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VIXEN HIGHWAY (2001)

THE BIGGER THEY ARE ... THE HARDER THEY COME

As crazy as a stoned hitchhiker and more dangerous than a pair of waxed legs, writer-director John Ervin’s Vixen Highway combines the retro sexiness of PT Anderson’s Boogie Nights, the cartoon clobbering of Jackie Chan’s action flicks and the raunchy wordplay of Judd Apatow's "bromances." Set in the woods, prairies and highways of present day Minnesota, this comedy is a Midwestern-flavored tribute to the works of director Russ Meyer, particularly his most infamous cult favorites, Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. This is embodied by the film’s three well-proportioned, provocatively dressed and extremely TALL leading ladies. Former croupiers of the Lakatua Casino in Sleepy Eye, MN, the arousing threesome compete with a string of lecherous male criminals in delivering an illegal donor liver to the house of an ailing bubblegum singer.

Driving a red convertible apprehended from the original couriers is Severa, a leather-clad Minnesotan with a personal vendetta against the liver’s recipient, Bobby Barzel. Riding alongside her is Fiona, a hot-tempered Russian redhead with a hatred for men and a love of martial arts. Finally,there is Loretta, a sexual adventurer from Shreveport, Lousiana who is as assertive in her desire for a woman like Fiona as she is for a man like Lance, the Bible-touting beefcake hitchhiker who joins them on their route to the million dollar payoff.

The leitmotif of Vixen Highway is our curvaceous leads’ interaction with the male sex, particularly its more insidious members. On the one hand, we have Emilio and Demetrius, two horribly dressed, not-so-wise guys flushed out of film noir, who have been entrusted with delivering the privately acquired liver from the office of an "easily influenced" doctor to the house of the "easily-listening matzo ball" they secretly despise. Despite their street smarts, the greasy stallions are unable to resist offering a ride to Severa, Fiona and Loretta after spotting them stranded by a disabled car on the highway. Making the mistake of revealing the type of ride they plan to give, Emilio and Demetrius quickly find themselves robbed of a vehicle and a goodwill package.

On the other hand we have Elroy, Scoop and Larry Hugh, three self-styled rube rogues who’ve forsaken the barren sticks of Fern Creek, Kentucky for the action-packed clubland of Minneapolis, Minnesota - one stop on their nationwide pilgrimage to ingest as many willing females as can gratify their T-bone appetites. Taking a cue from one of the men’s periodicals they subscribe to,the peckerwood playboys disguise as highway patrolmen to up their fortunes with the "weaker sex." Little do they know that the three vixens they pull over for "speeding" will pay them off with a fate worse than jail. Along the way, both sets of testosterone cowboys seek refuge at a little gas station run bytwo perpetually sweaty strumpets, Bertha and Sadie Mae.

At the center of this male-strom is Bobby Barzel, has-been sixties poster boy gone to drug-soaked seed, whose hatred of women is matched only by his disgust for his fans, and who will pay a higher price for his excesses than just a liver transplant. He is attended to by his curvaceous, long-suffering manager, Thyrza, his seductive, Satanic anasthesiologist, Olga and, a team of hand-picked sexpot surgeons, led by Dr. Jayne Mansfield.

Forged from the diseased mind of John Ervin, Vixen Highway brings back the unapologetically sleazy fun of Russ Meyer’s twenty-three features. Dancing perilously close to the edge of skin flicks, his movies are virtual advertisements for painful excess, and set the standard for "sexploitation cinema." It is not a stretch to say that many of his mad qualities can be found in the cinema of John Waters, David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino.