FILM REVIEWS

PANDORA PEAKS

Starring Pandora Peaks, Tundi, & Candi Samples
Directed/Produced/Written/Edited/Shot by Russ Meyer.
Unrated, RM Films International, 2002
DVD Reviewed By: Chris Beyond

It came from out of nowhere...well, we knew it was out there, but never really expected it to be released. And believe it or not I myself was being considered to design the poster for a possible theatrical release of the film in question.) Well, here it is; "Pandora Peaks"... perhaps Russ Meyer's final pre-mortem opus. And it's either total trash or great genius...or...perhaps a sly combination of both. For those of you who aren't familiar with the name or works of Russ Meyer, he is without a doubt the greatest director/writer/editor/cinematographer of all time (mind the slashes). His films have inspired filmmakers from Fellini to Tarantino with most of his films like "Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls" (co-written by film critic Roger Ebert who Russ has called "a tit-man who loves food"), "Up!", "Good Morning And Goodbye" (my personal favorite), and, of course, "Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

So after Russ finished what seemed to be his final film "Beneath The Valley Of The Ultra vixens" in the 70s, (and after a false start on directing the aborted SEX PISTOLS movie "Who Killed Bambi?") he started work on his 8 hour epic which he titled "The Breast Of Russ Meyer"...a production that he has long talked about, but most people feel that he will never truly finish in his lifetime. In the meantime, in the mid to late eighties he shot footage of a few of his favorite models and a video for the band FASTER PUSSYCAT.

Fast forward to the late nineties. Russ actually comes close to finishing the film he has created around two of the models he has shot. He names the film "Miss Pandora Peaks" after the name taken by the blonde star with the double H chest. Although the film bears her name, it shows almost as much footage of a model named Tundi. Both models are bleached blonde, but Tundi seems to have natural "talent" in an area where Pandora obviously needed lots of medical supervision. But anyone who know Russ Meyer's films knows that the size of the cast in his films isn't the true charm of his work.

Russ shows that he "still has it" in his newest film which runs a lot like his 60s film "Mondo Topless" (only with fewer models), with short quick cuts (no cut being longer than a few seconds), jumps to cityscapes, street signs, tape recorders, to jiggling flesh, to Russ shooting the scene and back to another city or sign and so on. But is the dialogue there? A trademark of all his films was the oddly smart narration and it is more than present here with voiceovers over the entire film from Pandora (speaking about her life and what it's like to have "real" breasts like her own (duh?), to Tundi (who I suspect was dubbed by Meyer star Ushii Digard), but mostly by Russ Meyer who gives us virtual history lessons on the towns in California and Germany where the scenes were shot. It is telling (especially in the end) that this film is called "Pandora Peaks" but in reality it is all about Russ, his love of his particular bouncy fetish, and his life and how he came to love filmmaking and making films showcasing the two things he loves most which lay below a woman's chin. It's a tough sit-through as it revisits the same themes over and over and over, but it's still rewarding in the end as you realize it was about him the whole time with Pandora being perhaps little more than one in a thousand muses over his lifetime.

So it goes without saying that if you are a fan of Russ' work, you must hunt down and get this movie. If you are not as familiar with his work I would suggest seeing any of the films I mentioned above first as they are a better introduction to what the bulk of his work is like. Plus the "boobs" in this film are much more frightening than any of the others you would see in his other films. Now all we can hope for is that Russ finishes his 8-hour epic by the end of next year so his life's collection will be complete. And somebody needs to sit him in front of a DVD machine and get him to put these things out on DVD (with commentary of course) before the bootleg market sells him under (and DVD bootlegs are turning up all the time now at conventions and on eBay). Keep making movies Russ! We loves ya!

-- (Chris Beyond is the editor/creator of No-Fi "Magazine" and contributor to www.anxietyfilms.com)