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The conjugal field laid bare by flickering go-go lights, Russ Meyer's Faces if you will, perhaps his cruelest parable. The opening jackrabbits from the feverish jazz of the topless saloon to the Mascagni of the cultured brothel, where the owner (Paul Lockwood), "a pretty nice guy with hang-ups," savors a ceremonial chest shave from a Mennonite blonde fluent in the Kama Sutra. (Elgar's box-kite from Russell's film turns up to register a bucolic memory in the midst of an orgasm.) At home, the frustrated wife (Anne Chapman) is tired of him rolling into bed after "humping every hooker in town as soon as she comes of age." At work, two hoods (Duncan McLeod, Robert Rudelson) wait in the wings for the right time to crack the safe. Bridging the extremes is the spouse, who impulsively replaces a stripper at the nightclub and, suspended between abandon and chagrin, allows herself to be seduced by the bartender (Gordon Wescourt). The intercutting between bodies furiously grinding in a hot tub and stock cars slamming at a demolition derby is just one of the juxtapositions in this crotch-angled stroll in nocturnal Los Angeles: The elegantly deceitful madam (Lavelle Roby) climaxes to Beethoven-scored visions of ejaculatory fountains, the tavern's impregnable money box is equated to the conflicted heroine's "treasure chest" (cf. Losey's The Prowler), a bloody robbery turns into a grueling session of marital therapy. Ever the self-policing lecher, Meyer orchestrates a swinish exhibition only to freeze on the uneasy smile of Chapman, a Vargas pin-up with sad Keane eyes. With Jan Sinclair, Joey Duprez, Pamela Collins, and Nick Wolcuff.
--- Fernando F. Croce |