Russ Meyer's Lorna

Fellini's "La Dolce Vita" (1961)-was a satire of Roman Catholic Church featuring Anita Ekberg wading in Rome's Trevi Fountain. Russ Meyer's "Lorna"(1964) is the poor man's "La Dolce Vita", thumbing its nose at Bible Belt Southern religion and featuring blonde bombshell Lorna Maitland skinny-dipping and also wading in the water. If Woody Allen is an auteur director--so is Russ Meyer. Russ Meyer makes his world come alive. Thank God.

"Lorna" is revolutionary in that it showed full frontal nudity and carried a plot line, Meyer's first film incorporating the two. Originally a nudie film maker, he was clearly infatuated with big breasted women. The lead character (real life stripper, Lorna Maitland) keeps us entertained on the screen with her well endowed figure, despite the slow storyline. Once the story finally kicks into gear developing into its shocking climax, it becomes surpisingly good entertainment. All I can say this was a rather pleasant experience. I've seen Russ Meyer's later videos (B.V.D., Beneath the Valley of the UltraVixens) and was expecting nothing but sex and violence. But after all, this was 1964. Give it a try, if you're not a prude!

Yes, Lorna Maitland looks incredible. Althea Currier looks incredible. But then again, all the women in Russ Meyer's films look great. Russ Meyer is an aquired taste. I think this film contains one of the most brutal rape scenes in early 1960's film. Althea Currier is sadistically worked over by Hal Hopper very early into the film. Both actors and the director really give this such a realistic look that it's hard for me to watch this 40+ yrs after the fact. Hopper's performance was over the top for me. Which is perfect for this film. Mark Bradley plays the convict\rapist convincingly. The rest of the cast are the usual stock company. If you like your erotic action fast, brutal and in black & white. Search no further. This is for you.

Lorna is about a married couple, in which Lorna, the wife, is left at home when her husband goes off to work each day. Lorna runs into bad company one day and things go wrong for her. Meanwhile, her husband is catching heat from his coworkers because they have convinced themselves that Lorna's husband does not satisfy her and that she longs for more loving than he has been giving her. What happens? Sorry not going to ruin it for you. Definite MUST SEE if you have any interest in Russ Meyer's films.

Lorna is one of the best examples of Russ Meyer's gothic style of film making and a radical departure from his earlier nudie-cuties. In this film Meyer establishes his theme that evil must be punished swiftly and harshly. Meyer himself described the film as "a brutal examination of the important realities of power, prophecy, freedom and justice in our society against a background of violence and lust, where simplicity is only a facade." Lorna (Lorna Maitland) is a sexually unsatisfied young wife married to Jim (James Rucker), who works at a salt mine and spends his evenings studying to become a CPA. When Lorna goes for a nude swim in the river, she is raped by an escaped convict (Mark Bradley), but her frustrated sexuality is awakened. She begins inviting the stranger to her home while Jim is at work. Meanwhile, Jim's co-workers tease him about his wife's beauty and infidelity. One day, Jim returns home early and discovers Lorna's unfaithfulness leading to tragic consequences. Meyer's film is presented on this standard definition DVD with no special features. The picture quality is as good as we are going to get from the source material and there are problems with picture wobble but they are not a great cause of concer, This film marks the beginning of Meyer's black and white gothic period and is well worth checking out.

With "The Immoral Mr. Teas," Russ Meyer was one of the pioneers of sex films... He knew, however, that the region would eventually want more than just naked ladies winning easily around the countryside, and went for a strong plot that contained a well-motivated but heavy sex scene... Lorna is a frustrated housewife... She lives in a wasted riverside shack with a deadbeat but sweet husband... He works hard all day and studies all night, leaving her unfulfilled... One day, while the husband is at work, an escaped convict bursts in on Lorna and rapes her... She is so enraptured by the experience that she becomes infatuated with him, but when her husband unexpectedly returns from work, she doesn't know what to do... "Lorna" was one of the first films to show nudity in the context of strong sex... While there was nothing really explicit or graphic about it, it was truly shocking for its-time... Today, however, it is quite mild and dull...

Anyone who has seen a good number of Russ Meyer films knows that he always ends his movie with a moralistic message of sorts. Always, the message tells the audience that everyone is the wrong, even the protaganist(s). Everyone is concerned fundementally with their own problems and overlook the problems of others, but later those problems will come back and bite them in the butt. Lorna is no exception to this storyline. But speaking about butts... Lorna has a nice one. And that's the point. The other half of the film is about women's bodies, but it's not porn. No, Russ Meyer was a Botticelli of sorts. His art is always an ode to the bodies of woman. His camera doesn't objectify the woman, instead makes her an object of admiration. So, just as Ayn Rand wrote books outlining the perfect man, Russ Meyer makes movies photographing the perfect woman, but alas, she always lives in an imperfect world, where she is always tempted by the lustful desires of both men and women, yet she still stands as a shining beacon of perfection in the often barren and impverished setting. Lorna is a housewife in the middle of nowhere and her naive and oblivious husband can't satisfy her and can't get her out of the country and into the city either. Luther, an amoral co-worker, of her husband Jim insinuates that Lorna is cheating on him. Jim of course refuses to believe him, but at the very same time Lorna gets 'raped' (kind of in an Ayn Rand fashion for those who read The Fountainhead) by an escaped convict. She falls for him because he is able to satisfy her sexually. Lorna is a rather short film (like most Meyer films of that time period), but the story does not require a longer film. Meyer splits his time well between Lorna's body and Jim's cluelessness. And every so often, a Man of God (that's how he is credited at least) corrolates the story with Lot in Sodom, providing an entertainign subtext that is actually well integrated into the story. Just as all Greek mythology is all the same story repeated in different ways, Russ Meyer films take the same themes and reuse them, but Lorna proves to be exceptional in the delivery of that story, making sure that no character is pure evil; it always contrasts the black and white photography with the shades of grey represented in the behavior of the characters. It's a film worth viewing, as it is an archetypical Russ Meyer film, embodying all the aspects of his other films with amazing balance and clarity.

Excuse the bad pun of my title, I couldn't help it! Anyway, Russ Meyer was definitely at the top of his game when he was making these "Country Gothic" films. The b&w movies with the zany characters are, to this day, a lesson on how to make a good movie on a low budget. "Lorna" is a simple story of a married, but unhappy "vixen" played be Lorna Maitland, who's acting is certainly not academy material. However, after you see her you'll know why 'ol horny Russ got her to be the lead. This "backwoods" story is fun to watch, but it doesn't come close to matching Meyer's masterpiece, the hilarious "Mudhoney", and of course, "Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill". As you likely know, Meyer's later movies in colour became downright stupid, as his stories suffered because of his obsession with big breasts. It seems he focused on sex first, then the storyline. Make no mistake, you still had the luscious ladies with the big boobies in these earlier films, but the stories were about the characters first; and what characters they were! One last point about this DVD; the price of this sucker is insane. You're much better off renting it, or taping it off the tube.