'X' MARKS THE BLOT.........FOX'S SUMMER OF DEPRAVITY RAGES ON IN 'MYRA BRECKINRIDGE'

Myra Breckinridge (1970)   Having strapped on (so to speak) Russ Meyer's "Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls"...... we'd be remiss if we didn't cover its X-rated twin.........both of them unleashed into theaters within weeks of each other.......

              Almost needless to say, the X-rating applied to these movies looks so sweetly innocent......48 years later.  You could see pretty much the same stuff on any basic cable series........

               Unlike 'Beyond',  put together with swift efficiency by Meyer, the production of 'Breckinridge' became a legendary perfect storm of disasters.........

                It's possible to still enjoy Russ Meyer and Roger Ebert's loony satire on it own flagrant terms.........but watching 'Myra Breckinridge'?

                .........similar to viewing YouTube videos of traffic accidents.........after a few minutes, you know to expect the worst and the accumulation of bizarre, embarrassing sequences becomes numbing after a while......

               The Gore Vidal satirical novel it was based on, a wicked, whiplash attack on American sexuality, cried out for a rogue director with the same devilish mindset.......(Robert Altman, coming off of "MASH", might have been a perfect fit........

              In a moment of "but we gotta make something that'll pack in the kids" madness, 20th Century Fox handed over the film to a young, trendy Brit, Michael Sarne.........(he'd just wowed Fox with his young trendy little movie "Joanna"....)

              We won't bother documenting the artistic meltdown of nuclear proportions that followed......it's all on display in the film itself, a grotesque, unfunny farce directed by an obvious poseur so far out of his depth, it's a wonder he figured out which end of the camera to point at the actors.....

             Here's as much as we could figure out:   Myron, (the snarky film critic Rex Reed, hired for his languid gaze and ripe lips) has himself surgically transformed into Myra (Raquel Welch,fiercely over-acting the comedy - everyone around her look sedated by comparison)

            Myra's great quest involves striking a blow for bisexuality by strapping on an unseen appliance and anally raping a bound young stud........then seducing his sweet young girlfriend (Farrah Fawcett)..........

             Okaaaaay.........if you say so, Myra.

             In the midst of all this, the movie presents an exhumed Mae West, strutting like a well preserved cadaver and spewing out a steady stream of her own personally written single-entendres.

             At one point, she salivates over a young Tom Selleck and spontaneously invents rap singing........honest.  Imagine a Hollywood Wax Museum brought to life via Disney World animatronics......

             Meanwhile, the woeful, clueless Sarne, permitted to plunder and loot  the 20th Century Fox archives, sprinkles the movie with random clips of Shirley Temple and Laurel and Hardy......(much in the same way 1970's directors would make ironic points by pointing their camera at random objects and people....

            And oh yes, we don't want to leave out director John Huston as the depraved head of an acting school that Myra infiltrates...…...he carries on like he's warming up to play the evil, incestuous mogul from "Chinatown"......

             Even before the film opened, Gore Vidal and almost the entire cast properly disowned it.....(we doubt if Mae West disowned it, though.......she viewed anything she was in as great self-publicity).......

             Sorry, but unlike "Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls", we couldn't even categorize 'Myra' as a guilty pleasure......

             It's just guilty. Period.

              Zero stars (0).........bye bye Myra........gone......and best forgotten.