there's a sad catch: her husband's piloting business takes him away from the cabin and leaves Vixen alone. Clever Vixen finds other diversions, and the film follows her as she bounds in and out of beds and meadows with a strange assortment of friends: a Mountie, several tourists, her brother, her brother's draft-dodging friend, a fisherman and his wife (separately), and most of the other residents of British Columbia excepting the bears.

While most films would try to clog these episodes with heavy themes-like marital tension or incest or lesbianism-Meyer light-heartedly plays them for sheer sexy fun. Vixen and her brother don't talk about social taboos or family relations. They don't talk about anything. They just grin a lot and yell as they move into the movie's memorable shower stall-chase scene.

The correctness of Meyer's approach is best illustrated by the few sodden moments when he loses his way and tries to inject some social meaning into the film. Meyer apparently got the idea during the last half of the shooting that Vixen should touch on some Major Issues of the Day, like racial tension, the War, the draft, revolution, etc. He's not too good at dealing with these ideas, and he ended up dumping all his social messages on one character: a black motorcyclist, who left America because of the draft and who nearly hijacks Mr. Vixen's plane to Cuba to promote racial justice. Meyer could have done himself and his viewers a big favor by cutting all the "relevant" scenes. There's no reason in the world that Vixen should be wasting time casting racial slurs at the motorcyclist, when she could as easily be chasing Mounties.

HERE is a second component in Meyer's greatness. At a time when the sex cinema seems increasingly preoccupied with all kinds of perversions-whips and bestiality and white slavery and homo-sexuality and the rest-Meyer comes on as an evangelist for good old boy-meets-girl relations. All the sexual action of the film centers on normal-if energetic-heterosexual encounters between ever-so-consenting adults.

Success comes at a cost; when word of Vixen gets around, the theaters here will probably hike their prices, too. Go now and avoid the rush if you can. If you can't, go anyway. The look Vixen puts on her face-a look of pure animal sensuality that must have made Meyer very happy-is worth the price of admission by itself.